#167: World Cup City

Introducing the Brussels Notes daily World Cup diary, from 1 June.

Dear reader, I’m afraid I have done something foolish, even reckless, again. But we’ll get to that. Firstly, I want to talk to you about the most important of the least important things in life. I am, of course, talking about the impending World Cup.

I love World Cup season; I always have done, ever since I drew my own World Cup sticker album in 1994 because we couldn’t - or my mother wouldn’t - spend the money on the real thing (I only got as far as drawing Andy Townsend, Paul McGrath and Roy Keane before giving up). I was too young to remember anything of the collective euphoria that gripped Ireland during Italia ‘90 four years previously, but in 1994 I was the perfect age to be inoculated with World Cup fever. I remember us beating Italy, I remember following Romania’s insurgent underdog takeover of the tournament, Henrik Larsson’s dreadlocks, Jorge Campos’ dreadful jersey, and I remember giving up on Ireland during their second round match against The Netherlands after Packie Bonner shovelled one into his own net, going out instead to the street and playing football with my friends as we in turn imaged ourselves to be Ray Houghton, Bebeto, and Roberto Baggio.

I can tell you exactly where I was when Ireland drew with Cameroon in 2002 (at a friends, having stayed up all night playing Pro Evo on the Playstation), when Robbie Keane scored his last-minute equaliser against Germany (at home, alone, jumping up and down on the couch in the living room), and when the Duffer scored the last of three goals against Saudi Arabia (Disneyland Paris). I still regret missing the final in 2006, having arrived in Dubrovnik earlier the same day and gotten our time zones mixed up, resulting in me rocking up at an irish bar in the old town after Zidane had nutted Marco Materazzi in the chest for defaming his mother and sister. And more recently there was the 2022 final, the first match that N and Z were allowed to stay up for that didn’t involve Belgium (sadly, they have never seen Ireland at a World Cup, and are unlikely to for the foreseeable), Z cheering on her idol/messiah/obsession Leo Messi.

But for all I love the World Cup - a love that has been sorely tested in recent years - I have never been to one; we were on the periphery of France ‘98, experiencing the tournament at one remove on a campsite in the Vendée. Germany eight years later could have been an option, but I was too busy - and broke - interrailing around Europe. As for the most recent tournaments, I think it is self-evident why attending was not possible - be it the distance/cost in South Africa in 2010 and Brazil in 2014, or the obvious issues with attending either Russia or Qatar in the subsequent two editions. The approaching World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico has the unique accomplishment of being both far away and expensive, and morally unpalatable.

At this point, I imagine some readers are asking themselves what any of this has to do with this Brussels-centric newsletter, or the terrible mistake which I referred to at the beginning. Well, they are of course related. I am not going to North America this summer to follow the World Cup, that much is obvious. So, I thought, why don’t I try and bring the World Cup to Brussels. And by that of course I mean: could I visit each of the 48 participating countries at this year’s World Cup without leaving this city? And the answer to that was, I discovered to my regret, yes (more or less).

Finding a connection with each country was not the difficult part. Brussels is, according to some metrics, one of the most diverse cities on earth, with close to 200 nationalities represented in its population. It has visible and well-established communities from all over the world here, alongside a significant diplomatic community. Initially, I was looking for bars, shops and restaurants, because these are usually the kinds of businesses immigrant communities establish in their host cities. It would have been easier, for example, if some countries had qualified (looking at you Italy, Ireland, and Romania) than others (Uzbekistan, Qatar, and Curaçao spring to mind), but spend enough time trawling the internet and you will find a connection with, or a trace of, each of the 48 countries.

Even if I have had to broaden my initial idea of what constitutes a “connection”.

The final roster of connections includes bars, cafés, bakeries, and restaurants, but it also features monuments, museums, streets and places of worship. In the course of my research, I have eaten and drunk my way through every corner of the city (except Uccle), which was also the secondary impulse for taking on this project - getting myself out of my habitual rut and exploring parts of the city I have never been to, did not know existed, or have walked past every day and never paid any attention to. So far, so mission accomplished.

But here comes my terrible mistake. I am taking all this research and turn it into a daily Brussels Notes World Cup diary, starting on 1 June.

Maybe this is something other writers have experienced, but once the idea came to me - to cover the World Cup in this way - while thinking up editorial ideas for the second half of the year, I couldn’t shake it off. It became a sort of a mania, pushing me deeper and deeper down internet rabbit holes in search of the right “connection”, poring over World Cup schedules, reading review after review of Ivorian hole-in-the-wall canteens.

And what has come out the other side of this mania is the following: starting 1 June, and running through to the World Cup final on 19 July, subscribers will receive a daily World Cup newsletter, each one focusing on one of the 48 participating countries as they relate to Brussels.

On Monday, to get the ball rolling, we will kick off (that’s enough football-related clichés) with the host countries, before moving onto some of the minnows, and then following the match programme of the World Cup as it progresses from group stage to knock-out rounds to end game. I won’t give away any of the subjects just yet, though I will say that this exercise would have been substantially easier - and cheaper - if FIFA had kept the number of teams in the tournament at 32.

Maybe the idea to do a 48-day run of daily newsletter is a bad idea. Maybe I will, like Ireland in 1994 (and 2002) flame out by the second round. But there’s only one way to find out. And, as Johan Cruyff once said: “It is better to go down with your own vision than with someone else’s.”

If it all sounds too much for you, then now’s the time to do a Saipan and jump ship before the tournament starts. For the rest of you, I’ll see you in Mexico on Monday morning. It’s going to be fun.

---

Thanks for reading - I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here!