I wasn't happy with the end of the World Cup. When France, aka The French Legion, took a 3-1 lead in the final, I shut off the TV and went to bed (It was just past midnight local time.) I had been following it closely for the month till that moment.
Here are some personal anecdotes about following the WC in Wuxi:
The matches took place late in the evening and early morning local time. I watched them on my mobile phone or on television (CCTV5.
Tony was interested in the results of the matches; not so much in the watching of them. His rooting interests were Australia, England and any other team that played against France. For some reason, he really hated France. When France defeated Australia, he cried. When the games being played late night and early morning local time, he was content to watch five and six minute highlight packages of them the next morning. I would queue these packages up for him so he wouldn't know the results of the games beforehand.
My rooting loyalities went to England and Poland. Alas the Poles stank. I watched England's last game against Croatia even though it was played from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM local time. I rooted strongly against France, Brazil and Germany. The best moment of the tournament for me was South Korea scoring late goals to eliminate Germany which though being my country of birth, I had become sour upon because of German Hillary. Neymar's crybaby antics solidified my desire to see Brazil lose. And the antics of a French person on WeChat along with memories of encountering rude Frenchmen in Wuxi during the 2010 WC made me loathe to see les bleues win.
The WC was a boon for my classes because it gave me something to talk about with the students. And what did they have to say? Some of them said that the German team was the most handsome. And a rare local Japanophile, after their tough loss to Belgium, told me that at least the Japanese team was all Japanese. She added that they wouldn't, unlike the French and the Belguimers, stack their teams with foreign looking players.
This race question raised its head after France's victory in the final. On a Wuxi WeChat foreigner group, jokes about the French team appearing mostly African got under a Frenchman's skin.
I got commentary on the matches from podcasts and articles coming from England and the USA. The American political podcasts lambasted the tournament and the game for its lack of scoring. While I accepted their points, I had to disagree and keep following the tournament. A better argument against kickball was made by Peter Hitchens, an actual Englishman. Hitchens cited the lack of scoring in Modern kickball, but made a more pointed observation when he contasted seeing male Germans marching on the streets of London to protest seating arrangements (that were made for them at a match where the club kickball team they supported was visiting an English side), with their seeming inaction when their women were being raped on their streets, the streets of Germany, by Syrians. This obsession with football was an escape from the responsibility of real life.
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