I have followed the World Series since 1965; the year the Dodgers beat our Twins. I
\nwas nine. As I got older, I realized the \u201cWorld\u201d Series isn\u2019t really the world.
\nThe World Cup is the world, the entire world. Right now, here in the middle of the
\ncontinent, the World Cup surrounds us. There are matches north, south, east, and west
\nof us.
\nSoccer is \u201cfootball\u201d to the rest of the planet. Here in America, we give that name to that
\nother, more violent game we watch on Friday nights, Saturday afternoons, and all day
\nSunday.
\nSoccer is by a lot the most popular sport on Earth. For whatever reason, it is behind
\nother sports in this country. Soccer has crept ahead in participation the last decades,
\nbut it still lags well behind football, baseball, and basketball.
\nI have friends who tell me that soccer is boring. I push back on that. It\u2019s so wildly
\npopular across the globe, there must be an attraction we don\u2019t understand.
\nI assume if I had grown up playing and watching soccer the way I did baseball, there
\nwould be subtleties I would know that I don\u2019t know. Even though I wasn\u2019t much of a
\nplayer, I understand things in baseball that aren\u2019t apparent on the surface. Like a batter
\nadjusting his approach late in the count.
\nThere must be nuances to soccer that one can only know if you\u2019ve been playing it since
\nyou could walk. Positioning, maneuvering, body movement, vision of the field.
\nI imagine a man my age from Ghana could find baseball boring. He wouldn\u2019t know why
\nyou bring the infield in with a runner on third.
\nSoccer is \u201cfutbol\u201d in Spanish. It is known simply as \u201cthe beautiful game\u201d around the
\nplanet.
\nWhen he was fourteen, our son Ezra announced he wanted to play soccer. I knew there
\nwas a program in New Ulm. Being a dutiful dad, we went over to sign him up for the
\nsummer season.
\nThere Ezra played U14 and for a couple more years after that. He was fortunate to have
\nPaul Koelpin as his coach. Paul was the soccer coach at Martin Luther College. He had
\na son playing Ezra\u2019s age and was coaching that team. He was patient and thorough,
\nexplaining the game to the newby kid from Sleepy Eye.
\nThe parents of that team who had played together since young were gracious in letting
\nPam and I into their circle. They were also patient in trying to help our understanding of
\nwhat was going on out there. Offsides in soccer is a fluid thing. Stoppage time is literally
\nimpossible to understand.<\/p>\n
At the time, the New Ulm Soccer Association had a lot of members from the Martin
\nLuther College community. I remember mentioning that to someone, who said, \u201cYou
\ncan\u2019t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a Lutheran.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s a line that has stuck in my head. Take no offense, I love Lutherans!
\nIn the years Ezra played, I became aware of things like the Euro Cup, La Liga, and the
\nPremier League. Around then, Minnesota United joined MLS. I dipped my toe a little
\ndeeper into soccer fandom.
\nIn this go round of the World Cup, I found myself with several rooting interests. Elia is a
\nfriend who is from Mexico. Pam\u2019s nephew is married to Elly from Argentina. Daughter
\nAbby is married to Jhonattan from Colombia. As I write, only Elly\u2019s team remains.
\nIf you are my age, you\u2019ll remember the Minnesota Kicks. That was a pro team that
\nplayed at Metropolitan Stadium in the Seventies. I was mostly annoyed by them,
\nbecause they made a mess of the grass field where the Twins played.
\nMore than once, a divot would cause a ball hit to the outfield to take a weird bounce in
\nfront of Disco Dan Ford in right field. Dan had enough problems focusing without that.
\nFor a few seasons, the Kicks were a sensation. Thousands of young people filled the
\nparking lot of the old Met. Mostly they were there to party.
\nI went to one Kicks game with friends. They were playing the California Surf, and I\u2019m not
\nsure how I remember that. There definitely was an aroma on a certain herbaceous type
\nas you walked across the parking lot. It blended with smoke from the grills to create a
\nunique essence.
\nYou could\u2019ve gotten high and hungry at the same time.
\nA few years ago, I went with family to the new soccer stadium in St. Paul. Allianz Field
\nis home to Minnesota United, aka the Loons. It\u2019s a great setting, designed for soccer, so
\nevery seat is good. The playing surface is a pitch, not a field. I learned that from my
\nLutheran friends.
\nAs far as I could tell, there were no illegal smells. Simply good old-fashioned beer to
\nprime the spectators. An impressive Brew Hall has dozens of craft beer choices.
\nFor a guy who is a minor fan, I did have a big soccer experience. In 2018 Abby was
\ngoing to graduate school in Barcelona. We went to visit her that summer. I knew enough
\nabout soccer to know that FC Barcelona was one of the best clubs in the world. Their
\nstar player was Lionel Messi, one of the best players.
\nAbby and I were able to get tickets to a La Liga match at Camp Nou Stadium. We joined
\n106,000 of our best friends watching a 1 to 0 win for the home side.<\/p>\n
Getting to see that player on that team in that stadium was like watching Babe Ruth play
\nat Yankee Stadium if you want to do a baseball equivalent.
\nThe thing that struck me was the attention every fan paid to the action on the field. I\u2019ve
\ngone to a lot of baseball and football games. Some people are yapping, Others are
\neating or going to get concessions. A ball game is a social event. The actual game
\nseems secondary sometimes to the visiting and ballpark food.
\nWhen the play was going on down on the pitch in Camp Nou, everyone was focused on
\nthat. Even little kids who would be squirming around at Target Field had their eyes on
\nthe futbol. I suspect it\u2019s like that in most places around the world.
\nI confess that when I watch soccer, sometimes it still seems like a bunch of guys
\nrunning around out there. But I still appreciate \u201cthe beautiful game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have followed the World Series since 1965; the year the Dodgers beat our Twins. I was nine. As I got older, I realized the \u201cWorld\u201d Series isn\u2019t really the world. The World Cup is the world, the entire world. Right now, here in the middle of the continent, the World Cup surrounds us. There …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 21:56:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146844"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146846,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146844\/revisions\/146846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}