I open this week’s post with a public service announcement: the Copa Mundial starts this Friday. Perhaps a fairly obvious announcement, for those of us already living in Latin America; but if you, dear reader, are logging in from the USA or perhaps Mars, let this serve as notice to please view this schedule, find the live blog of your choice and refrain from initiating any conversation in the coming month, at least with me, that does not include at least one reference to vuvuzelas.
In other words, the FIFA World Cup starts this Friday, and I can’t wait.
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Many Uruguayans can’t either. Uruguay helps launch the Cup with a Friday match against France, and despite a moderately tough bracket that also features Mexico and South Africa, hopes are high for advancement to the second round. After all, Uruguay is ranked 16th in the world right now, and ready to atone for not making it to the World Cup in 2006.
And after all, fútbol forms one pillar of Uruguayan cultural identity, and surely that counts for something as well. The bookshop of the national theater, in addition to drama-related art deco postcards, sells one commemorating the first World Cup in 1930, which Uruguay both hosted and won. The Friday game will start at 3:30 pm local time, and schools are busy deciding how best to handle game screenings. Some teachers, speculation has it, may be allowed to give students the option to watch the games on laptops or on television during class time. My colleagues are resigning themselves to a week or more of erratic library hours and distracted functionaries. I’ve known the opening game date for a month, as my choir scheduled a performance around it.
Unlike fair-weather fans of the United States squad, who insecurely seek affirmation of Team USA’s greatness (or at least, non-mediocrity) from the rest of the world, Uruguayans know la Celeste is great. Granted, some will point out sheepishly, this sense of greatness is constructed largely around Uruguay’s stunning World Cup finals victory over Brazil….in 1950. But great they are, and maybe the world will finally come to realize it. Whatever the outcome of the first round, however, it’s refreshing to be watching the World Cup in a country with so much joie de fútbol.
Flora Lindsay-Herrera is currently a Fulbright Fellow in Montevideo, Uruguay. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.
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uh-oh….UY and MX are facing a showdown next week!!!
It’s cool to read this from the perspective of someone in the country who shares a bracket with the country I’m living in (Mexico)!