Cranfield World Cup
International amateur football at its best
Oxford and Cambridge are both known for their centuries old universities. If you travel from one city to the other, halfway through you’ll find yourself in the mid of nowhere: that’s our destination.
Welcome to Cranfield!
Cranfield is a small, very small village and home of a world renowned university specialised in post-graduates courses mainly in the aerospace sector.
Well, when I wrote that you are in the mid of nowhere, I was not joking: the local airfield was used during the 2nd world war by the RAF and the Germans tried to locate it but according to the legend they never managed to bomb it.
The university campus lays right on the side of the airfield, at the boundary between Buckhingamshire and Bedfordshire.
I (willingly) moved there in the 2002 Fall and I still clearly remember being disturbed by the silence: for days, I was awaken by singing birds, a totally unnatural sound for somebody used to sleep with windows open on an Italian marketplace.
I really enjoyed being a student at Cranfield: as you are in the mid of nowhere, you stick much more to the people, you take much more care of them.
And the people make the difference.
It was a very international and multicultural student population: we were living in the English midlands, but we were at the same time out of it, we were at the center of the world (or at the very least Europe).
During my year at Cranfield University, I am pretty sure I learnt more about people and how to communicate across cultural boundaries than about the technical specialty of my master: the experience I gained was simply invaluable and the level of camarderie achieved never ever reached again.
Now, let’s stop with sweet memories of a decade ago and move to the sunny summer of 2003 and the yearly Cranfield World Cup.
What’s that?
Well, a very joyful feast in which you tried to score more goals than your opponent but whatever the final score you ended up singing, laughing and drinking good draught beer.
Original nationalities were not so important: you still had 100% national teams, but they were by far the exception. The norm was to see Italians, English, French, Spaniards, Dutch, Brazialian, Greeks, Argentinians, etc. don the colours of Papua New Guinea, Barbados and many “not so frequent” participants to the final phase of the World Cup.
Everybody gave his best, but honestly the show was more outside the pitch than inside, unless you are a big fan of the football horror genre…
I remember the shouts, the supporting chants, the ironic ones, the hard tackles and the cold showers: that was (amateur) football at his best, with a lot of interested people actively participating, both playing and supporting the show from the side.
Who won?
Honestly, no clue: I’ll kindly accept suggestions. In any case, whatever the winning team was, it was an unforgettable experience made extraordinary by a lot of committed, open minded and fun oriented people who met more or less by chance in the mid of nowhere.
