Kickoff Whistle: A Personal and Absurd Journey Through World Cup Opening Matches

Watch the report by Idan Kuvaler, Walla Sports correspondent at the World Cup / Walla editorial team

Let us begin with a tribute to Italy, the four-time World Cup champions who have failed to qualify for the tournament’s final stage three times in a row, and quote the poet Dante Alighieri, who wrote in The Divine Comedy, at the gates of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” These words are written not only to show that football fans are capable of quoting late medieval poetry (please do not ask further, I’m afraid that would exhaust most of my knowledge on the subject), but, you may be surprised to learn, as a viewing recommendation for the World Cup opening match, which tonight will pit Mexico against South Africa. A new World Cup dawn will rise tonight, Israel time, at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium / GettyImages

Opening matches are usually a source of disappointment even when they involve first-tier teams and not the “B-list” (not to mention C or D) of world football, but note the nuance that makes all the difference: if I were to cut off our pleasant meeting on the grounds that I needed to rush off to watch the moving international match between Mexico and South Africa, you would probably think I was not normal. By contrast, if I told you I had to hurry to watch the World Cup opening match... oh, that is something entirely different! Because tonight there is not just a match here, but the first drink, on the house, at the opening party of five weeks with live broadcasts almost every day, and when you get a free first drink, you do not complain that the cava is lukewarm.

Say what you want about this World Cup: that a three-country host arrangement looks like a species that does not exist in nature, that Americans barely tell soccer from cricket, that FIFA is corrupt, and that a World Cup with 48 teams loses some of its standing as the premier event in world football, the one that brings together the best national teams in the world. Enter the guessing game, take part in the quiz, and you may win a זוגית package to the World Cup quarterfinals, right here on Walla.

Football fans in Mexico. This is not Mexico against South Africa, it is the World Cup opening match, which is something entirely different / GettyImages

King of the neighborhood

I swear I will not even begin to argue and will only say that anyone who does not let the World Cup slowly draw them in, until the moment when something in every fan breaks, the moment when suddenly there are three days without a match before the final, and then you realize that it is almost over, anyone who does not say, “Come on, it is number eight all the way, I would not let him be a security guard at the mall entrance,” but who will wake up at three in the morning to watch their next match, or Jordan’s, or Upper Volta’s (just kidding, they are not in the World Cup, but I wanted to check alertness), anyone who sends a tired smile in the cafe where he is drinking his fourth cup after staying up all night, to the person at the table opposite him, with that look in his eyes, deserves it! He does not need the Dante quote, but is politely asked to return to the hell in which he already lives, the one that stretches between his two ears, and not disturb us as we enjoy ourselves.

Because despite the arrogance of fans like me, who are addicted to football between August and May, even the less attractive World Cup matches have a charm that speaks to anyone who can sit in the stands at the neighborhood school field, watch two teams of friends meet on Friday to play football, and give it the same level of interest as a championship match on the final round of the Premier League, pitting Manchester United against Liverpool with both teams on the same number of points... That is exactly the secret of the World Cup’s charm: it does not pretend to set some high standard of quality, but rather turns the whole world into a neighborhood asphalt pitch, the kind where you score a random goal and run toward an imaginary stand, kiss the badge and shout “Cantona!”, even after he became an antisemitic, Israel-hating jerk, damn him...

So if that is how it is, why despair of all hope? Because opening matches tend not to deliver the goods. In other words, it is better to come to them without expectations and say something like, “Fine, but tomorrow there is Brazil!” (though I no longer remember when there were fewer expectations of the most decorated team in world football). So come without expectations, and at most you will be pleasantly surprised and get an exciting contest with a good match and goals. And above all, remember that every World Cup takes a little time to get going, especially one with 48 teams (an outrage, I agree).

Maradona as a young man loses to Belgium in the opening match of the 1982 World Cup, the first to be broadcast in color in Israel / GettyImages

My opening matches

Here is a short journey through my opening matches. From the 1974 World Cup I mainly remember the national mourning after the Netherlands’ loss to West Germany, but in 1978 I was already sitting in front of a black-and-white television to watch a disappointing 0-0 between the bad Germans and the Polish sons of bitches. In 1982, however, like everyone else, I was waiting for the debut of a boy named Diego Armando Maradona, who had just been signed by Barcelona, and in Camp Nou, the stadium where he would go on to play...

Maradona barely appeared, which cannot be said of the Belgian team, which won 1-0 thanks to a goal by Vandenberg. I was happy, not because I have anything against Argentina, but because Y., with whom I was in love, agreed that we would kiss for the first time.

The next tournament takes us to the Azteca Stadium in Mexico, where Mexico and South Africa will play tonight, for the opening match of the 1986 tournament, the one in which Maradona did appear, and then some, in the match between Italy and Bulgaria that ended in a dramatic 1-1 draw, with the Bulgarians equalizing in the closing minutes. How do I remember? Because that World Cup coincided exactly with my high school matriculation exams, which of course badly affected the preparation. Actually, who am I kidding, I was and remain an idiot.

