Caroline Palmer

House Burning Down? So? Soccer's On!
June 29, 2006

So, you find your house burning down while the World Cup soccer match between France and Spain is on TV.  What do you do first? A) Call the fire department?  B)Grab the kids?  C)Gather your most prized possessions?  D) Grab the TV and run out to find the nearest electrical outlet so you can continue watching the game?

If you picked D, then you are on the same wavelength as a rabid soccer fan in Beijing, who Reuters reports did just that as his wife grabbed their baby. 
 
"When the neighbors shouted 'fire!', I took my little baby and ran out in my nightclothes," the man's wife was quoted as saying in the Beijing Daily Messenger. "My husband paid no attention to the danger, just grabbed the television and put it under his arm. After getting out of the house, he then set about finding an electric socket to plug in and continue watching his game."

Now that's a fan for you. The report goes on to detail the lengths that many insane (and I don't use that word lightly) fans in Beijing have gone to to see the games, especially given the time of the matches broadcast from Germany. One guy even quit his job, even after his boss offered him a pay raise to stay (now there's a professional bargaining tool that we all might consider adopting).

Perhaps a non-sports-fan such as myself can't even begin to understand such rabid devotion to something involving a ball, but am I alone in thinking that these people need psychological help more than they need their soccer fix?

By Rebecca Stropoli

Posted by Caroline Palmer on June 29, 2006 | Comments (0)