World Cup Basics for People Who Don’t Know What Football Is
So…you want to watch the World Cup for the first time, but have no idea what’s going on. Don’t worry, we’ve got you.
The World Cup is coming. It’s a monumental event that is supposed to unite nations across the globe, or at least, bring them close enough together that their fans can chant mildly offensive limericks within earshot of the players on the pitch. It is the culmination of a gruelling two-year qualification process designed to separate the best from the others (in theory). Think of it as a massive, one-month All-Star Game, but with much greater stakes.
While soccer’s popularity has been on the rise in North America, it still lags behind the big four in several ways. The MLS, for the most part, is just a glorified retirement home for once great European stars who might have enough marketability to sell tickets (Zlatan, the King Among Men and a modern-day version of Adonis, notwithstanding). More and more Americans watch soccer yearly, but with the United States missing out this year (in what I may say extremely hilarious circumstances), some may not have the interest to tune in. But they should.
So this brings us here dear reader, the point in which I make my most ambitious attempt to explain the World Cup, the significance and the key motifs to you, a person who has an at best tertiary relationship with the sport and needs something to watch when the NBA Playoffs come to a close. If you’re at least a casual soccer fan, feel free to google a compilation of Ronaldo’s best haircuts instead of reading this. We’ll get you in the next article.
What is the World Cup?
Actually, let us rewind that for a second and start with…
What is Football?
It was a bold move by America to name a sport that involves minimal use of foot contact with the ball “football,” especially considering the name was already taken. If you happen to watch the World Cup on any of the non-Fox affiliate broadcasts (read: good broadcasts) you may hear the term “football” used in reference to the truly beautiful game. Don’t be alarmed. That is the actual name given to a sport where players often do use their feet.
In football, you have two teams of 11 people each, 10 who are “in-field players” and one who is more lazy than the rest, that serves as the goalkeeper. They then line up in some variation of defence-midfield-offence across the pitch, and kick the ball around for 45 minutes per half before switching sides and doing it again. For about 10 of that 90 minutes exciting stuff happens. There are four refs, one who gets to run around the pitch with the players and often interrupt the play by being in the wrong place in the wrong time (think Joey Crawford if he was actually allowed to be on the court), two on the sides to call off-sides (no offensive player is allowed to be ahead of the last defender when a pass is played to them or it’s offside) and the fourth official who has the coolest job because he gets to hold up a novelty board with numbers on it and get abused by coaches of either team during a bad call for no reason.
What is the World Cup?
The World Cup is an international competition established by FIFA (The Fédération Internationale de Football Association) in lieu of the Olympics which removed football as a sport and also due to the wildly unpopular (or popular depending on who’s grandfather you ask) amateur athlete rule which stipulated that only amateur athletes can participate, thus banning any professionals. Much like the Olympics, it was built on the principle of unity, co-operation and humiliating your opponents athletically to prove your nationalistic superiority (or something along those lines). Eventually, the Olympics caved and allowed professional athletes to return (they kept football as a sport), but the damage was done.
To make it easier on everyone, it’s a once-every-four-years football competition that pits 32 qualified teams against each other, first in group competition, then in a knock-out tournament-style bracket. On a simpler level, it’s a tournament that helps determine which nation has the best system in place for identifying youth talent and then developing them by taking away all social life and commitments by signing a four-year-old to a contract that requires them to train for hundreds of hours a week. It’s all very great.
How Does It Work?
As I mentioned before, there is a two-year qualifying process to the World Cup, which involves notable players (as selected by each national manager) bailing on their professional clubs (the teams that actually pay them money) for two weeks at a time to participate in qualifying tournaments. These qualifying tournaments are basically “regular season” matches where FIFA places teams in groups via draw and the top team from each group gets to make it to the playoffs (the World Cup).
