I will now attempt, using my extensive vocabulary and professional writing skills, to describe what football was like in the land of Feni:
Talk about a party. I've watched the IPL cricket, the Olympics, and the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Compared to the World Cup, these events in Goa were equivalent to a meeting of the Society for the Prohibition of Feni.
The World Cup caused entire villages to go insane. They also serenaded crowds on the roads with World-Cup-themed songs, including one, called Waka Waka Kaka, declaring that referee Stephane Lannoy was ... OK, I can't tell you this is because of censorship rules, but it was nasty.
And that was support for just one country. There were supporters for the 31 other teams, and their fans were just as enthusiastic, by which I mean crazy. For a month they watched matches being held all over South Africa, and every match ended in a huge party regardless of who won.
Huge television screens projected these matches practically all over Goa, except in the Secretariat where members were busy looking for a replacement Tourism Minister.
We watched the final on the beach in Morjim, where giant TV screens had been set up courtesy of the foreign drug -dealers. There were scores of screaming, singing, dancing face-painted football fans, and I can honestly say it was one of the most exciting sporting events I have ever seen, because some of those drug-dealers girlfriends were topless. You'd go to the bar counter, and you'd turn around, and YOWZA there would be a drug-dealer girlfriend standing right behind you, acting as though she was not basically naked, which she was. I recall going to the bar counter numerous times.
I spent that night on the Morjim beach, swept along by a boisterous river of several million wild happily stoned football fans.
Question: How happy were they?Answer: They were so happy, foreigners were actually hugging Indians.
"Enjoy this!" I shouted to my friend, as we were being hugged. "Tomorrow they'll despise us again!"
My point is that for excitement and atmosphere and a general United Nations of craziness, there is no sporting event that approaches the World Cup
Scoring a goal in football is not as easy as say, hitting a sixer in cricket. It's really very very difficult, one might say almost impossible since everything favours the defence. So the offensive players usually have to do something magical just to get off a half-decent kick. That is why, when a goal is scored, they tend to be brilliant. Especially World Cup goals are so priceless, the tension preceding them is often nail-biting and adrenalin-pumpingly unbearable, leading to a cataclysmic moment — GOOOOOOALLL!!!!
The final this year was between the Netherlands and Paul the Octopus— much to the surprise of the Mimi the parrot. The Netherlands was heavily favored, but Paul won, and the whole of Spain went berserk.
And no one seemed interested in the Santosh Trophy... I wonder why ?
