Ukraine: The End of World Cup (Pic)

On Friday I watched Ukraine play in the quarterfinals for World Cup. The whole country was slightly manic, as this was the first time Ukraine had made it into the finals. I was asked fifteen times by fifteen different people where I’d be watching the game. I was also consoled by about another twenty on America not making it, them not realizing that neither I nor other Americans care. What I held back from saying was that if we did care, we’d win every year. I don’t tell anyone that because it would just reinforce the well-deserved stereotype of American arrogance, but it’s the truth: find a baseball or basketball team somewhere in the world that can beat one of ours. Go on. I’ll wait.

American arrogance at its finest.

Anyway, I ended up watching it at a friend’s apartment, one full of Ukrainians. I decided that it would be best to watch this game with some true fans instead of the Dutch guys, and true fans they were. Let’s just say I had a real life lesson in every Russian curse word ever invented.



You would have thought they’d play well: the Ukrainian coach had told his players that they could have sex with their wives and girlfriends if they made it to the semifinals. I hadn’t realized Ukraine had a “women-weaken-legs” no-sex policy, and to this day I still can’t comprehend why kicking a ball around on a field is better than having sex. I always assumed “love of the sport” really meant “as soon as I get famous, I’m getting some,” but apparently people willingly give up getting laid because of something once started when a kid on a dirt field was doing “look ma, no hands” and a game was born.

But even the promise of sex didn’t save the Ukrainians from getting stomped. It was a travesty, made all the more so by my new emotional investment in the sport. I really, really wanted Ukraine to win World Cup. Several times during the game I realized that I was standing and yelling because someone had gotten the ball within a few meters of the opposing goal, without any conscious input from my brain. It was beginning to dawn on me why people had been keeping me up till dawn with the partying in the streets that took place every time Ukraine had won a match.

Ukraine was scored on within the first few minutes, something I was told was okay. “It’s a Cossack thing. You have to loose at first to win,” I was told by the girl squeezed in beside me on the 50 year-old couch. But then another goal was scored. And then a third, this time off the foot of one of our own guys. Luckily it was the star player. I read that the same thing happened on the Columbian team one year, and the hapless mistake-maker was murdered upon returning to his country. See, that’s the kind of motivation you need: don’t offer them sex, offer not killing them.

Ukrainians are gracious losers, though. Every time the other team scored on us or one of our own kicks was blocked, they’d praise the kicker or the goalie. And they also had an elegantly simple post-game plan: if we win, we celebrate and get drunk. If we loose, we just get drunk. They broke out the vodka halfway through the second half, when it became apparent that Ukraine had no chance of winning. We lost, so we got drunk.

And for Ukraine and for me, that was the end of World Cup 2006.