World Cup Is Here--but Do We Care?

My car is parked just outside Gate 1 at Anaheim Stadium, long after sundown, long after the final out, and it won’t start.

A dead battery at an Angels’ game. Symbolism hangs heavy in the air.

I am on the phone with a tow-truck dispatcher, providing the requisite information. Name, make of vehicle, location of vehicle.

“Anaheim Stadium?” the dispatcher says. “Was there a game today?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “The Angels beat the Brewers.”

Silence on the other end.

Dispatcher apparently is stunned.

“You know,” he finally replies, “I’m really detached from sports right now. All I’m waiting for is the World Cup.”

Soon, I am standing at a pay phone in a pitch black, otherwise vacant parking lot, discussing the prospects of the United States advancing out of Group A, the crazy antics of Mexican goalkeeper Jorge Campos and the horrible goal Rene Higuita allowed against Cameroon in the second round of the 1990 World Cup.

The dispatcher says he is glad Colombia has replaced Higuita with a different goalkeeper for this World Cup.

He says he likes Colombia’s chances much better now.

He says a tow truck will be there within 45 minutes.

*

“Do you have any soccer magazines?” I ask the vendor at the Westwood sidewalk newsstand.

“Are you Americans?” the vendor asks.

Vendor apparently is stunned.

Yes, I tell him. We are American journalists, assigned to cover the World Cup, and we have to become lifelong experts in the next six days, so we’d better start reading now.

“I am going to the June 19 game,” the vendor says enthusiastically. “Sweden-Cameroon. A tough game for us. Cameroon is all offense. They don’t care about anything else, just offense.”

Our vendor’s name is Karl, he’s from Sweden and he’s a big fan of Tommy Svensson, the new Swedish coach who is going to turn the thing around.

“Write this down,” Karl says. “Sweden 2, Brazil 1. That is the score. We will have trouble with Cameroon, but we will beat Brazil.”

He finishes ringing up our order.

“Sweden beats Brazil. You see if I am right.”

*

Scenes from a World Cup host who couldn’t care less?

We are not worthy, that’s what the rest of the soccer-playing world tells us.

We are not interested, that’s what a Harris Poll tells us. Seventy-one percent of Americans don’t know the World Cup is being held in the United States. Fifty-six percent have no interest in watching any of the games on television. Sixty-two percent don’t even know the World Cup is a soccer tournament.

Yet the games are selling out, everywhere except Dallas, and that’s a problem World Cup officials could solve in three seconds if they changed the wording on their advertising from “Group B and C Round-Robin Competition” to “1994 Cowboy Placekicker Tryouts.”

Foreigners can’t be buying all the tickets. Who’s snapping up the others? The so-called American soccer underground--you know, the unshaven, vertical-stripe-shirted loners you spot from time to time in the corner of an international bookstore, breathing heavily over the latest copy of “World Soccer”?

This seems unlikely, in that scalpers are asking $1,100 for World Cup tickets and many members of the American soccer underground have jobs as tow-truck service dispatchers.

That leaves the curiosity seekers, the gawkers, the I’ll-try-anything-once types with money to burn and a burning desire to brag to the guys at work, “I actually saw a goal. No kidding. Look, I even took photos.”

To get them to try it twice--that’s the real goal of this World Cup.

And for that to happen, this World Cup has to sweep aside two hoary and petrified perceptions mainstream America has about soccer.

1. There’s not enough scoring.

2. We’re no good at it.

No. 1 is going to be a bear, because the rest of the world loves soccer just the way it is. Poetry is written after 0-0 ties while a 5-4 final is dismissed as an act of shoddy rank amateurism and both goalkeepers had better be on the first rail out of town in the morning if they know what’s best for them.

Some minor tinkering has been approved for World Cup ‘94--the ball has a slicker surface, supposedly to cut down on air drag, and shoe toes have been flanged to provide a steadier shot--but when the United States also proposed larger nets and moving the games inside hockey rinks, FIFA decided to draw the line.

As for No. 2, our only hope is that the scores remain 0-0, 1-0 and 1-1.

If you spot the United States playing any 5-2 games in the first round, you can pretty much bet on no United States games in the second round. Bora Milutinovic’s team has one prayer in its group--flood the defensive zone, keep the score as low as possible and hope for a fluke at the other end.

Against Colombia, this is highly unlikely. Colombia, with its Valderrama-to-Asprilla goal production line, is expected to grind the United States into thin lines of fine white powder.

Romania, too, is supposed to be too rich for our blood, though the Romanians are noted for their waning attention span against lesser opponents.

That leaves Switzerland, Saturday’s Cup-opening opponent for the United States. Consensus holds that since this is the game the Americans have the best chance of winning, this is the game the Americans must win.

Tie it and the scramble is on.

Lose it and the home crowd goes back to its morning box scores.

Win it, however, and it will be Miracle On Ice Revisited. The shot heard round the world? Once ESPN and CNN get their hands on it, the winning goal will be the shot seen and seen and seen around the world and back.

So there won’t be too much pressure on Bora and his boys as they step inside the Pontiac Silverdome on Saturday. Just the future of soccer as a legitimate sport in the United States, riding on every move they make.

One way or another, we’ll know in a hurry.