Once in the World Cup, teams are placed into eight groups by seeding (which is an inherently flawed system which allows nations like Switzerland — who refused to play friendly matches in an attempt to bump-up their rating — to be rated 6th in the FIFA Ranking Table). The Federation basically looks at the pool, throws some blindfolded darts at the list and goes “right, these are the eight best teams.” It then repeats the process two more times and the result is that no team from the same group of eight can be drawn together for the tournament, at least theoretically establishing some sort of parity.
In the group stage, each team plays each other once, we tally up the results and then top two teams move on to the knockout tournament where it becomes a one-and-done single-elimination grind to the top, or as we would know it — playoffs.
Who’s in it?
There’s thirty-two teams from different regions of the world participating this year and we’ll have a more in-depth preview of each team. For now, feel free to use the good ole Google machine to answer your question. Or follow this link.
As always, the field includes the perennial favorites such as Brazil, Germany, Spain and France. The new kids on the block (Belgium) and the perennial disaster in-waiting (England). That is not to say that some of the middle of the pack can’t inflict damage as every World Cup features at least one Cinderella going way farther than anyone expected.
Who’s Not In It?
The other 175 teams officially listed on the FIFA World Rankings Table. More notably: Italy, Netherlands, Chile, the United States and Cameroon.
The World Cup Qualification Process is normally fairly predictable with seeding structure that ensures that top teams have the best shot by not bunching them together. That, however, cannot save them from individual screw-ups either in the group stage or the run-off tournament for teams that came in third place. Italy is this year’s most notable absence, which is disappointing considering their iconic goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon — who is roughly the same age as the statue of David — had said this was supposed to be his last World Cup.
Where Is It?
This year, the World Cup has the honour, although I am not entirely sure that that’s the right word, to take place in Russia. Normally, most countries bid on the rights to host the tournament and then FIFA, through an entirely unbiased and fair process selects the most appropriate place to host the tournament eight years in advance.
JK. FIFA is a notoriously corrupt organization with many allegations of granting tournaments to nations that don’t have the capacity nor the capability to host an international event of this magnitude. What’s more (and as evidenced by Euros in Ukraine and the Olympics in Sochi), “investing” on paper in infrastructure for a major sports tournament is an excellent way to launder investments that should be going into stadiums and roads into pockets of politicians responsible for overseeing said construction. Why does FIFA do this? Usually in exchange for said infrastructure money.
Why Should I Watch It?
On a surface, football may appear to be too tame and ‘boring’ for the masses, especially those used to exquisitely high scoring games across multiple leagues. But then again, people pay actual money to sit in the sun for four hours straight and watch people with beer guts that rival Al Bundy hit a baseball a few times, so I don’t really know.
In the simplest terms? Because it is indeed, a beautiful game. A lot of people may find football a little bit to slow as we have been conditioned to enjoy sports that only operate in overdrive, but also if you watch Golf we can’t accept any of your arguments here. At its best, football is the athletic equivalent of mixing ballet with chess.
It contains every element that we’ve come to enjoy from sports. First, there’s the tactical sets. Much like in American Football or basketball, managers are responsible for planning tactics before each match, but unlike these sports, they paint with a wider brush. American sports tend to outline specific plays with army-like precision, creating multiple sets for various situations. Football operates as a wider tactical example where it all comes down to the lineups of positioning, how far each player pushes up the field, how wide they play, do they just loft the ball over half the pitch or do they build up through tactical short passing. Every movement of every player is calculated and is made to create space around them. It truly is remarkable to watch how 11 men on a team move with seeming independence, but how each of their movement seems inherently tied to one another.
Secondly, have you seen this? Look at it closely. The human body isn’t supposed to move like that. Like, it’s not supposed to leave the ground, be vertical and maintain just the perfecft amount of grace and coordination to this this. Take a look.
The truth is, behind the seeming minutia you encounter on the first glance, football is a game of composed of individual brilliance and tactical beauty. Do yourself a favour, watch a full match.
Serge Leshchuk is a senior writer at Grandstand Central, the number one Process devotee and a nihilistic Raptors fan who also does video production. You can send your complaints to him directly on Twitter.
