France won :(

Used to think it was stupid to be a fan... to let your state of mind depend on people miles away running around a green field fooling around with a ball, and sometimes there being no goals involved at all... so never really watched a match or followed the world cup... till today. A few days ago, a guy I hardly ever speak to suddenly caught my arm on the road and simply asked "France or Brazil?" and I had no clue what to say, so I replied with a Brazil, only because I vaguely remembered them having something like a ball on their flag. His friends started laughing at him, and he looked extremely disappointed.



THe next thing I see on TV? Brazil fans crying, and French guys tearing off a reporter wearing a Brazil tee and replacing it with the French flag. I was not yet hooked, but the entire fever was getting to me. People were talking football everywhere, and the final blow was the monsoon rains - in particular a train from VT to Thane, via Currey Road, where the water was apparently high enough to damage the engines of the train - thus making it stop for unreasonably long amounts of time. Imagine being in a place crowded with football enthusiast...




And everyone was talking about the match today. So I posed, and posed like hell. I scrapped abrupt "Portugal or France" questions to random people on Orkut, asked who people were supporting over the phone, and even took the the pains to place bets with random people. He was of the opinion France would win, so I thought what the heck, I'll support Portugal.




Then I sat through the match, without getting even a little sleepy, and I understood why people get as crazy as they do. When the game went into overtime, I was holding my breath everytime the Portugal players took the ball close to the net, and was heavily dissed by the failurs. Will leave the rest of the match to the experts, but for me it was an expirience, because the first real match I sit through managed to get to me... watching all of it must be good entertainment.




France for Finals.