The Beautiful Game, as Told by a Noob
I now get football. But also, I do not get football.
“So what’s your team?”, Ena asked me. She knew I wasn’t a football fan, so I readily admitted that I didn’t know. Argentina? Because you know, Messi, GOAT, the bandwagon. But I told her there was this cute French guy I’d met on vacation a few years ago, which was clearly enough reason for me to also root for France. (I wore a denim-colored top so I could swing both ways.)
I wasn’t completely in the dark about football when I walked into the hotel room, bearing lemons and a pack of salt to pair with the tequila they had — a token for letting me crash their World Cup final watch party.
For one, I knew France was the standing World Cup champion because of my job in 2018. I was working for an international brand then, handling the HORECA (Hotels, Restaurants, and Cafes) space. A month shy of the start of the season, bar owners approached us for support for game viewings: matching personalized jerseys for the whole staff, hand-held country flags for every match, mini football balls as table centerpieces. One hotel even wanted us to mount a small indoor football pitch! In my head, I was like, really? All this work for a league?
Throw it back eight years earlier when I first heard of this football player called Lionel Messi…
