Maybe it is because it rolls around just once every four years. Maybe it is because it is played by more people, in more countries, than any other sport. Maybe it is because it promises, and usually delivers, moments of magnificent drama --all the more stirring for the long stretches of tedium before and after. But whatever the reason, the World Cup final, the culmination of the quadrennial soccer championship that kicks off for the 17th time today in Seoul, is the planet's most-watched sporting event by far. An astounding 2 billion people, it is reported, saw Mr. Zinedine Zidane dash the hopes of 170 million Brazilians in the last one, in France, in 1998.
The World Cup is so popular that it constitutes a kind of parallel mental universe, where the everyday rules of rational behavior do not apply. In Ireland, fans actually petitioned the government to switch the country to Japanese time for the duration of this year's championship. In Senegal, schools will close on May 31, June 6 and June 11, when the 42nd-ranked Lions of Teranga play France, Denmark and Uruguay. Even soccer-resistant America has fans, albeit mostly immigrants: An Italian resident of Washington says that during the last World Cup his boss thought he was seeing a psychiatrist because he scheduled his summer vacation in three-hour blocks.
The World Cup bends the realities of politics, too. On one level, it is true, football mania begins and ends in rabid nationalism. That's half the fun of it. But on another level, it breeds a striking sense of commonality, the prerequisite of detente. After all, it is hard to feel completely estranged from anyone who shares one's passion for watching a bunch of grown men chase, kick and head-butt a big ball into a net. For one month, as the 64 World Cup matches dwindle toward the last faceoff in Yokohama at the end of June, it will be a bit like Christmas Day in the trenches of World War I: hostilities temporarily suspended, guns laid down. For a brief moment, the so-called World Cup community supersedes even local loyalties. And that, of course, is the other half of the fun.