The cars go by, the drivers honking loudly. I turn to find out who’s won the latest match and I see red, white and green flags being waved out of the windows and open sunroofs of the vehicles. “That looks like the Italian flag,” I think. “But that can’t be right.” I’m sitting outside an Italian restaurant in north London and the waiters and waitresses are imperiously unmoved by all this Football World Cup nonsense. “How is your bruschetta? Was good, si?” The waiter takes away the empty plate, paying no attention to the convoy of swerving, screeching cars. Finally a car goes by with something written on the flags. It’s “Iran” in black letters and I realise it’s the flag of the Islamic Republic that I’ve been looking at all this time. Another waiter brings my main course, looks at the passing cars and shakes his head in contained contempt. “They won a game. Against Morocco. One-nil. And already they think they have won the World Cup.” Dantean tragedy is etched on the young man’s face, for Italy has failed to qualify for the World Cup. The last time this occurred was in 1958.
Changing citizenship
Of all the major quadrennial international sporting events, the Football World Cup is the one that gives me the purest pleasure. The Cricket World Cup douses Indians in a broth of tension. The Olympics continue to visit humiliation on the idea of India as an athletic nation. The FIFA jamboree, though, is devoid of any such freight. India has never made it into the tournament and I don’t expect it will in my lifetime. Even if we were to somehow slip in, we would most likely be the minnows of the minnows, coming back not with zero points but probably minus ones. This allows me and millions of other Indians to become guest citizens of other countries for the duration of the World Cup, to change citizenship midway as the teams we support go out one by one.
I was too young to notice when England won the World Cup in 1966. By the time Mexico 1970 came around, I was a signed up member of the non-playing swathe of fans who got their kicks from newspaper and magazine reports. There was the huge scandal of Bobby Moore, the England captain, being accused of shoplifting a bracelet, there were all the different team colours and kits in the (very few) colour magazines, and then there was Pele with his magic feet dancing all over our consciousness. By the mid-70s I lost all interest in soccer — I was wearing thick glasses by then, and while I stupidly had no fear of the hard cricket ball, there was no way I could get involved in heading the much bigger football. Thus, I was only vaguely conscious of the Cruyffs and Beckenbauers and knew nothing of the legendary Argentinians of 1978. By the late ’70s I was studying in the U.S., a cricket- and football-free zone, and in 1982 I found myself walking down 42nd Street in New York when a strange racket broke out.
Again, it was the cars. Young men driving convertibles, honking, waving red, white and green flags. I asked someone what had happened and he shrugged: “These *&%ing Italians have won in their Super Bowl, some World Cup, #@& knows, it’s that thing they call football.” Italy had indeed won the World Cup, beating West Germany in Madrid. It was in 1986 with the Maradona World Cup that I began to pay proper attention to the event. By then colour TV coverage was available everywhere, from the London pub which I had accidentally entered just after Dastardly Diego had scored his Hand of God goal against England to the Calcutta neighbourhoods that were fiercely divided into ‘Argentina’, ‘Brazil’, ‘Germany’, etc.
A menu that offers more
From that Mother of all Handballs to the Mother of all Headbutts, when Zidane smacked Materazzi in the face and shattered France’s hopes, there was all the meta-football drama. Then there was all the actual great football — the strikes that changed the tournaments in a flash, the crazy poetry of the Brazilians, the beautiful machinery of the Germans, the great pairings — defensive and offensive, the individual performances. All of this unfolds every four years, mapped out in fixture tables, the points calculated over the pages and the knock-out stages filled in with ticks and crosses. In all of this, as an Indian, you can sit back and relax, your thudding heartbeat transferable between the country colours. If the dedicated fans of participating countries are locked into their limited menus, you, as a forever neutral, can demand and be served a multi-cuisine menu at any time.
To tell the truth, I’ve always been partial to Brazil from those early days of worshipping Pele via print (and some short black-and-white Films Division newsreel clips), but it’s not as though I’ve not wavered. This year I’m backing Brazil again, but I also want Argentina to win because of Messi. But then I also feel more kindly towards the Germans, having got over the inherited English hatred towards the boys in black and white, and counterintuitively I also feel okay about England, given the decent range of striker talent they have. Who do I want to see win at the end? Something in me wants to see a team from Africa or Asia win the Cup. Not the Saudis, Iranians or South Koreans, but perhaps one out of Egypt, Nigeria or Senegal.
