Falcon tradition inspires passion in World Cup host Qatar
On Monday morning, the world’s eyes were in Germany, on the plane, just a couple of seats away from the back of the plane. The players were on their way to Qatar for the FIFA World Cup 2014. This is how the dream team enters history, with the most valuable football club in the world. It is here that this team represents the world.
It is here that this team represents the world.
Since the first edition of this tournament in 1930, in the South American country of Recife, which is today the capital of Brazil, the United States of America, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, Cameroon, Portugal, and the host nation Qatar have faced each other at a time of the year when the world faces its biggest challenges.
On Monday, however, the teams represented at the World Cup’s most important competition – a competition with much political and historic significance – were two of the world’s most unlikely allies and partners, and the world was on notice that this would not be some sort of bizarre, odd-couple, football-club-as-symbolic-war-of-words, and that things between them were not the usual, standard, traditional, and even very predictable.
It was, in fact a strange scene. The world was shocked to see a team of world famous footballers, and one that has only played in the Champions League, win a trophy which is usually the sport’s top prize, but that is something that usually is not related to any sport. It was an unusual scene, with one eye on football history, and another on history and politics. This, however, was a day that was full of more surprises.
And one of those surprises had to do with football history.
Football may not be the universal, globalizing sport, which has been the subject of numerous history books in the last decades, but at least in the 20th century – since World