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The kickoff of the largest international sports event brings activity in the rest of the world to a standstill.
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 1, 2002
CASABLANCA, Morocco -- Even in this most Western of Arab nations, it is obvious that a huge gap exists between the United States and the rest of the world when it comes to one supremely important matter: football.
We Americans can't even get the name right. We persist in calling it "soccer" while billions of others know that a game played with the feet and a ball should logically be called football. And this year, Moroccans and nearly everyone else in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America are even more obsessed with football than usual.
The World Cup finals are under way.
Even to a culturally myopic American traveling abroad these days, it is impossible to escape notice of the globe's biggest sporting event, held only once every four years. (Imagine the hype -- and then imagine some more -- if the World Series and the Super Bowl were on the same quadrennial schedule.) Japan and South Korea, which are co-hosting the matches, haven't seen anything as big since the Olympics.
For days, newspapers in Morocco and elsewhere have been full of stories assessing the strengths and weaknesses of players, coaches and national teams.
On television, the BBC, CNN International and the many Arabic- and French-language TV stations (France once ruled Morocco) are awash in Cup-related human interest stories.
Among the more unusual was a report from Japan, which for some reason is crazy about England's World Cup team. It seems that many Japanese men are donning England shirts, either to show solidarity with the team or to escape unwanted notice from British football thugs.
Wednesday, as tension between India and Pakistan grew alarmingly, many stations preempted regular programming to present live coverage. But it wasn't of the Kashmir crisis; instead they flashed to South Korea, where Sepp Blatter had just been re-elected president of football's governing body, despite allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
"Let's go to work, let's go to the World Cup," the former Swiss army colonel exhorted his colleagues.
Blatter's organization rules a sport whose global popularity has spawned a billion-dollar-a-year endorsement industry and turned its best players into enormous stars. When England's captain, David Beckham, broke his foot earlier this spring, it knocked Israel's invasion of the West Bank right off the front pages of most British newspapers. Beckham and his wife, Victoria, a former Spice Girl, arguably command more ink than all members of the royal family combined.
For people in developing countries like Morocco, where the gap between rich and poor can be so glaring, football serves as the great leveler. At Casablanca's Royal Mansour Meridien, a luxury hotel that is offering coupe du monde specials, well-dressed Moroccans settled in at the bar Friday morning to watch the World Cup's opening match, between France and Senegal, on a big screen TV.
At the more modest Blane's Cafe, a coffee bar in the nearby medina, or old part of town, the crowd erupted when Senegal made a key save in the second half, at the very time devout Muslims were being called to prayer. The cheers were so loud they caused worshipers on the street outside to stop in mid-prayer and look around.
When the prayers ended, Blane's was flooded with as many of the faithful as could fit inside.
The place went wild as Senegal took the match 1-0.
Meanwhile, on the Atlantic beach a few miles away, homeless boys whooped in glee as they kicked a football around the trash-strewn sand.
Football "helps integrate them, it makes them feel part of something," said Khalid Elmahmoudi of Bayti, a non-profit organization that works with Moroccan street kids.
Although Morocco is out of World Cup contention, football fans can still cheer local teams: the monthlong competition for the Morocco Cup is also in full swing. Thousands of Casablancans are heading 250 miles south this weekend to watch their team play arch rival Agadir. The match is expected to draw 100,000 spectators.
"I want to go but I have to work," said Abder El Fakhar, chief concierge at the Royal Mansour, "so I told my colleague I will pay for the bus ticket, because one of us should be there."
Yet the United States, the world's only superpower, remains largely indifferent to the world's most popular sport. Who knows why professional soccer -- er, football -- has never caught the fancy of folks in Dallas or Des Moines or Decatur. Maybe it's that the United States, despite its size and growing diversity, is still a relatively insular place where homegrown sports like baseball just seem more American.
But even Americans once caught football fever. In an interview on the BBC this week, Pele -- the Brazilian footballer considered the greatest player of all time -- wistfully recalled a visit to the United States at the height of his fame many, many years ago.
"Ah," he said, as if he still couldn't quite believe it, "the whole of America shouted "Pele! Pele! Pele!' "
P.S. As I was writing this I heard a knock on the door of my hotel room. It was a man bearing a plate of chocolates, all in the shape of little football shoes.