Certainly, after Wednesday’s advancing win, more Americans may join the ranks of the 3.5 billion soccer (or football, depending where you are from) fans around the world. Soccer is considered the most popular sport in the world, and the World Cup is an opportunity for 32 nations to come together for one month for the love of their sport. Perhaps, the popularity of the sport is due to the fact that it requires only an inexpensive ball so people from the poorest neighborhoods to the wealthiest cities can take part in the game. Perhaps it is the lack of complicated rules.
Whatever the case, soccer seems to transcend barriers of race, class or geography. Just ask EF Group Leader, Chad Brannon, whose students bonded with a group of Ticos when they visited a tiny town in Costa Rica. Or ask EF volunteers who traveled on a service tour to Guatemala about their favorite moments working at an orphanage, and many will mention the pickup games of soccer with the boys, played despite the fact that quite a few volunteers couldn’t speak Spanish. These are only a couple of many similar stories.
In a Washington Post article, Bill Clinton, who became a fan of soccer as an adult and witnessed Landon Donovan’s winning goal, said, “I think the big issue everywhere in the world today is there are some forces bringing us together and some forces tearing us apart. And you want the ones that are bringing us together to triumph over the ones that are tearing us apart.”
In Clinton’s opinion, soccer accomplishes that goal, bringing people with different values and ideals together in a safe and entertaining way.
Like soccer, traveling has the same effect. That’s why EF has signed on to be an official sponsor of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. With the United States now set to advance, more Americans will likely start following the World Cup, and possibly by 2014 more of us will consider soccer to be our favorite sport.
Photo Credits: AP Photo/Ross D. Frankli









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