“ Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere. ”
Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.
~ Simon Kuper
It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.
Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.
