Why Go to Germany?

Why would anyone want to go to Germany to watch the football World Cup? As far as I can tell there is no special enjoyment that one would derive from watching a sporting event from the stadium as opposed to watching it on your television set.

If anything you’re better off watching the matches on TV for the following reasons:

1) You get to listen to the commentator give his opinion on the game, instead of blankly staring at twenty-two men chase after a ball in the middle of a green field.

2) If there is more than one match going on simultaneously, you can switch channels with a single press of a remote button. Teleporting yourself between stadia in different cities is slightly harder.

3) The fact that television cameras zoom in on the action means that you can actually understand what’s going on, without having to squint to figure out who passed the ball to whom.

4) Television replays mean that you don’t have to worry about missing the only goal of the match because you sneezed at the wrong time. (Stadia today are normally equipped with big screens, so this one doesn’t for much.)

I can understand a die-hard fan traveling to Germany to cheer his/her team -- I’m told you play better when the stadium is packed with people cheering you on. But surely, there can’t be that many die-hard fans out there. India, for example, isn’t even playing in the tournament -- why are all these Indians going there? If they claim they want to enjoy a nice holiday in Germany, why go now? I’m sure all the prices will have shot up through the roof since there’s so much of a rush to get there. Enjoy your German holiday some other time.

Here's something else to think about -- how many different countries have won the football World Cup so far? I think seven, if my memory serves me right. That's a surprisingly small number when one considers that this is the twentieth edition of the tournament and football is played everywhere! Just to put things into perspective, we've had eight cricket World Cups and five different countries have lifted the crown there. And remember how few countries play cricket as compared to football. What do you think is the reason for this oligarchy of sorts in world football?