WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FIRST ROUND : Spotlight : WINNING HIM OVER

All over America, it seems, writers and columnists are getting World Cup fever, even those previously staunch in their resistance to this “silly foreign game.”

No less than Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, a writer whose sun usually rises and sets on the sport of baseball, waxed poetic on soccer in Wednesday’s editions of the Post. Boswell was encouraging people to attend Wednesday’s Saudi Arabia-Belgium game at RFK Stadium. He wrote:

“Unless you hate soccer, despise a great party, loathe a swift sport with fabulous athletes and, basically, wish the rest of the world outside of America would evaporate, Just Do It. Tell the boss you’re sick. Bend the budget. Show up early.”

Boswell ended his column as follows:

“Soccer is certainly gaining ground with me. If I could live a thousand years, I’d now set aside a decade for soccer. Before this World Cup began, I’d have given soccer about the same time slot in eternity as auto racing: maybe a week.”