An Outsider Looking In
by Chris Gelken
Around the News Desk
Being the only Brit working on the same desk as a bunch of North Americans, I sometimes feel like the odd man out. For example, I enjoy watching basketball, but during the NBA championship these guys went into a trance. They'll sit and tell insider jokes about baseball celebrities and discuss 'football' tactics. They could be talking in a foreign language - well, considering they are 'communicating' in American English, as far as I am concerned they are.
Everything changed with the start of the World Cup. Suddenly there was sporting event that gave me the opportunity to join my North American co-editors in their coffee break banter. Okay, it's frustrating that they persist in calling the game soccer and ask dumb questions like "what does off-side mean?" - but then it isn't their fault they were deprived of a European education. I am a charitable sort of bloke, they are more to be pitied than scorned.
And then came England's first match in Marseilles. We had a lot to broadcast that day but our newscasts were dominated by what the French call 'the English disease'. Football violence. Who cared that England won? Certainly no one on our desk. One angry commentator I saw on television described the sport as a game played by inarticulate young men supported by thugs and hooligans. A few days later with a French policeman lying in hospital after being beaten to the point of death by German 'fans' it was a point of view difficult to disagree with.
Until Iran met the USA. If two countries ever had reason to play a grudge match, this was it. If two screaming crowds of supporters ever had enough cause to leap on each other like packs of dogs, this was the game. But what actually happened should serve as a tribute to both the United States and Iran. It was a clean game marked by outstanding sportsmanship. The supporters celebrated and commiserated with each other with exceptional good nature.
This was a sporting event that both the United States and Iran can be proud of - and it should serve as an example to the rest of the world of how civilised people behave.
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