Fandom Doesn't Require an ID Card

sports · EN

I’d like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent consumer of sporting events. If the game has an interest to me — of any kind — I’ll give it a look when it’s presented to me. But I just do not care. I never did. I never had a rooting interest in a team. I never found myself wrapped up in the spectacle, the pageantry or the national hype of the event. The U.S. team, made up primarily of players I’d never heard of before the start of the tournament, faced off against Belgium, another team I knew next to nothing about.There was some hype about a U.S. player being red-carded the match before and thus being ineligible to play against the Belgian team, but that decision was reversed by the sport’s governing body. I don’t care how it happened or who made it happen. I only know when decisions like that are reversed, there’s going to be an equal amount of happiness and anger depending on the outcome.