World Cup and the Internationalist-Aspiring "One-Month Soccer Fan"
The 2014 Brazil World Cup is now down to the last few games, but here in Taipei, the sudden soccer fever among the younger residents only seem to grow stronger by the day. Every night when the game is on, multiple bars advertise showings and multiple social groups and official gatherings emerge to indulge in all-night binge-watching, replete with the usual face-painting of national flags and wearing of soccer jerseys. This is all happening in a place where the national soccer team has never made it to the World Cup (nor has any chance to in the foreseeable future).
And frankly, it is not like soccer really has that big of a market in Taiwan anyways. The biggest spectator sport should be baseball, followed by basketball, each with professional leagues that are televised and widely covered by print media. Each of these produced attention-grabbing heroes like NBA's Jeremy Lin or MLB's Chien-Ming Wang. In contrast, no such personalities has emerged out of Taiwan's soccer world, made even more unlikely by the fact that no national level professional soccer league has really ever existed on the island. The lack of soccer infrastructure has largely retarded domestic development.
It is this lack of domestic soccer development or exposure that makes the Taiwanese public's current "obsession" with the World Cup all the more surprising. All the sudden, it seems, everyone is speaking of this or that soccer star's career stats or favored playing styles when no one has really paid attention to the same stars' performances in their respective professional clubs in the past. And for equally unknown rationale, everyone seem to have a favorite team in the Cup, a choice so adamant and unchanging that the loss and exit of that team draws genuine-looking heartbreaks (as expressed by Facebook).
So why all the enthusiasm then? Perhaps the answer lies in the perceived value of internationalism the World Cup represents. Sure, the globalized world may ended long time ago in practice, but the ideals that are associated with being worldly are well-represented by global sporting gatherings. This can be World Cup, Olympics, and to a lesser extent, tennis' Grand Slams or the World Baseball Classic. Being seen as global, ultimately, is a desirable quality, and to follow what everyone else is doing to be seen as global, above all, is the easiest way to be seen as global.
And this tendency is not really limited to the field of sports. It is, supposedly, an attitude toward life that many (here in Taiwan, at least) associate with cosmopolitanism and modernity. In a conversation with a friend over lunch the other day, the author was jokingly told about the sheer number of apartment blocks in Taiwan named after foreign localities or with foreign-sounding names. From the real estate developers' point of view, at least, the locals here prefer to live in a complex named "Taiwan Paris," "the Riviera," or "Tiffany." The names by themselves conjure up that international image people desire in their daily lives.
It is not inconceivable, then, that the same people who are trying to place in vain every possible notion of internationalism in their lives are skipping normal hours of sleep for a whole month to indulge in the camaraderie of soccer-watching. The positive externalities are certainly there. You get to hang out with foreigners from different countries, and for once (gasp), have some sort of readily-made common language with these people that many locals are very much scared to talking to on a really casual basis. Being part of the larger world has never been so easy.
But let's be honest. The "one-month soccer fan" that emerges once every four years in time of the World Cup is no real soccer fan. Thankfully soccer's rules are simple enough for the casual audience to pick up in less than an hour. But even then, the vast majority of people are watching World Cup not because they want to watch soccer. The soccer matches are just useful background noise, something that allow people to connect outside their normal boring social circles, and talk about something that is outside their normal boring life routines. It really speaks volumes about how much people want to escape the boring reality.
Escaping boredom of the everyday is exactly what FIFA and the world of soccer wants to market to soccer-newbies like the Taiwanese. Surely, at least a small minority of the World Cup viewers here will become engrossed in the sport of soccer itself that they will watch it even after end of the Cup's current rendition. TV stations, European clubs with plenty of marketing cash, and locals eager for more soccer-themed partying will surely take advantage of the large if temporary spike in interest. Yet, heck, if becoming an interesting globalist is as easy as wathcing more soccer, then there is no reason that the sport will not become more popular here over time.
And frankly, it is not like soccer really has that big of a market in Taiwan anyways. The biggest spectator sport should be baseball, followed by basketball, each with professional leagues that are televised and widely covered by print media. Each of these produced attention-grabbing heroes like NBA's Jeremy Lin or MLB's Chien-Ming Wang. In contrast, no such personalities has emerged out of Taiwan's soccer world, made even more unlikely by the fact that no national level professional soccer league has really ever existed on the island. The lack of soccer infrastructure has largely retarded domestic development.
It is this lack of domestic soccer development or exposure that makes the Taiwanese public's current "obsession" with the World Cup all the more surprising. All the sudden, it seems, everyone is speaking of this or that soccer star's career stats or favored playing styles when no one has really paid attention to the same stars' performances in their respective professional clubs in the past. And for equally unknown rationale, everyone seem to have a favorite team in the Cup, a choice so adamant and unchanging that the loss and exit of that team draws genuine-looking heartbreaks (as expressed by Facebook).
So why all the enthusiasm then? Perhaps the answer lies in the perceived value of internationalism the World Cup represents. Sure, the globalized world may ended long time ago in practice, but the ideals that are associated with being worldly are well-represented by global sporting gatherings. This can be World Cup, Olympics, and to a lesser extent, tennis' Grand Slams or the World Baseball Classic. Being seen as global, ultimately, is a desirable quality, and to follow what everyone else is doing to be seen as global, above all, is the easiest way to be seen as global.
And this tendency is not really limited to the field of sports. It is, supposedly, an attitude toward life that many (here in Taiwan, at least) associate with cosmopolitanism and modernity. In a conversation with a friend over lunch the other day, the author was jokingly told about the sheer number of apartment blocks in Taiwan named after foreign localities or with foreign-sounding names. From the real estate developers' point of view, at least, the locals here prefer to live in a complex named "Taiwan Paris," "the Riviera," or "Tiffany." The names by themselves conjure up that international image people desire in their daily lives.
It is not inconceivable, then, that the same people who are trying to place in vain every possible notion of internationalism in their lives are skipping normal hours of sleep for a whole month to indulge in the camaraderie of soccer-watching. The positive externalities are certainly there. You get to hang out with foreigners from different countries, and for once (gasp), have some sort of readily-made common language with these people that many locals are very much scared to talking to on a really casual basis. Being part of the larger world has never been so easy.
But let's be honest. The "one-month soccer fan" that emerges once every four years in time of the World Cup is no real soccer fan. Thankfully soccer's rules are simple enough for the casual audience to pick up in less than an hour. But even then, the vast majority of people are watching World Cup not because they want to watch soccer. The soccer matches are just useful background noise, something that allow people to connect outside their normal boring social circles, and talk about something that is outside their normal boring life routines. It really speaks volumes about how much people want to escape the boring reality.
Escaping boredom of the everyday is exactly what FIFA and the world of soccer wants to market to soccer-newbies like the Taiwanese. Surely, at least a small minority of the World Cup viewers here will become engrossed in the sport of soccer itself that they will watch it even after end of the Cup's current rendition. TV stations, European clubs with plenty of marketing cash, and locals eager for more soccer-themed partying will surely take advantage of the large if temporary spike in interest. Yet, heck, if becoming an interesting globalist is as easy as wathcing more soccer, then there is no reason that the sport will not become more popular here over time.
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