By the time you read this, I hope to have landed in Philadelphia, and perhaps even passed through customs and begun watching the World Cup in the stadium. It will be my 10th tournament. But for the first time in decades, I’ve had a week watching the World Cup the way normal people do: at home. The experience has confirmed my long-held suspicion that the emotional centre of this event isn’t the stadium but the living-room.
I delayed my departure from Paris because my boys are doing their final school exams, and it was felt I should be present at least for bits of the experience. I think they are revising, but the evening before the first exam I was watching Germany-Curaçao with one son, 17, when he remarked: “Is this the first World Cup game we’ve ever watched together?” It was. That evening I was going to a Dutch friend’s house to see my team, the Netherlands, play Japan. The son asked, “When was the last time you watched Holland at a World Cup at home?” I had to think. I’ve been to every World Cup since 1990. The Dutch didn’t qualify in 1986 or 1982. The correct answer was therefore the Argentina-Netherlands final in 1978.
I was eight years old, sitting in my pyjamas in our living room in a small Dutch town, watching with my parents and grandparents. Argentina were 1-0 up with 12 minutes left when Dick Nanninga, the big Dutch centre-forward who ran a flower kiosk in daily life, headed the equaliser into the confetti-strewn net. In my memory, a communal cheer rose from the neighbouring houses. Argentina won 3-1.