I Don’t Actually Like Sports. I Like People.

My friends are asking why I keep writing about World Cup football. They know me after all.

It’s a fair question because I’m not really writing about football.

I’m writing about people.

Which is probably why I’ve always loved great sports writers, even though I don’t really love sports. They’re writing about hope, failure, obsession, redemption, identity, grief, joy – all the things the rest of us spend our lives trying to make sense of. The setting just happens to be a baseball field or a soccer pitch or an American football stadium.

The game is just their canvas.

I’m sure these writers know plenty about tactics and formations, batting averages and statistics. I don’t.

Maybe that’s because I don’t really love sports. I love uninterrupted moments of consequence.

Soccer, tennis, and baseball let us sit inside the tension. You can watch a face. A hesitation. A ritual. A decision unfold.

American football asks something different of me as a viewer.

Stop.

Huddle.

Commercial.

Replay.

Analysis.

Commercial.

Twenty seconds of action.

Repeat.

After about an hour of this, I generally lose the will to live.

But give me a penalty shootout. A Wimbledon tiebreak. A full count with the winning run on base in the bottom of the ninth. One pitcher. One batter. One kick. One point. One moment when years of work suddenly shrink to a few unbearable seconds.I’ll watch that drama every time.

I love impossible comebacks. Aging champions who refuse to read the script. Tiny countries that somehow end up taking on giants. The underdogs who haven’t yet realized they’re supposed to lose. Cabo Verde.

It’s not that I even care all that much who wins, but that I’m fascinated by what pressure reveals. Djokovic bouncing the ball one more time before he serves. Nadal lining up his water bottles with almost religious precision. A goalie slapping both posts before a penalty. A pitcher taking one extra breath before the next throw. The look on someone’s face when hope and terror occupy exactly the same space. The instant they realize the next few seconds might become the thing they’re remembered for forever.

The tiny rituals we all invent when the stakes become unbearable.

So if my feed seems oddly full of football this month, don’t worry.

It isn’t really about football.

World Cup football just happens to be the stage. The games change. Human nature doesn’t, and I’m still people-watching.

The people just happen to be wearing someone else’s advertising.

Right now, Argentina is facing Egypt in the round of 16. And I know exactly who I’m hoping for.

Not because I think Egypt is the better team. Not because I expect them to win.

Because I have a soft spot for the impossible. For the teams who aren’t supposed to be there. For the moments when hope gets a few minutes longer than anyone thought it would.

And because somewhere in Gaza, people will be gathering around screens set up in bombed-out streets, watching too. Hoping too.

It’s hard not to be moved by that.