Fans tweak work schedules, body clock to catch World Cup football magic
Football fans carry cut-outs of Ronaldo, Neymar and Messi in Kolkata; Kozhikode fans watch Brazil vs Morocco. (PTI and Reuters photo) Not a 4-week distraction
Football fans carry cut-outs of Ronaldo, Neymar and Messi in Kolkata; Kozhikode fans watch Brazil vs Morocco. (PTI and Reuters photo) Not a 4-week distraction, but a month around which routines are rebuilt Cross. Control. Dribble. Goal! Add the alarm’s snooze to the play and you have World Cup magic in this part of the world.In its opening weekend, the Cup has begun capturing Indian fans’ imagination and viewers are juggling work, family obligations and tricky time difference to catch the action unfolding at unearthly hours in US, Canada and Mexico.The five-week long event is still to witness Mbappe’s prodigious dash, Haaland’s towering presence and the magic of teenaged Yamal. But with the games beginning after midnight and ending at dawn, sometimes even well into the mornings, Indian fans have seemingly stepped into a portal, choosing to live by another continent’s clock. The altered routines include saving leave, setting 3am alarms, negotiating childcare, pushing back office mornings, choosing highlights over live action, and deciding early those fixtures that can’t be missed. The key, as in many things desi, is jugaad.For Indore’s Jomon M George, that habit began years ago. As a teenager, he waited for late-night TV broadcasts, collected bubble gum cards of Baggio and Donadoni, and spent the next day arguing football with friends. “Baggio was our favourite,” he says.Jomon said he has watched every World Cup edition since 1994, the last time incidentally that it was played in the US with similar allnighters before the TV sets.He wasn’t going to miss this one either.
Despite the many online alerts at hand, the MO is unchanged: fixtures marked in advance, work finished early when possible, power naps before the big games and shrill alarms set for those times when resolve alone cannot be trusted.Few fans may manage that kind of dedication. But everyone recognises the labour — and love — behind it. The World Cup does not enter their lives as a four-week distraction; it becomes the month around which routines are rebuilt.At home, the negotiations can be even more exacting. Kolkata’s Jayitri Sengupta, currently working in Melbourne, has a three-year-old child, so she and her husband began a savings kitty over a year ago. The ‘investment’ would help hire a cook and babysitter for the month, just so taking care of the child would not come at football’s expense. “We were able to make the arrangements,” she says brimming with pride.A long distance away, Mohammed Asif, 41, a businessman in Hyderabad’s Manikonda and a father of four, remembers World Cups through images that stayed with him — Ronaldo’s haircut in 2002, Zidane’s headbutt in 2006, Spain’s tiki-taka in 2010 and Mario Gotze’s extra-time winner in 2014. The Brazil edition tested him the most, he remembers, because it coincided with Ramzan and many matches began around midnight or 3am India time.Then in the corporate sector, he used all the tricks the rule book allowed.
The BriefWire