“We won either way”: The People I Watched the World Cup With

This is Asides and Offsides, a World Cup 2018 notebook by Bryan Washington.

When Spain defeated Iran in the World Cup last week, I’d just finished swimming in a lap pool, and the older Asian lady who’d been wading in the next lane sat beside me. Most afternoons, it’s just the two of us. We were watching the match highlights. It’s a mostly white gym, and we rarely speak, but we’re the only obviously non-white folks at the pool, and our absence is palpable when the other isn’t around. We watched the Iranian defenders fumble across the field. We watched Diego Costa waft the ball through their net. And when the clip ended, the woman and I pursed our lips and nodded—we weren’t really invested in either team, but here were, wholly involved.

*

When France defeated Peru, I watched from my phone in a clinic waiting room. The kid beside me kept looking at the screen over my elbow. His mother kept asking him not to in Spanish. He’d nod, acquiescing for ten or fifteen seconds, and then he’d start watching again, kicking his heels against the bench. On the television above us, a roundtable of white folks debated detaining children in cages. But we watched the game over the drone of the TV, and the ambient waiting room noise, and when Kylian Mbappé scored, the kid put his head in his hands. Eventually, the doctor called his name. His mother tugged her son’s arm, sighing at me on their way out.

*

When Croatia defeated Argentina, I watched Lionel Messi and his team descend into oblivion from a taqueria. The cooks were beginning to close up shop. They laughed and laughed as Messi grimaced, throwing his hands around, kicking at his opponents.

Later that night, at another taqueria, I caught the same match on replay, screened behind a very large family of white folks. They weren’t watching the game. They left a big fucking mess at their table. And their waiter, a young guy, emerged from across the room to clean it—but he ended up just leaning on the barstool beside me. As Ivan Rakitić shot Croatia’s third point, the waiter whistled loudly, laughing. Then he shrugged my way. Said, “Qué vamos a hacer?” And he started to wipe down his table.

*

When Brazil defeated Costa Rica, edging past them by two goals, I watched as Neymar, Jr. cried tears, for better or worse, from my sofa. Afterwards, I messaged a friend in San José about his country’s loss, and he sent me a line from Luis Chaves: “The weeds grow / when we’re not watching them. Years accumulate / while we worry about the weeds.”

*

When Nigeria defeated Iceland, I was eating empanadas at this coffee shop, in one of the whiter parts of Houston, and one of the only ones with a flat screen. For maybe the first time ever, it was full of Nigerian folks. They sat across chaises and benches and stools, in joggers and sports jackets, glancing from the screen to the people beside them. The room was the blackest I’d even seen it—probably the blackest it’s ever been—and every time Nigeria scored, a cheer engulfed the whole of us. A few seconds of silence would pass before the hum of conversations returned. But in the final few minutes, nobody spoke—and then the game was over, and Nigeria had won, and the meetings suddenly ended, the day resumed itself, and suddenly everyone left.

*

When Belgium defeated Tunisia, two opposing players collided squarely into each other while attempting a header. As they gathered themselves, the Belgian defender held his head in his hands. The Tunisian forward, already two goals behind, smoothed his hands through the defender’s hair, massaging his neck. He stayed there for a moment, with his hand on his opponent, before he walked off to join his team for the game that they’d lose, one of their last two in the tournament. It was a nothing gesture. They both probably forgot about it immediately.

*

When Mexico defeated South Korea, I watched from a packed bar in the middle of the Heights. Houston is chock-full of Mexico fans. I don’t own a South Korea jersey, but I wore this old black hoodie with SEOUL in bright-blue letters. The bar was full of green and red. I stood in a pool of sweat.

But halfway through the first half, I looked up, and what looked like the only guy in a South Korea jersey was standing beside me. Once Son Heung-min finally scored, in the ninety-third minute, the two of us screamed, high-fiving, spilling beer all over our neighbors. Afterwards, the guy told me that he’d seen me from the entrance. He said, “I thought it was just me!”

*

When England defeated Panama, I texted a friend in Panama City about the loss. She’d been eager for the tournament, and I thought she’d be mourning the loss. But she texted me back immediately: She’d skipped the game entirely, choosing dinner with her husband on a veranda with their friends. The match was redundant. That they’d made it was a victory alone.

It doesn’t matter, she wrote. We won either way.

*

When Japan tied Senegal, after their coach wrong-headedly cited the African team’s size and speed as their primary advantage, I watched from the floor of my apartment, exhausted from the match on the screen. The players challenged one another. They helped one another up, slapping hands. Sadio Mané scored early, and then Takashi Inui scored off a beautiful pass, and then Moussa Wagé scored as he veered into the box, and then Keisuke Honda scored a smooth one after entering the second half—and when the game finally ended, everyone seemingly collapsed at once. The players congratulated each other. Both teams—incongruously, beautifully—sat at the top of their group.

*

When Colombia defeated Poland, I was entirely sick to my stomach with despair. I messaged a friend, asking how he was able to get anything done at all, in the midst of everything. How was that even remotely possible?

He messaged me back that the feeling was normal; that what would be abnormal was not having it at all. That even if you’re sunken in hopelessness, the point is to try. Or, if you can’t try, then to document—and documenting is itself a form of trying, really. But what a gift it is, he wrote, to be able to watch football in between.

*

When Iran tied Portugal, I watched the recap from the lobby of my gym. The older Asian woman stood beside me, and a German guy stood beside her. Minutes earlier, a fire alarm had just sent everyone packing from the building. We’d left the pool, sopping wet, with our towels on our backs and flip-flops on our feet. That morning, television pundits had equated the lack of civility toward government employees to Jim Crow. The next morning, the United States Supreme Court would uphold the Trump administration’s Muslim-majority travel ban. As everyone filed back toward the gym, the three of us stood beside each other in the lobby, soaked and shivering, eyeing the highlights. We watched as Saudi Arabia outscored Egypt, and Uruguay soundly defeated Russia. And when Luis Suárez smiled into the camera, I gasped, and the older Asian lady said, “Wow,” and the German guy said, “Fucker.” Then we plodded inside.

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