Five hours, 57 minutes, and three seconds to the World Cup’s kick-off at Sao Paulo. If you’ve been waiting for this World Cup for yeeears, you go to the stadium THAT early
You’d all be invited to Barcelona
If someone gave me a euro cent every time I said “I could write a book about it”, by now I’d be FC Barcelona’s basic shareholder (even though, technically, it’s not possible to buy shares in this specific club, but I’m just trying to make a point here), and I’d send free plane tickets to all my blog readers to fly to Barcelona from… wherever, to go watch Messi, Neymar, my favorite of all Luisito Suárez, and the rest of “my” team in action, all for free! If only. “Sharing my Brazil World Cup memories” though, is the very definition of “I could write a book about it”. What I can do here, staying below 1000 words (wishful thinking, as always), is scratch (in the lightest of ways, and just a tiny spot of) the surface…
Half journalist-half fan, about to watch “my” Greece get their butts kicked by Colombia at Belo Horizonte
Two hands raised
“Pinnacle”, and “but”. For days now, trying to keep my fat butt in a chair in front of my laptop and write something about my World Cup month (without deleting it two minutes later, as it did happen 2014 times this last week), these two words kept crossing my puzzled mind over and over again, like students in a classroom, insisting on passionately raising their hands to answer a teacher’s question. So, let’s… hear it from “pinnacle” and “but”…
June 15, Maracana, Argentina Vs Bosnia, first time I saw “10 LIONEL MESSI” play live
Michael Jordan, my English… teacher
It was October 1993, the day “His Airness”, Michael Jordan, announced his decision to retire from basketball (before returning to the courts a couple of years later). That day he said, “I feel I have reached the pinnacle of my career”. I was almost 18, I had been studying English for years, but that was the first time I heard/saw that word. “Pinnacle”…
Greece’s best player in Brazil, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, singing the national anthem minutes before kick-off of our 0-0 against Japan at Natal
Minor bragging coming up
If you’re a diehard football fun, if you grew up watching again and again a video tape with the history of the World Cups (my case), to the point of destroying the tape (there are only that many times a poor tape can be played), and furthermore, if you’ve traveled to Brazil almost half a dozen times and you’ve watched several football games from… Salvador da Bahia to Porto Alegre (yes, I’m bragging, the hell with it), and you know first-hand how football is seen in this specific country, then, really, being in BRAZIL for an once in a lifetime (they last hosted it in 1950, and next time they host it I will be loooong gone) WORLD CUP, can indeed be considered the pinnacle of your “watching football”… career.
Feeling sorry for those who had to sit under the sun, SIZZLING hot early afternoon at Fortaleza, during Germany Vs Ghana
Further bragging just around the corner
Especially if you’re a sports/football writer, if you are given media accreditation, and if FIFA approves all your 14 “match tickets” requests, including for both semifinals and the big final (ok, I’m bragging again, shoot me, but picture –immature- me sticking my tongue out, hehe) then… … … then, even “pinnacle” looks too poor a word…
Samaras has just scored from the penalty spot, Greece are seconds away from making it to the last 16 sending the Ivory Coast back home!
There HAD to be a “but”
Enter “but”… Despite a HUGE dream coming true, there were more than half a dozen important factors that made my whole experience… shall I say… “not AS dreamy, after all”… In a blog that can be read by anyone (no matter if what really happens is that it’s read by less than a dozen friends of mine), I can’t, for rather obvious reasons, mention all the… factors (including the most important ones). What I CAN do, is share a couple.
Gekas has just missed a penalty at Recife, and seconds later Greece were out, Costa Rica had… snatched a spot in the last 8 (%&#$@!!!)
