How I became a World Cup expert – by collecting stickers

I haven't played football, or rather soccer, since summer camp, but I have a ticket for Brazil and a partially completed Panini sticker album …

 

"You're going to the World Cup?"

The emphasis is always different, but the implication is the same: me going to the World Cup is about as funny as sending a vegan to a country that only eats meat. I know nothing about football. Nothing. I have a disability, you see, that means all discussions about football turn into vague white noise in the space between my ears and my brain. It was only relatively recently that I realised the football stadium that is walking distance from my flat is not actually called "Arsenal Stadium" (I did wonder why so many fans of Emirates Airlines congregate in my neighbourhood on Saturdays). I'm also, I should add at this point, American, and in America, soccer is something you're forced to play once when you're 10 and get sent to summer camp. And then you never, ever think about it again.

But I'm a professional journalist."

read the article by Hadley Freeman

How I became a World Cup expert – by collecting stickers | Sport | The Guardian: