By Michael Shanks
Soccer and the World Cup specifically, gives us a communal activity—both in playing and attending a soccer event or watching it on TV as a fan.
When the World Cup was in South Korea, all TVs were tuned to the games when you walked through a neighborhood. When the United States faced South Korea the whole country watched. Really, the whole country stopped during those 90 minutes of play.
We soccer fans and players commune in other contexts as well, but often times we feel like “an individual in a crowd”.
For example, new studies show that even as the Internet binds us in a network, it isolates us as individuals. Don’t get me wrong, the Internet is amazing, but the roar of the crowd connects souls like no video conference or chat room ever could. So get out there and play soccer and get out there and watch a soccer game live at the stadium if you can.
And Korean soccer fans travel to games too. And South Korean’s passion for their soccer team and the game of soccer is only growing.
These are South Korean fans cheering before the game against Switzerland in Hannover, Germany. Soccer, like no other sport in the world, brings people together to support their team.
The sport of soccer brings us together, and lets us relate to each other in ways we couldn’t otherwise.
For instance, you can get to know certain aspects of personality from the way a player plays the game. Most likely you’ll find yourself following players that inspire you and just might have traits that you have too – they most everyone has when they are engaged in a competitive and fun activity like playing the game of soccer.
Is not Ronaldinho’s smile and the joy he plays with infectious? When a great player makes his teammates play better, when he maybe inspires the players around him or her, that makes soccer or any sport an amazing game. That’s what a community is. A group of people inspired by the play of players on the field. Hopefully that’s what continues on in the game, too. It continues to show fans and people that the game is about joy. The game of soccer is about community.