I watched my next World Cup at all hours in Sydney, Australia, where I was employed as an illegal construction worker... and in the evenings I made up hours packing goods at a textile warehouse, all in order to save as much money as possible for a year of wandering around the globe. The matches were broadcast in the early hours of the morning, so I watched one of the biggest shocks of the opening stage, Cameroon’s 1-0 win over Argentina (Omam-Biyik, remember?)...

Papa Bouba Diop of Senegal stuns Thierry Henry and the world champions in the opening match of the 2002 tournament in Japan and Korea / GettyImages, Henri Szwarc

My first time at the World Cup was in 1994, and I was already a communications and business management student, married and writing for the local paper Time Tel Aviv, just before moving into advertising. I sat on the roof of A., who was then my editor and later became a friend, and watched Klinsmann and Germany beat Bolivia in a World Cup I could not connect to until the very last penalty of the final.

One of the better opening matches was in the 1998 tournament in France. By then I was already the father of a three-year-old daughter, watching Brazil against Scotland and recalling a similar meeting in the group stage of the 1982 tournament, the one that introduced the world to what I consider the most exciting Brazil team of all time, the side of Zico and Socrates... Brazil in 1998 was not that good, although it reached the final, and even as the favorite, but mediocre play, and an own goal, were enough for a 2-1 win in a fast and lively match.

All of that was only the prologue to the opening match of the 2002 tournament in Japan and Korea: my wife flew to the United States for work and left me with a 7-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son, which gave me the right to invite friends over for the event. Over platters of cold cuts, cheeses and pickles, and an illegal number of beers, we watched what was then considered the biggest shock of the tournament so far, ahead of Saudi Arabia against Argentina in the last World Cup, which removed this match from the history books: Senegal’s 1-0 victory over star-studded France.

The 2006 World Cup arrived and I was already a father of three, yes, my 11-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son already had a one-year-old sister. At the height of that World Cup, between the group stage and the round of 16, I flew to Germany for magical days in the streets of Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart with fans from all over the world. I still watched the opening match at home, and I jumped no fewer than six times in Germany’s 4-2 win, Germany now without the “West” prefix, the most goals ever scored in a World Cup opening match.

Andrés Iniesta scores the dramatic winning goal in the final against the Netherlands in 2010. Now I can reveal that I was the jinx / Reuters

Disappointment in Amsterdam and Zagreb

And here we come to 2010, a rather mediocre World Cup in terms of football quality, but interesting for our purposes, because its opening match is a mirror image of the one that will take place tonight: South Africa, then as host, against Mexico, co-host of this tournament. The football did not reach great heights, but at least the net moved twice in a 1-1 draw. By the way, Spain and the Netherlands reached the final of that tournament, and I flew to watch it with friends in Amsterdam. One can sum up by saying I did not bring them much luck...

In the opening match of 2014, in Brazil, my eldest was already in the army, Croatia managed to stun the stadium in Sao Paulo with an early goal, an own goal by Marcelo, but Brazil struck three times and opened the tournament in which it suffered the greatest humiliation in its history with a victory.

In the 2018 tournament, my eldest daughter was already living with her boyfriend, my son was in the army, and for a moment I forgot the worry of being the father of a soldier and was swept up by the greatest opening-match show of all time: hosts Russia beat Saudi Arabia 5-0. A few days later I flew to Sochi to see the Belgians dismantle the lovable Panamanians in their World Cup debut, but the real experience awaited me in Zagreb. On the eve of the final, I flew to the Croatian capital to cover the electricity in its streets after Modrić and company’s surprise run to the final. Just as eight years earlier, luck was not with me. Or maybe it was? Because on the personal front, the woman who flew with me to Zagreb as a friend and colleague had just become, less than a month ago, my wife...

We flew to watch the 2018 final in Zagreb, as friends and colleagues who wrote a joint piece. Three weeks ago we were married... / Walla editorial team, Nir Kippnis

Honeymoon on the pitch

We will return to her shortly, but not before stopping to refuel at the last World Cup, the one sold to Qatar. In other words, the hosting may have been sold, but not the matches, because the Qataris managed to make a small bit of history and become the first host team ever to lose the opening match of the tournament, 2-0 to Ecuador. Incidentally, this was the World Cup in which the highest level of football was displayed ever, likely the result of being held in winter, meaning the middle of the season in Europe’s leading football leagues.

What did we learn from this short journey through opening matches? That there was not much great football in most of them, but there was some drama and even history, because, as we said, a match between Mexico and South Africa by itself is not interesting, but the World Cup opening match definitely is.

Just before you get off the train, and since throughout the journey I have mixed the personal with the World Cup, there can be no farewell without words that are also words of love, not only for football: today I am already a new grandfather to a granddaughter who is almost six months old and newly married to a fan who made it clear in advance that she intended to wake up for every match... We will do the tournament’s final stages in Europe, traveling between countries whose national teams will take part in the decisive matches. I am offering this information in advance so that if there are football associations that want to pay me, from Spain and Portugal, from the Netherlands to France and from England to Germany, to keep me from visiting their territory (see the Netherlands and Croatia), if they reach the final, in a journey that is destined to involve a honeymoon and football... there is certainly something to talk about!