Why the World Cup Matters to Israelis More Than Ever

Illustration | Photo: Reuters

The World Cup starts tonight, once again. Billions of people around the world will stop their daily routine for a football match, and then another, and another. For more than a month, the world will talk about goals, misses, stars, surprises and referees. For most countries, it is a sporting celebration. For many Israelis, it is something else entirely.

The World Cup has never been just football. Not here, in particular. We are arriving at this tournament after years in which Israeli reality has become more intense, more complex and more exhausting. Almost every day brings a new headline, a new crisis, a new confrontation or a new worry. In all this noise, the World Cup offers something rare, a pause.

Not a solution. Not a real escape. Just a pause.

In many countries, football is part of reality. In Brazil, Argentina, England or Spain, the World Cup is the peak of a story their national team has been writing for years. In Israel, the story is different. We almost always watch from the sidelines. Our national team is not there, so the tournament becomes a kind of parallel world, distant and disconnected from real life, and perhaps that is exactly why we love it so much.

It is easy to fall in love with a meeting between teams that we would never have imagined in the same sentence. It is easy to get swept up by a new star revealed before our eyes, or by a small team that surprises everyone. At the World Cup, there is no need to choose a side in advance. Everyone can adopt a new story every night.

This tournament, the largest in the competition’s history, is expected to deliver more matches than ever before. Some say that is too much, that there are too many teams, too many matches and too many broadcast hours. But from an Israeli perspective, it is hard to complain about more football.

When there is so much reality around us, a little more escapism does not sound like a bad idea.

There is also something symbolic in the fact that the World Cup almost always meets us at tense moments. Over the years, Israelis have found themselves watching matches during wars, military operations and national crises. Football did not erase reality, but it provided a few hours in which it was possible to think about something else.

Perhaps that is why the World Cup succeeds in touching even those who are not devoted football fans. It brings back a feeling that has almost disappeared from adult life, the ability to get excited about something simple. To wait for a match. To argue about a result. To remember a goal scored in the 90th minute.

For a few short weeks, the whole world focuses on the same thing. Not politics, not wars, not crises. Football.

And when the opening whistle sounds tonight, millions of Israelis will do what they do every four years. They will choose a team to support, argue with friends, stay awake until the early hours of the morning and, for a moment, go back to being the children they once were.

Maybe it is not a true escape from reality. But sometimes, that is exactly what is needed.

Adam Michlaswilli