Australia and New Zealand can’t rewire their time zones to suit a soccer tournament, but the timing couldn’t be worse for North American soccer fans
. It was the Philippines’ first for everything at a World Cup, women’s or men’s – first goal, first win, first shutout, etc.
North America is not the centre of the world, but it is the centre of the women’s soccer world. It has produced the past two World Cup winners, and four of the past five Olympic gold medalists.One assumes most fans would like to see the Messi of women’s soccer, Alexia Putellas, play for Spain. But how many want to drive to work the next day on zero hours of sleep?
There’s a reason they don’t open the Apple Store between midnight and whenever the sun rises during iPhone drops. If you can’t bring your product to market when potential customers are most curious about it, don’t be surprised at the results. What great tournaments do is create buzz, which is then transformed into drama. This star hates that star. This player did this amazing/outrageous/infuriating thing. That player said something about it. If you want to see how this all turns out, start sleeping on the living room couch so that you can set an alarm for 3:55 a.m.
And that’s it. No one else has done anything wild, or touched off an international incident, or scored 13 goals on an opponent and celebrated each one like Mardi Gras. The U.S. did that in the last World Cup. That had people around the world talking for days about sportsmanship versus killer instinct. Which is the power of a World Cup – it takes mere sport and transmutes it into universal themes.Canada drawing with Nigeria? Minor surprise. France doing likewise with Jamaica? Same thing.
Eventually, this problem sorts itself out when the sports assume control. That begins to happen in the knockout rounds. And there is still plenty of time for some incident or another to grab global attention by the back of the neck.
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