Euro 2008, the quadrennial European soccer championship, is in the full swing, and I had been following it somewhat. The main reason for my interest was the play of the Croatian national team, which until today had a stellar performance that not too many had expected. It was a performance which included a win over Germany, only the second such success since the historic win in the quarterfinals of the 1998 World Cup. As I mentioned, the performance was stellar until today. Today Croatia suffered a loss to Turkey in one of the most bizarre and frustrating ways imaginable. In fact it was so frustrating, that I cannot bring myself to even think about it, little less to describe it here.
Even though I like sports, I don't care to write much about them, and overall I don't pay all that much attention to soccer. So why this blog entry? Primarily to try to exorcise my frustrations. But also because today's game brought again to my attention everything that I find maddening about soccer in general. It's a game of skill, but also more than most other team sports of chance. It can go on for full 90 or even 120 minutes without a single goal, and then in matter of minutes or seconds, a careless mistake, a chance occurrence changes everything. There is a hardly sport out there that is as susceptible to the emotional rollercoaster that soccer can bring about. It is easy to understand why so much of the world is obsessed with it. However, it is also very susceptible to its own form of Monday-morning quarterbacking, and its own form of counterfactual thinking. If the ball just turned this way instead of that, if that played kicked the ball instead of let it pass, etc., etc. The moments of defeat and victory are relived for years, and sometimes even decades. In its own right I find it all very psychologically unsettling.
My overall dislike for soccer goes way back to my elementary school days. At Phys Ed class our teacher liked just to give us the ball and let us play while he did whatever he liked. It quickly became obvious that I was by far the worst player, something that did not bother me in the least and I even took some perverse pleasure in it. I did not care to improve my skills so I would become more popular, accepted by my teammates, or whatever. Monday morning recounting of the Sunday games never interested me. In fact, I often tell people, only half jokingly, that I came to the US because it was the only country in the world where it was socially acceptable not to care much about soccer.
And yet. And yet, every couple of years, when either Eurocup or the World Cup rolls around, I put on Croatia's national team jersey, plant myself in front of the TV and get immersed with a passion that most other sporting events never elicit. And invariably, more often than not, my hopes and hopes of all of Croatia are brought to screeching halt sooner or later. But every once in a while we are given a glimpse of potential glory to be attained, and it's these glimpses that keep bringing me back year after year. And I will never learn my lesson.