World Cup Fever summary

In 1988, Simon Kuper arrived at Oxford to study history and German. He couldn’t have timed it better. At the start of his studies, Germany was divided into East and West. Two years later, it would be reunified.

Kuper spent time in East Berlin in 1990 and was there for the electric night the Wall came down. He was also watching the football – and noticing the role the game played in stitching two nations back together.

By 1998, Simon Kuper was writing a daily currency report for the Financial Times and was, understandably, desperate for something else. That something else arrived in the form of a press pass to the World Cup in France.

He was more excited than most of the French. France, famously, was not a football country – the national sport was more likely cycling or rugby depending on the region. And yet here it was, hosting the Cup. Defending champions Brazil, whose manager Mário Zagallo had been involved with all four previous Brazilian wins, were the favorites.

Usually the lead-up to a World Cup is full of anxious questions. Will the stadiums be ready? Will the hooligans behave? Not in 2006. Everyone knew the Germans would pull it off. Two decades after reunification, Germany was respected. The ambition for this tournament went beyond its theme – A Time to Make Friends – it was to be loved.

Covering the tournament, Simon Kuper was unsurprised by the efficiency. Trains on time, press passes processed without fuss. What did surprise him were the flags. Flag-waving had been traditionally frowned upon in Germany since the Second World War – the association with nationalism made it deeply uncomfortable for most Germans. For many, it wasn’t until 2006 that the German flag became a popular decoration – the summer of that tournament has since been remembered collectively as the Sommermärchen: the Summer Fairytale. As one young German fan put it: “If the Brazilians, Italians, and everybody else fly their flags, why shouldn’t we be allowed to do the same?”

Simon Kuper was born in Uganda. His parents had lived in apartheid South Africa before emigrating. The 2010 World Cup, then, meant something to him that it couldn’t mean to most journalists boarding their flights to Johannesburg.

He knew this World Cup was decades in the making. The formation of the Orlando Pirates in 1937 and the rise of football attendance in Johannesburg’s townships in the late 1930s and 1940s grew directly from a wave of Black Africans migrating to cities for work. Football gave meaning to lives hemmed in by segregation. 

When Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup in 2010, it wasn’t yet on the brink of authoritarianism. By the time Simon Kuper arrived in Moscow eight years later, it was. Crimea had been annexed. Opposition figures had been imprisoned or poisoned. Human Rights Watch described it as the worst human rights crisis in Russia since the Soviet era. The police presence on the streets was conspicuous and journalists worked with an awareness of being watched.

On the pitch, though, the tournament delivered. The England–Belgium group game was one of football’s odder spectacles: both teams fielded significantly altered line-ups, with media openly discussing whether finishing second might be more advantageous than winning the group. Belgium’s Adnan Januzaj curled in a gorgeous winner, and both sides got what they wanted.