After more than four years, the world's largest tournament is back on the main stage, and McMaster had multiple venues hosting watch parties that you can tune into
It’s been over four years since the last world cup in Russia, held in the summer of 2018. Since then, there have been many fans who have been awaiting the return of this event and finally the time has come. A world cup during winter. Over the course of the month, soccer fans at McMaster University had and will have the opportunity to tune into numerous events and watch parties that will be occurring throughout the course of the event.
While it has already passed, the “World Cup with the Dean” event had been organized for Nov. 23, where students had the opportunity to join the dean of DeGroote School of Business to watch the opening Canada game against Belgium. The rare opportunity features complimentary food and snacks for the attendees.
Another source for watch parties occurring around campus is the OSCARplus website, which has been helpful for students all the way through. On the website, students will be able to find over a dozen watch parties that are offered by International Student Services and for the time being are only showing the group stage games, with a view of expanding during the play-off stages. Although no prior registration is required for each game, it is a first-come first-serve basis for all students, with most of the games being broadcasted in the Student Centre (MUSC B118).
A third opportunity for soccer fans at McMaster to tune into the World Cup comes via the McMaster Sports Community, a regular watch party host at the school. The club intends to hold their final World Cup watch party on Dec. 2 at 2:00 p.m., viewing the Serbia vs Switzerland affair. Food and drinks will be provided to attendees free of charge, and the event will be held in Burke Science Building, room 115.
There is no doubt that there are soccer fans among the student population that will be tuning into this year's biggest sports event, and although it is the first world cup ever being hosted in the winter, it opens the opportunity for McMaster to offer as many student-led events for the matches as possible.
If you’re a casual soccer fan like myself, you may have encountered this person over the past three weeks:
“If you only tune in for the World Cup, you’re not a real futbol fan.”
Invariably, I hope your response was to ignore, and move on. There’s not much to do if someone thinks they hold dominion over fandom. It’s a silly thought.
It’s true that casual fans, like myself, only tune into soccer for the World Cup. More to the point, we come out of the woodwork in droves donning expensive, hastily purchased jerseys. We pack pubs to the brim and parrot common rhetoric. The handful of players whose name we recognize - the Wayne Rooney’s and Landon Donovan’s of EA sports fame - become gods in our eyes.
I can see how that could be annoying to a hardcore fan. We dilute the conversation at the bar. No real fan turns to another and asks, “what’s an offside trap?” Throughout the year, soccer fandom is a cozy house gathering. The World Cup, by that analogy, is a free kegger - everyone is really drunk and no one knows anyone.
The World Cup will always attract a global audience, and that includes us rubberneckers. If you’re a diehard, you’ll just have to accept that. It’s the same with any other great sporting spectacle, be it hockey, basketball, football, baseball - if it draws a crowd, we’ll tune in.
We’ll watch because professional sports is entertainment that doubles as social currency. The point of it is to be entertained. And hopefully, be enjoyed with company. If people are talking about it, we want to join the conversation. We might not be entirely interested in the chatter itself, but we’re very interested in chatting. It’s a way to connect and escape loneliness.
That’s the real value of pro sports - it’s a distraction. It’s a campfire at which people of similar interests can convene. A like-colored shirt can band otherwise strangers as brothers, if only for a game. It has the power to bridge the sometimes tenuous gap between father and son. Why do you think it’s branded as a religion?
To that point, the World Cup is the Mecca of sports. There’s nothing else like it. Fans in the streets. Pints are consumed. Flags of every color hang proudly from the hoods of cars. An abrasive whirr of vuvuzelas and car horns permanently underscores the sound of a city..
Don’t let anyone take that away from you. Enjoy the finals and cheer to your heart’s content, even if you barely know what’s going on.
