Joga Bonito – The Beautiful Game!

Have you heard of withdrawal symptoms?

You know, the kind that happens when you let go of something you are addicted to, like drugs or smoking or football.

Yeah, you saw right – I said football. Specifically, the recent World Cup, which just wrapped up about three weeks ago.

To be honest, I have always been a football fan, but no World Cup impacted me as much as this year’s did. Possibly because my favourite team, The Netherlands (or Holland or Oranje, whichever you prefer, sir) actually qualified to play in the tournament.

I remember when the World Cup first started; everybody thought a South American team would win, apparently because no European team has ever won outside the continent before. Even among the Euro teams, Holland was not considered strong.

“The history is such – This is not Euro’s tournament!” and “Holland? HAH! Holland, the perpetual quarterfinalists!” were the kind of comments that were strewn my way. Nothing could break my spirit, not the taunt or the insults.

I remember listening to Shakira’s Waka Waka and K’NAAN’s Wavin’ Flag everyday – they became a sort of mantra for me. I sang it so often at home, my brothers became bored of the songs without actually listening to the original versions properly!

Waking up at 2:00am became the norm. Being a lecturer, my students were smart enough to notice my tiredness, and my love for football too, which was evident through the assignments I gave them!

The first round of the tournament was a little funny, with Spain dropping their first game against Switzerland, the giants like Italy, England and France struggling to find their footing (pun intended), Germany losing to Serbia… oh, and Holland winning all their games comfortably.

The African teams were very impressive, and a lot of us wanted at least one African team to advance to the next round of the game. That came, in the form of Ghana. When Asamoah Gyan scored Ghana’s extra-time goal against USA, all of us at home whooped and cheered – it was like our home nation had taken home the Cup.

And then we came to know of the existence of Paul the Octopus, a UK-born, German-bred mollusc which had the uncanny ability to predict results for Germany games. He had only been wrong once, and that was in Euro 2008, where he predicted Germany would go on to carry the cup – but Spain did! For the World Cup however, the octopus was predicting all of Germany’s games correctly, a 100% prediction record.

Oranje had the dream run to the final match – unbeaten, strong, thrashing Japan in the second round, Brazil in the quarters and Uruguay in the semis to go to the finals. This was the time where I saw a lot of half-baked Holland supporters pop up like mushrooms after the rain. Facebook was filled with people cheering Oranje on… something that did not exist at the start of the tournament.

The final match itself came. Oranje vs. Spain. A dream final for me, two teams I love face off each other to win football’s most coveted trophy. I was, however, confident Holland would take it home, regardless of what Paul predicted. I can still remember the match so clearly: me sitting on my feng shui (or lucky) chair, mouth agape as I watch Spain’s Andres Iniesta score the solo goal of the match. I watched him cheer, I watched Iker Casillas cry tears of joy, I watched my father and younger brother jump in exhilaration – all in silence.

It was definitely one of the worst nights of my life.

Yes I cried. Yes, for days after that I was in a bad mood, and it was so hard for me to congratulate Spain’s fans, although I know they truly deserve to win. For days after the World Cup, I was still getting up at 2am, I had nightmares about the final match again and again and I STILL carry an orange ribbon in my bag every day – withdrawal symptoms, like I said.

Now we can all just wait another four years for Brazil 2014 to come. Who knows, that would be the year Holland would take home the Cup… or even Malaysia. Waka Waka!