While a friend upstaged my joy, I'm still happy to have tickets to the World Cup
I opened my Yahoo! mail the other day, expecting little more than the usual spam. What I saw was, well, heartwarming. See, it’s been a while since the subject line of a message made me smile so. Instead of something about viagra, it said “Successful ticket allocation for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany.”
I opened the e-mail several days after talking to a Canadian friend of mine (we’ll call him “Tom”) who’s also going to the World Cup (which incidentally starts in a little less than four months from now – 118 days as of Friday, Feb. 10 to be exact). He’s a pretty big soccer fan to put it mildly, but he’s just one of many friends with whom I’ve been talking about the world’s biggest sporting event.
As it turned out in talking to him, “Tom” just so happened to know somebody who knows somebody who recently took a job in Switzerland with FIFA, soccer’s world governing body. Well, “Tom” got tickets to the opening match in Group H – Spain vs. Ukraine – and to one other fairly interesting match in Group F. Here’s how he put it: “I’m also going to see the eventual tournament champions.” He paused, then added, “I’m going to see Brazil against Croatia.”
I was almost jealous – almost – as I, like so many other fans without such good connections, entered my name (and Mastercard number) on FIFA’s online waiting list for tickets to those two games and several others, including England vs. Paraguay, Netherlands vs. Argentina and the Czech Republic vs. Italy. I’d been waiting since early December for news on my application and hadn’t heard anything. I was naturally getting worried.
Back to the e-mail: I was of course excited to open the e-mail from FIFA and find out that I was going to the Spain-Ukraine game (!!), but a little disappointed to learn that I had gotten a seat with an obstructed view of the field. But beggars can’t be choosers, as the old adage goes, and I do feel lucky that I’ve got a ticket – to the greatest sporting event in the world! And to see Ukraine!
Now – how am I going to get there?
