The World Cup is an Exercise in Yearning

Since the start of the World Cup, I have rearranged my life around kickoff times. I feel more at home at the pub than in my apartment. It’s comforting to be surrounded by the sound of pundits, the smell of whatever beer keeps sloshing out of the passed pitcher, and the feel of shoulders bumping about.

But those are just the added perks of why we’re here. What keeps pulling us back isn't the pub. It's the possibility.

48 countries compete in the World Cup and 47 of them will lose. Most fans take time off work, travel far and spend big, and arrive with a longing for an improbable outcome – to win it all.

That same longing exists outside of international tournaments. When my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. to watch a Premier League match, it's not by accident. I don't wake up that early because I expect Chelsea to win. I wake up because I want to experience the match as it unfolds. For ninety minutes, anything is still possible. 

And listen, results matter. But hearing the final score and living through the match are two entirely different things.

Belief and yearning are essential to the experience. The odds don't have to be good. They just have to exist.

Have you ever heard the terrifying off-pitch sound of English men screaming “The Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home)”? Singing this song is almost an embarrassing commitment to belief. 

This very real, produced, played-on-the-radio song was written three decades after England won the World Cup in 1966. It was released for the 1996 Euros, and in the chorus, calls out the “thirty years of hurt.”

I hate to bring up the passing of time, but we have now reached 60 years. Football hasn’t come home. Why do people keep singing a song that has been wrong for so long?

“We still believe, we still believe,
We still believe, we still believe

It’s coming home, it’s coming home,
It’s coming, Football’s coming home”

Now that is yearning. 60 years of longing for a win that hasn’t come...yet.

A song makes for a beautiful metaphor, but every nation believes the same thing. Against every prediction, they could bring the trophy home. The reason they believe is because they can. The odds may be long… but in life, sport, and soccer especially, underdogs rise. 

Football will most certainly hurt you. That’s the price of caring.

We yearn because we still believe.

Hope is irrational. The World Cup asks us to do it anyway.