Coupe du Monde

I’m not sure how big the World Cup was in the U.S., but it was definitely HUGE here in Switzerland. For the past month, you could hardly go anywhere without seeing a match on TV or hearing people discussing a team, a match or the tournament in general.

To give you a feel for how popular the World Cup was here, multiple cities throughout the country set up giant outdoor big screen TVs in various plazas for the duration of the tournament. And they were absolutely packed from the very first match through the championship.

Lausanne was one of these cities – in fact, they basically transformed the main plaza by the lake into a giant outdoor viewing experience, complete with grandstands, food / beverage tents and a even a full studio for one of the main Swiss TV channels that carried all the matches live and provided pre-, mid- and post-game commentary.

Here’s a picture of the setup…










I watched a couple of the matches in the plaza and it was a pretty incredible experience. People went absolutely crazy when their teams were playing (dressing up, singing, etc.) and there were tons of fans supporting literally every team that played (I knew that Lausanne was an international city, but I was genuinely surprised how many global transplants there really were).

Fans came in all sizes...

Even some animals got into the spirit, like this chien français (UPDATE: err ... néerlandais ... I guess the flags are right-side-up ... ).

One downside of living so close to the plaza where they were showing the matches is that there was about a 1 second delay between my TV signal and that of the big screen. As a result, whenever anything exciting happened (namely a goal or good save) I would always hear the crowd’s reaction shortly before seeing the play on TV.

My interest in the World Cup definitely reached its peak while watching the final last night. I was happy to see Spain win as I felt that they deserved the victory and played consistency well throughout the tournament. Plus, I have some Spanish colleagues and was happy to see their team win.

I was also happy to see Paul the Octopus finish the World Cup with 100% accuracy on his predictions. For those who aren't familiar with Paul, here’s some background on him…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_octopus

It’s pretty incredible that he was able to pick the winner of all eight games that he was presented. Even if it was pure “luck”, it’s still amazing in my book.

***

While I thoroughly enjoyed the World Cup, I found that there were two things that got on my nerves. The first was players who flop – i.e., regardless of how hard they were touched (if at all) by an opposing player, they would collapse as if they’d been shot and then flail about on the ground in seemingly excruciating pain. Yet as soon as the ref called a penalty, they miraculously sprang to life as if absolutely nothing had happened.

The second was the infamous vuvuzelas – a horn made “popular” by South African soccer fans. I don’t think that I would have minded their monotonous buzz if I had only heard them on the TV, but they unfortunately made their way to Switzerland and fans took full advantage of them before, during and after the matches. There’s nothing like trying to go to bed when an ecstatic fan is blowing a vuvuzela outside your apartment window at midnight in celebration of his team’s victory.