Whether the World Cup is “a mass quadrennial migration” ("Around South Africa, the Good, the Bad and Biltong" NYT 7/4) or rather a quadrennial mass migration, there is no doubt that the last four weeks were pretty intense. A true soccer fan may very well have forgotten all about time and become lost in tenses.
When after the semifinal the NYT considered Germany “A Global Force” (7/4), its sports writer tried to step into a pair of Argentinean cleats and imagine how “Messi will awake in the night and see those Germans closing in. More than anyone, he will see Schweinsteiger muscling in. And when even Messi became demoralized by the German strength, Schweinsteiger had a tick or two of his own.” Although the Argentinean as well as the German team had to discover how quickly visions of a golden future turn into miscalculations of the past, even in soccer-land the past happens long before the future begins. According to conventional logic then, Messi will awake at night because Schweinsteiger played on when Messi already was demoralized.
Between the past and the future lies the present as a transition between these two time periods. Transitions ensure that the change from one condition to another doesn’t occur abruptly. Whatever memorable experiences may be connected with the cup at the Cape, not “the abrupt transitions have been most indelible” but rather the abrupt changes between “watching a herd of 30 or more elephants in the sunshine a few hours before watching Luis Suárez score twice for Uruguay in the rain; watching youngsters play in the surf in the morning in Durban, then dodging hailstones in a winter jacket in Cape Town that night” (Reporter's Notebook, NYT 7/3).
Definitely indelible would be if indeed “Joachim Löw ...wore a periwinkle sweater to Maradona’s creased and shiny suit” ("Germany Routs Argentina" NYT 7/4). The two coaches may have exchanged some friendly - or not so friendly - glances; that they swapped clothes is, however, improbable.
Some commentators had trouble distinguishing Spain (singular) and the Spaniards (plural). UEFA.com claims that “Victorious Spain receive rapturous reception,” BBC reports that “Spain return to rapturous welcome,” and Reuters adds that “Spaniards turns out to welcome home heroes.” Back home, the Spanish team probably doesn't care about subject/verb agreements. The only thing that counts for the players is that their “hard-working team ethic enabled Spain to lift the FIFA World Cup ” (UEFA.com). They obviously lifted the golden cup onto a bus since Reuters declares that the fans came to “see Spain's World Cup heroes pass by with the trophy on an open-topped bus” (Reuters). While the Spaniards may have watched their heros with the trophy passing by on a bus, how this bus can be open and topped at the same time remains a riddle.
Another riddle is how Paul the Octopus could have foreseen all this, but his “antics have been ... adding yet another light-hearted and quirky twist to the great celebration of humanity that is the World Cup in South Africa” (Huffington Post 7/8). What a rapturous welcome for the cephalopod species into the species of homo sapiens.
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