Missing trains-rich Ukraine
In June 2012, in order to catch ten Euro games in Poland and –mostly- in Ukraine, I covered something less than 5000 kilometers, but excluding the 380-something between Warsaw and Lviv, the rest were almost a… leisurely walk in the park, because I used my favorite –by far, F!A!R!- mean of transport: trains. Even those 380km on a bus from Warsaw to Lviv were ok, because I took a day bus, not a night one. In Brazil, flights-aside (from Rio to Natal, and from Salvador to Brasilia), the kilometers I forced myself to cover, were close to 6500 (take a look at the list of the games attended in Brazil, at the bottom of the post, and you’ll get an idea about my super heavy itinerary), most of those on endless night bus rides, in freaking freezing cold buses, in which it was practically impossible for me to sleep.
Immortalizing the… view, Salvador da Bahia, Belgium Vs USA
Moscow to Liverpool, AND BACK
I repeat, 6500km, which is like… Moscow to Liverpool, AND BACK. Or, for my North American readers, Miami to Vancouver, plus 600 miles (6500km is 4000-something miles, and Miami-Vancouver is “only” 3400-something). There were days I would arrive at some city on a night bus, and honestly, I had to take my time, a few seconds, to figure out where I had just arrived. There were even a couple of times that I took back-to-back night buses, all because of my… greediness, because I wanted to go to as many games as possible. I did, and I don’t regret it, but a prize had to be paid… And it turned out to be a heavy one…
“GOL!” indeed. Higuain has just scored the only goal in Argentina Vs Belgium at Brasilia
Pills, pills, pills, and more pills, in vain
Adding injury to insult, I fell sick the night of June 15, just three days into the World Cup, and stayed sick (coughing, running nose, a little fever, the whole annoying and “bliah” package) until well after the end of the World Cup. There were some “good” days (coughing-wise), the pills would temporarily work, but the non-stop moving around and switching from air-conditioned environments to hot open spaces, just didn’t let me catch a break.
As historic as it gets…
No matter what, I did go to 14 games in eight cities, and despite the real and significant “but”, screw it, screw “but”, I’d surely do it all over again, it was a truly priceless experience, my undisputed “watching football around the world” pinnacle. Only… in case you don’t know, Jordan retired after leading the Chicago Bulls to three straight NBA championships. Two years later he returned, and –amazingly- led them to ANOTHER “three-peat”. My point is, what feels like a pinnacle, CAN be… matched, maybe even surpassed. The next World Cup is already in my mind, and ok, it won’t be in Brazil, but in so-so-so many ways, it COULD be more fun (at least for me). If only I, in the meantime, learn from my Brazil 2014 mistakes… (which doesn’t look too likely, given that it’s incorrigible me this is about, but… just saying)
Christ the Redeemer “supervising” what is going on in Maracana’s final
140 to 155
140 Brazil-Croatia 3-1, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014, June 12
141 Colombia-Greece 3-0, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2014, June 14
142 Argentina-Bosnia & Herzegovina 2-1, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2014, June 15
143 Japan-Greece 0-0, Natal, Brazil, 2014, June 19
144 Italy-Costa Rica 0-1, Recife, Brazil, 2014, June 20
145 Germany-Ghana 2-2, Fortaleza, Brazil, 2014, June 21
146 Greece-Ivory Coast 2-1, Fortaleza, Brazil, 2014, June 24
147 USA-Germany 0-1, Recife, Brazil, 2014, June 26
148 Costa Rica-Greece (1-1) 5-3, Recife, Brazil, 2014, June 29
149 Belgium-USA 2-1, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, 2014, July 1
150 Argentina-Belgium 1-0, Brasília, Brazil, 2014, July 5
151 Brazil-Germany 1-7, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2014, July 8
152 Netherlands-Argentina (0-0) 2-4, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014, July 9
153 Germany-Argentina 1-0, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2014, July 13
154 São Paulo-Chapecoense 0-1, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014, July 19
155 Palmeiras-Cruzeiro 1-2, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014, July 20
Perfect circle… On January 30 I started my six months’ trip in South America watching Palmeiras at Pacaembu against Penapolense. Six months later, just before flying back to Europe, with the World Cup already behind, I went to the same stadium to watch the same team against Cruzeiro (this time even wearing the right jersey and everything)
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