If somebody told me many years ago that I Canada would be a good place to watch a World Cup, I don't think I would have even bothered to laugh it off. Ridiculous. But here I am for my fifth Canadian World Cup, my fourth in Toronto, and I think can there be a place where more people get as excited about it as they do here.
With a few days to go you can see it everywhere. The flags are flying on the cars, bars are gearing up with their posters and flags, and it's on tv with commercials and news. In a country where everybody seems to have come from somewhere else it's maybe not just about the football, more an opportunity for the locals, recently local or long term, to display some support and pride for the departed country. After five World Cups I've come to be at ease with the fact that the majority of these flag wavers are mostly part-time supporters, who are more interested in being a part of a group of fellow Italian or Portuguese congregated in bars and celebrating on the streets post-match. Hobby fans always irked me, the ones who were all of a sudden experts but had not grown up with the heartache of fan-dom as I had. I guess I was a football snob and still allow myself a few chuckles at the North American way of doing soccer. But. no matter what, there is an excitement in the air of this city right now.
In 1998 I was working in Canada for a fourth consecutive summer. The attraction of taking a summer job at the end of University in a country which seemed so wild and exotic brought me here and discovered love kept me coming back. Hours of teaching tennis to players who had no interest in what was going on in France, in the middle of nowhere (really) didn't seem to lend itself to a month of watching football. Thankfully, the huge satellite dish on the roof of the hotel and the discovery of an audience in America meant that soccer was on Espn and ABC. This coupled with my luck that I was working for a hotel owner who appreciated fine French cuisine and service meant that I was to spend many hours around a TV with frustrated, annoyed and delirious Frenchmen and women.
It started in a pub in Toronto for the opening match. An English pub, chosen for me. It seemed like a great idea. Pity the landlord/bartender, whichever he was, forgot to think ahead and prepare for the eventuality of football fans turning up at his pub at noon, even though he had gone through the bother of advertising it outside. The match, Brazil-Scotland, was barely memorable, as was the service. The comedy of Brazil's winning goal, scored through a bizarre own goal, was as comical as the Faulty Towers type bartender running out to buy bread when he realized that customers were actually ordering lunch at lunchtime.
From then on it was a search for results for matches missed, of which they were many. The hotel bartender was a great source of information as during his slow afternoons he could slip into the large screen TV lounge across from his bar and happily keep football on, without distraction. This was also before internet had reached us in the woods. There were matches I knew absolutely nothing about. Cameroon played Austria and the score was 1-1. I found this out today.
The French matches were different. I guess it was power of numbers. The casual TV room was taken over by waiters, bartenders, chefs and tennis pros. I'm sure somebody was running the hotel and in a parallel universe guests were taking tennis lessons and being served afternoon tea.
Of course watching the football was good. Having the feeling that I was sitting in bar in France made it even more entertaining. Right away the obvious target for every Frenchman's ire was the centre forward Stephane Guivarc'h, the man who was supposed to score the goals that would lead les bleus to glory. Not only did he have the odd (to anybody not French) 'h in his name, but he also had the uncanny knack of consistently not being able to score. Frustration turned to comic relief at the expense of the unfortunate Stephane. On the other hand admiration from my part was beginning to grow for the exciting Petit and Henry and the wonderful Zidane.
While France made it through the first round comfortably, yet also strangely nervously despite the three out of three wins, England manged to put all their supporters through the normal grief. They started with a 2-0 win over Tunisia, of which I saw no action. I had volunteered to go on a Toronto bound errand, which was always a great opportunity to get away from nowhereness for a night and spend time with the person who was the reason I was here. Love over football. It was happening. Next, England lost to a last minute goal against Romania which lead to the customary must win last match scenario. Colombia were taken care of by Darren Anderton and a David Beckham special.
In other first round groups, Argentina looked good, Spain looked like they always did, good until they started playing, Nigeria were interesting, Scotland were consistent in not making it out of their group and the US were even worse than non-Americans thought they would be. They did give American TV a great story though, with their match against Iran and all the political and historic sub-plots.
