That's that, then.
Another World Cup, done and dusted. The French have been crowned champions, the narratives have all tied themselves up, and the trophies are all handed out. In addition, the podcasts making sense of what happened have been recorded, so we're officially done with soccer for the next three weeks or so. I'm a little sad that I'm going to have to find new topics to write about here in the blog, but such is life, I suppose.
The Guardian's Football Daily, the Totally Football Show, and Game of Our Lives have all given their thoughts on the action on and off the pitch, but I wanted to reflect on the passing of another tournament.
This is my seventh World Cup, and my sixth that I've watched from start to finish (I came late to 1994 despite it being held in the US). Much like Ted Mosby's triennial rewatch of the Star Wars trilogy in How I Met Your Mother, it becomes a useful way of marking the passage of time.
In 1994, I'd just finished my first year of high school, and glimpsing how the Italian fans celebrated getting to the finalist me on a path of fascination with Europe, which would lead to me living there several times as an adult. It also made me fall in love with football, and all the pageantry and silliness surrounding the World Cup.
In 1998, I was finishing my first year of college, and still on a number of paths I'd started down four years earlier: for example, my German teacher indulged my interest and told me I should be supporting her hometown team, Eintracht Frankfurt (and to this day, I do check their results in the Bundesliga every week).
When 2002 rolled around I was a few months into my first job, and my first stint living in Britain, hired because I could speak German. I watched the final in a pub in London with the brother of an Irish friend I'd known in Germany.
For 2006, I'd just started my second job, and stint in London - quite literally, as the tournament started on the first Friday after I began the job. That's a particularly sweet memory not just because Italy won it, beating France on penalties, but also because I thought I'd sold a story (it turned out not to be, because the publisher was weird and dodgy). I guess that's a metaphor for how Italy did afterwards, as I don't know that the promise of those early days of June 2006 bore out, either in football, my personal life or my professional life.
In 2010 I was still in the same job, but a little stalled, on all fronts. Yet there were the stirrings of some progress, which would bear out the following year when I switched to my new job in telecoms. The other abiding memory is being in Bordeaux with friends during the group stage, and seeing the French national team implode, even as Italy could barely muster a draw with New Zealand. I remember being so unsatisfied with the final, both the level of play and the quality of Spain as winners.
For 2014 I was once again embarking on a new chapter in my life, having just transferred over to California with work and discovering the joy of streaming matches on my computer at work. I watched the final at my mom's house, enjoying my stepdad's pleasure at seeing Germany win, but my clearest memory of that tournament is rather the Brazil-Germany semifinal, which I watched in an Irish pub on Castro Street in Mountain View with a British friend. The best thing was how the Brazilians in the pub, shellshocked from their team's humiliating defeat, started singing and dancing and generally having a party - since they were all there anyway.
And this year? 2018 was marked by my job loss at the end of the previous year, and my departure to London for a few months. It's also marked by my having found a new job while the tournament was going on, including being greeted at my interview by the hiring manager who said he'd been watching the group stage match between England and Belgium. The final I watched in a hotel room in Crescent City, CA, during a road trip of a few days with my dad where we took in Oregon and northern California.
So where will I be in 2022? Going by previous years, it wouldn't be inappropriate to guess I'll be embarking on whatever my next step is going to be after this one, but who knows? I expect I won't be anywhere near Qatar, unless I move to Europe again at some point in the meantime. And as for who wins, there's no basis for it but I might as well guess now that France won't defend its title, and nor will Croatia get to the final again (Brazil is the last team to reach consecutive finals, win or lose, in 1994, 1998 and 2002).
Looking at my final World Cup post from four years ago, I held out hope that 2022 would be stripped from Qatar and given to the US, but now that NAFTA is set to hold the 2026 tournament, it's unlikely to get taken away from the Qataris, so it'll be interesting to see how that all turns out.
The last thought here is sadness that the tournament's over, but a little relief too, as I get to go back to normal life (such as that is, given that I'm having to start turning down freelance jobs as well). It might seem strange, but I'm glad the World Cup doesn't come along more often, as the large gap between each one lets me better take stock of what's changed and what hasn't. Rituals like this, which let you mark the passage of time, are important and good ways to chart how the rest of the world has changed too - after all, in 2014, I don't think I'd have expected the political situation we have now.
So roll on World Cups every four years, and European Championships in between. And in the meantime I'll be consoling myself with the Champions League and club football. After all, the Premier League starts on 10 August, so less than a month to go!
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