Soccer schizo

They don’t call it the World Cup for nothing. Like other World somethings – World Wars One and Two spring to mind – the fun is in being for or against a team. Are you cheering your country or continent on? Are you for the Allied forces of Beautiful Football, like France, or the Axis powers of Boring Football, like Germany? Have you put your heart where your mouth is?

We in Singapore are free from the tyranny of having to cheer our country on – the team never made the finals – so many Singaporeans end up as default England fans. Those who are colonial or sold on the brand of David Beckham, that is. I am pro-Asia. Well, more pro-South Korea than pro-Japan. It is one thing for me to be fond of Japanese films, Japanese food and my Japanese friends and another thing to be a flag-flying fan of the Japan team, somehow. When Australia played Japan, I was for Japan but my boos at Australia were louder than my cheers for Japan, somehow. Maybe I didn’t know how to cheer for an Asian country that might not want to be an Asian country. Or it might have been simpler to support South Korea, because those tigers played harder than Japan.

After the Asians got kicked out, I briefly went Brangelina, rooting for Ghana, the Brazil of Africa, the top dog of the underdogs. But the African Brazil got outplayed by the Brazilian Brazil, who have now been beaten by the most African of the European teams, France.

So it is France vs Portugal and Germany vs Italy in the semi-finals and I am about to go schizo here.

On the one hand, as a Francophile and a Zinedine Zidanephile, I want France to win. On the other hand, I don’t want Portugal to lose badly. The Ah Lian in me loves the Portuguese Ah Beng, Cristiano Ronaldo, the bad boy who wears too much hair mousse and allegedly winked at his bench after he allegedly encouraged the referee to dismiss English striker Wayne Rooney in the quarter-final. I adore bad. On the third hand, I love Italy’s fashion sense and silky footwork. On the fourth hand, I don’t hate Germany. Their goalie had notes on Argentinian penalties in the quarter-final! The kiasu Singaporean student in me gets that.

To be all mugger about it:
France = world-class retirees (Zidane, Lilian Thuram, Claude Makelele)
Portugal = world-class Beng (Ronaldo) + world-class coach (Luiz Felipe Scolari)
Italy = world-class (con) artists
Germany = world-class 11-man machine
How?