The second round had two major highlights. Brazil-Chile (4-1) was probably a good demonstration of Brazil moving into second gear. But I was busy teaching somebody how to feel like they were hitting more topspin on their forehand. When there's little hope, the next best thing is to teach the perception of greatness. No, the first highlight was a night at the residence of our English general manager. He fit into the category of part-time, hobby supporter and so did the other few English staff members. It probably made sense that anybody who cared about football in England had thought "Canada? What would I want to be there for during the World Cup?" Except for the much traveled English bartender, who's Fijian ancestry, gave him a touch of the exotic. As a true professional he could go from five star service and exemplary manners to swearing at the TV with the best of them. Of course there was the one blot on his customer service record when he couldn't hold it any longer (literally) and told the fancy, five star hotel guests to hold off on their order as he had to go take a leak. Seriously. So I was the second most involved supporter amongst that small gathering of English folk. And it was quite the night. Micheal Owen scored his "here-I-am" wonder goal, Beckham managed to get himself sent off in Beckham-esque fashion and England lost after a truly typical gallant effort. Courtesy of our employers, but unbeknownst to them, much beer was drunk that night and there was a significant amount of yelling at the TV.
The other memorable second round match was France-Paraguay, or at least the 23 minutes of extra time, before Laurent Blanc scored the golden goal winner. It was a Sunday, always particularly busy at lunchtime. Tennis lessons were done and as the guests made their way to the buffet lunch, I was quickly into the main TV lounge. Extra time was starting and for the next 23 minutes waiters and bartenders seemed to have to take lots of detours my way. Even Chef made a quick appearance. In the end Blanc laid rest to any shoot out fears. The whole wait staff seemed to sigh a huge sigh of relief. This is undoubtedly exaggerated in my memory, but I'm sure that everybody was more relaxed knowing they could now get back to work, including the non-football watching staff who now had their colleagues' full support.
Now their seemed to be a destiny feel about France at least making it to the final. Never did I doubt they would win the penalty shoot-out against Italy. Even when they went 1-0 down to the surprising Croatians in the semi-final it always seemed likely they would win in the end.
The quarter finals saw Dennis Bergkamp score a true beauty of a last minute winning goal against Argentina. This one I saw. But what I missed was Brazil's 3-2 win against Denmark. With no YouTube and no easy access to TV at night, matches like this existed for me as a scoreline with no story.
Brazil made it to the final after a shoot out win against Holland and the dream final was set. This only became a dream final when it was set. But what could be better than the home team, aiming to make up for what Platini's generation missed out on in winning their first World Cup, against the country that for so long set the benchmark of greatness. For the French winning the World Cup against Brazil would be a win of the greatest satisfaction, where there could be no detractors saying they had it easy. Brazil, on the other hand, could show that while the 1994 win was not one of their most spectacular, this team could come close to the greatness of '82 nd '86, and win.
Thirty minutes before kick-off, with my seat amongst the transplanted French bar patrons secured, I went off to make my call home, to Malta, for my first trans-Atlantic exchange of score predictions. I came back soon before kick-off and knew of no pre-game issues until well after France had given Brazil a good old 3-0 hiding. Zidane scored twice, and Petit finished it off with a flowing, celebratory counter attack at the end. And the une, et deux, et trois zero song was born.
It was only the next day that I read in the newspaper about Ronaldo's breakdown/illness/pressure from sponsors. They mystery has never really been solved. The conspiracy theories mushroomed. Whatever happened it was one of the more bizarre World Cup stories.
Two days later it was Bastille Day. The celebrations hadn't really stopped in our French community since Sunday afternoon. A bartender, who had taken great pride in the victory, drank his beer around the almost nightly bonfire and said nobody could do anything to annoy him, nothing could stand in his way because, "I am World Champion".
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