i have so many fun world cup memories 94 world cup - i was only 12. I was very into it for some reason. I suppose there was enough hype about it here since it was in the US that it was appearing on sportscenter etc. Something about it caught my attention even before watching any of the games. I watched the 2-1 win over colombia at my grandpa's house and celebrated my skinny ass off. Everyone thought I was nuts because we were a baseball/football family. My grandpa died later that year of brain cancer. At the time it felt like the distance between that June visit and his death that winter was great. But of course it was only a handful of months. Now that amount of time passes in a blink. 98 world cup - This would have been the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. I played on a soccer team in high school where only 2 or 3 americans made the roster, the rest of the squad was japanese, mexican, or brazillian. there may have been one or two german kids on our team at that point. Quirk of being a private school with an ESL program. That summer two of my best friends (Kenichi and Yuji) stayed in america to work on their english. If I remember right, those games mostly occurred in the afternoon in america. I have distinct memories of going to meet them at the dorms in the morning, working out, doing cardio, doing drills (in those stupid jump soles shoes) and then watching world cup games in the dorm all afternoon while begging the dorm parents to feed us. We played soccer in the fall, so my junior year season was coming up. I had made the starting XI as a midfielder my sophomore year but moved to keeper randomly mid-season after our top 2 guys left the school in the same week. We ended up being very good my junior year(but terrible my senior year when the international kids left and I broke my hand and couldn't play keeper anymore.) I remember watching the world cup games specifically focusing on the keepers, thinking, oh, ill just do what edwin van der saar does. It's that easy. 2002 world cup - Again, this seems like a lifetime passed between 98 and 2002. In 98, I was attending this christian private school, trying to convince myself to be holy and virtuous etc. By 2002 I was a typical drunk horny college kid. I remember explaining to all my friends how much fun the mexico-US game was going to be, and eventually convincing them all to get together at someone's house so we could stay up all night and watch it. About 30 minutes into the game, everyone is drunk and cheering their asses off. USA obviously wins the game, we're all hammered, celebrating. I think that game was like 2 or 3 am CT, so we all ended up in the front yard in lawn chairs watching the sun come up the morning after the win. I watched the finals in the bedroom of this random girl I had met the night before. I remember panicking after we had hooked up because my cell phone was in my pants somewhere in her darkened room, and i needed to find it so i could set my alarm to wake up and watch the game. A long time had passed since 98. 2006 world cup - i have very vague memories of this. No USA. I rooted for Brazil because some of Ronaldo. I dont even remember what I was doing with my life at this point. I had graduated from college but had not transitioned to the real world yet. My only lasting memory is being so happy watching Zidane get sent off because I couldn't stand any of those french teams and I disliked him specifically, probably for aesthetic reasons because he was bald. 2010 world cup - at this point i had already had and lost a real job, and was in another transition period trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life. I was very excited for this world cup. Donovan, dempsey, bradley, altidore. I think we were ranked in the top 15. I was living in a tiny apartment with a friend of mine. When I still had my real job, he and I pooled money and bought the biggest HDTV we could find and fit on our wall. It was enormous. I remember the USA-England match, and laughing at how we had utilized that terrible world cup ball to our advantage when Dempsey's little dink hit England's keeper with so much spin it just rolled out of his hands and into the goal. The iconic USA beats England 1-1 headline. All the vuvuzelas. People hated them but I liked them, or at least I tolerated them. It felt fun and unique. A country on the other side of the world can play the same sport as everyone else but still have their own culture tied to it. The game against Algeria, Im watching it quietly in the living room because my roommate was a night owl and always slept in. Each minute that ticked away killed me. It felt more and more unlikely literally every 60 seconds that we would get out of the group. By the 85th minute or so I was standing behind our couch. I remember this so vividly. Finally, like 92nd minute, USA hits the counter they'd been trying to get for like 20 minutes. Dempsey gets denied but Donovan finishes. I yelled so loud, something that wasn't even words but was just some kind of high-pitched yelp. Then I immediately covered my mouth because my roommate was asleep. Except he instantly burst out of his room cheering because he'd been watching it too. 2014 world cup - at this point im into my career, working in a newsroom with a handful of extremely hard core soccer guys. One of my editors was a very strange bachelor who took it all way too seriously. I dont remember all the specifics of how the group broke down but i made some crack about how funny it was that we were all sad about the draw to portugal but then happy following the loss to germany, since we still advanced out of the group after portugal beat ghana (???? cant remember if that's how it really broke down.) Minutes later this guy is going on a 25 paragraph rant about how americans (he was american too. from san antonio. Very white. Smelled like cheap cigarettes and natty light) don't understand soccer and we're all dumb brutes. I watched the game against Portugal, which ended brutally if you remember, on the outfield grass of our local AA baseball team. They have a nice little downtown stadium. They served us all booze and let us watch the game on the jumbotron. Everyone was so hyped, but when the game ended 2-2 or whatever after the late equalizer, everyone walked out looking like tyrion when gregor killed the viper. just gutted. 2018 - if i remember right this world cup was canceled and never happened. Fun fact.
