I was in Italy for the 1994 World Cup, which incidentally involved the Italian team in the finals against a vastly superior Brazil squad. The country was basically shut down during daylight hours. Every stereotype of Italian laziness and European worship of soccer was completely and 100% accurately true during this tournament. Anywhere there was a TV (like, say, the interior of a sidewalk cafe) there were no less than fifty motionless standing viewers, punctuated briefly by moments of celebratory Italian joy (the random kissing of strangers, hugs and cheers, more kissing of women, other men, their own fingers) whenever their team scored or some despised foreign team (France, England, anything northeast of Hungary) was scored upon. And there are sidewalk cafes everywhere. My father's small mountain hometown village, an area still handicapped from an earthquake 20 years earlier, an hour inland from Salerno, filled with only the poor and infirm and alarming quantities of rubble and pre-fab housing, had two cafes and a bar. So you can imagine that in cities like Milan, Florence, and Rome the streets were basically shut down.
We obviously don't get that collective sense of community sports viewing over here. Our domestic sports championships all occur in prime time and either in private homes or out at sports bars, which isn't quite the same as spontaneous gatherings around the closest television in town.
My company is currently blocking every avenue for a video feed of the US-Slovenia game right now, and they've even gone so far as blocking ESPN Radio. I can guarantee right now that there's no work getting done in any office in western Europe in the late afternoon, because everyone is watching the WC, and it's totally normal and expected over there. I wish we had something so mesmerising and nationally revered that it could put a halt to entire lines of industry without fear of retribution and firing from bosses and Corporate.
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