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I Love Soccer. I Hate FIFA

The World Cup is in Toronto and I don’t care

In the early summer of 1998, when I was thirteen, my family decided to make an unusual upgrade to our rural British Columbia home: bolting a satellite dish to the side of our house. The specific reason? To be able to watch the FIFA World Cup in France. For weeks, we gathered around the TV, cheering and gesticulating, to watch the tournament held on the other side of the world. For as long as I can remember, mine has been a soccer family. The idiom about growing up “with a ball at one’s feet” is probably accurate, but picture less ambition and much more dribbling between pellets and patties in our lumpy sheep field. The first goals I scored on were made by my dad with glued PVC pipe and old fishing net.

My first formal experience was a mixed age, mixed gender, rag-tag team named after the rural road we all grew up along, playing in a club league against other hodgepodges from other corners of Salt Spring Island. Later on, I played on Metro teams, at the highest club level for kids in BC, which involved taking a ferry and driving for hours every Tuesday and Thursday for practice and more than a full day’s travel to Vancouver every second weekend for games. When I was thirteen, I travelled to the Czech Republic with my team to train with FC Baník Ostrava and play a tournament and exhibition games; two years later, I travelled to England with another team to train with Bristol City FC and play a tournament in Newcastle. Every year, my team earned a spot in the provincial championships.

All the while, I watched and watched: my sisters’ games, my friends’ games, professional games in person, and on TV, the big international tournaments every four or so years and weekly games in the Premier League, England’s top-flight league. Over the years, I’ve woken up with the bats and raccoons to watch games held on the other side of the world so many times it’s become a ritual. I’ve found myself in cramped cafes and bars from South Korea to South India with people who share little except for devotion to a team very far away from where we all had grown up. I’ve trekked through countless pre-dawn, minus thirty Celsius snowstorms in Toronto to the little pub that opened early to catch games with a friend. I’ve been a die-hard supporter of a single team since I was fourteen.

And twice I’ve made the pilgrimage to England for the........

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