What Happened?

I wasn’t planning to post anything until after the England game tomorrow so I could update you all on the World Cup. However, I wonder now that any of that is necessary; everyone over here watches it, so they already know what happened, while the people in America…

If I were to make a good joke at America’s expense, I would go on to say, while the people in America don’t have any idea what is going on, or don’t care, or whatever. But I just stumbled across this video (I understand it has gone viral, so I’m not sure how I avoided it so far):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbn3rOPmR9w

Apparently, America has awakened to the World Cup in my absence. I am simply gobsmacked by the amount of celebration surrounding this goal and the number of people watching it. Incredibly, if you go to the 238 mark, you’ll even see my old home city of Albany, NY (right before the shot of “Some guy in Arkansas”).

All I can say is, well done, America. Now the rest of the world can’t continue to make fun of you for being so unaware of soccer. (And, yes, I call it soccer. As someone else noted, we already have a wildly popular game called football, so we have to call it soccer, like the English used to, in order to keep from being confused. Deal with it.)

Watching this video, in addition to amazing me, makes me sorry I was on a train from Greenwich (that’s GREN-ich) to Horsham. This time I am going into town to watch it on one of the outdoor screens at a local pub. Superstitious as any fan, I notice that they do well when I’m not watching, but I’m not going to let that stand in my way. They will win, or not; this is more about being part of it.