Here’s the best-kept secret about the World Cup, the soccer tournament that comes every four years and holds much of the world’s attention.
From little villages in Africa to small towns in South America to distant reaches of the Far East to the world’s most glamorous cities, the “Mondiale” is that rare event that truly brings our planet together.
But no one wants to admit a pesky detail that everyone knows but is embarrassed to talk about.
The games themselves can get quite boring.
By boring I don’t mean not dramatic. I mean these long stretches where the ball moves around but no team threatens to score. That’s not a bug about the sport; it’s a feature.
Take today’s game, Portugal against Spain. Guess how many shots on goal Portugal took? Three! That’s for the entire game.
Can you imagine telling someone about a sport where after 90 minutes, a team only manages three shots on goal? It’d be like going to a Bruce Springsteen concert and only hearing three songs.
How to explain, then, the mad popularity of the sport?
Two things: the beauty and the stakes.
It’s not a coincidence that soccer (or football, as they call it around the world) is known as “the beautiful game.” If you’re not a fan, it’s hard to appreciate the magisterial quality of 22 men with the speed of thoroughbreds and the stamina of desert camels as they run on an immense green pasture trying to put a round object inside a net.
If you’re a fan, the drama never stops. The game just flows. It looks beautiful, even if a goal is neither scored nor threatened.
Which brings me to the stakes. At the World Cup, they don’t get higher.
If a team that represents my country is playing (as the U.S. will, later today), I will tolerate 90 minutes of sleep-inducing tedium if I know we will win in the end.
Look at the Spanish fans after they beat Portugal 1—0 with a late goal. They went berserk. Do you think any of them worried that the game really dragged? They’re in football heaven– their country won!
This tolerance for what appears to be tedious happens in our lives all the time. I will brave traffic when I’m driving to a beach that I love or visit close friends. I will sit through a dull film to make my kids happy. The stakes make the boredom OK, or at least acceptable.
Which is why even those who don’t see the beauty of 22 men running on a field of dreams will gladly watch the Mondiale.
They, in the hundreds of millions, will gladly watch “nothing” happen for long stretches because they know that, at any time, the ultimate “something” may happen.
Their country may win.
And that is the least boring thing in the world.
