WORLD CUP USA ’94 / MEMORIES : ELLIOTT ALMOND : Lost in New Jersey, One Finds the Way
I’m lost. Hopelessly, unequivocally astray in the forests of central New Jersey. I’m with three Brazilian reporters looking for 22 Bulgarian soccer players and we have only a few hours left to do it.
There is little chance we will find them. They are staying in Princeton, enjoying the groomed grounds of a famous Ivy League university. We’re a bit north in a rental car, trying to meet our deadlines. We have come from Short Hills, N.J., where we spent the morning with the German soccer team. On the map, it looked simple to get to Princeton, but once we reached the forested hamlet of Watchung on Highway 531, I knew we were in trouble. I remained hopeful, considering my company.
Driving on this lovely, cloud-filled summer day was Jorge Rodriques of O Globo of Rio de Janeiro. You might have read recently about the samba and the carefree Brazilian spirit. This is not Jorge. He is as hard-driving as a Wall Street banker. I’m not sure he stops for Carnival, yet he talks endlessly about the virtues of his city.
About now, he seems to be overlooking the natural beauty of New Jersey as I banter about why they call it the Garden State. OK. He is angry. And frustrated. And as lost as the rest of us.
After driving around Rutgers University on College Farm Road (“You mean we need College Road at Princeton?”), we give up.
This was my World Cup. This is my life. Driving around New Jersey with angry Brazilians looking for wild Bulgarians. I had the privilege of discovering the world and rediscovering America during the last month. Just maybe that is what international sport is all about: the mingling of peoples and cultures in an effort to better understand each other.
It was an exotic monthlong journey during which I sometimes felt stranger than paradise, where the changing American landscape never ceased to amaze me.
There was the evening along the Esplanade of the Charles River listening to the Boston Pops perform the traditional Fourth of July show that seemed so different from every Fourth I had celebrated on the beach in California.
There was the time in a Dallas tapas bar when a man asked in the tiniest of drawls if I was leaving my table. At least that is what I think he asked. I could not quite understand the dialect. I left anyway.
Jorge Rodriques and I had little choice but to become friends. Same goes for Noelly Ruzzio of Sao Paulo’s major paper. Our newspapers exiled us to Dallas for much of the tournament because FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, was centered there. Our job was to report on FIFA’s machinations, which at times was a step above covering the Seal Beach sewer district meetings.
As much as we tried, we were unable to grasp the essence of Dallas, whose gleaming downtown edifices rise out of the Texas wasteland like a surreal forest.
While we read about America embracing futbol elsewhere, we had the feeling Dallas was sticking to football, and there was little Maradona, Romario or Hristo Stoitchkov could do about it. The venue operators tried to enlist some support when they asked Troy Aikman, the Dallas Cowboy quarterback, to attend one of the six soccer games held in the Cotton Bowl. Perhaps echoing the sentiments of his fellow Texans, Aikman respectfully declined.
This is not to say the thousands who attended matches were bad fans. Dallas is mad about youth soccer, and a certain segment gave the event its full support.
But we never had the sense that something special was happening there. In the mad dash around the city each day, there were few signs of excitement. The town’s touristy West End brought out the Argentine, Brazilian, Dutch and German fans when their teams played there, but it was more of a curiosity than a happening.
Dallas two-stepped to its own country-and-western beat. And as we became intimate with the city, the more remote it seemed. The more distant America appeared. After spending five weeks in Europe before the World Cup, I expected to employ the comforts of home.
Quite the opposite occurred. The quarters of Paris were as comfortable as an old pillow. In Dallas I was lost.
Hopelessly, unequivocally lost.
