World Cup Watch Party Round 5: The Row's Over
Norway is gone, but the Viking Row and everything else they brought with them will live on because they won the World Cup of Public Opinion.
I committed to this, and I’m sticking to it. Only one big essay this time as we head into the semis. To catch up on previous rounds of the World Cup Watch Party, click the links below:
I get it. I see the appeal.
America—really, the world—we love a big goofy guy. We love a big, strong, physically intimidating specimen of a human being that could crush us like a soda can but wouldn’t, because they’re our friend. Shaq, Andre the Giant, The Rock.
We love these big, powerful adults and we love to admire their hugeness while we also project a child-like innocence onto them, creating a feeling that we’re the ones who must protect these behemoths from the cruel world outside.
American culture is now ready to go to war for their newest favorite large boy, Erling Haaland and, by extension, his merry team of Viking destroyers.
And I want the record to show, too, that on June 11 I texted this in a group chat:
Everyone with a brain could tell that Norway was going to be the story of this World Cup. As soon as this official team photo was posted, it was over for every other team.
Listen: The Norway team was not the underdog that the media painted them to be. This is where I have to inject just a little bit of skepticism about this team and the way it’s portrayed. Erling Haaland is, in short, the most unstoppable true striker on the face of the Earth and will go down as one of the greatest to ever do it. And it wasn’t a situation where one star was surrounded by nobodies. Martin Ødegaard is one of the Premier League’s best midfielders. Players like Oscar Bobb, Antonio Nusa, Jørgen Strand Larsen and Kristoffer Ajer are legitimate top-flight talents, while Bodo/Glimt proved this season that Norwegian clubs belong on Europe’s biggest stage. This was a good team on paper and in practice.
But the Vikings won America’s hearts because, among other reasons, they knew what they were supposed to be doing here aside from scoring goals and preventing the other team from scoring as many goals as them. They recognized the current landscape of an international event. The team photo, the Row. Much like how all warfare has gone digital, what Norway did off the pitch was the 21st Century equivalent of their ancestors’ raids on a new shore, spreading their culture and customs, only they did it with clever marketing and gimmicks that they knew would take hold with the population without having to, you know, literally pillage.
This was, quite simply, Norway’s World Cup, because it feels like this World Cup isn’t just won on the field, but online. There is very much The People’s Champion this year, and Norway already won it.
Someone like Erling Haaland was uniquely suited for this. His specific brand of hugeness combined with an affinity for certain new-age social-media-ready wellness regimens like saunas, red light therapy, mouth tape and occasionally grilling big steaks, but combined with his ability to tease traditional American culture just enough to let us know that he’s not some manosphere bro created the perfect cult figure. He was an action figure. He was big and strong but couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt you, and he could still play dress up if he wanted to.
Soccer is still an afterthought in America. It comes after football, basketball, baseball and certainly it comes after reality TV and social media. If each round of the World Cup ended with voting on who your favorite team was, and which team should be eliminated, Haaland and Norway would cruise their Viking ship to an easy victory. This was a very American World Cup in this regard.
There have been plenty of other underdog stories in World Cups in the recent past, but none of them stuck like Norway. Morocco in 2022 is the one that most quickly comes to mind. It was a similar situation: A small country not known for its dominance on the global scale, but packed with stars from the biggest clubs in the world. Morocco surprised everyone by reaching the semifinals after eliminating Spain and Portugal. This was a team that died in the group stage in 2018, and before that hadn’t qualified for a World Cup since 1998. Its only other Round of 16 appearance before 2022 was in ‘86.
I was actually fortunate enough to be in Morocco when they got out of the groups, and the scenes in Marrakesh were as if they had already won, because in a way they had. The world was paying attention to them.
Unfortunately, Morocco has spent the last four years turning heel and finding its way into being one of the biggest villains in soccer, what with having basically stolen the African Cup of Nations trophy from a deserving Senegal thanks to some questionable politicking. But even without that, even before AFCON, Morocco had already been largely forgotten by fans who only tuned in every few years.
There were other over-the-top characters in that very tournament, too. Who can forget what Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez did with the Golden Glove trophy after Argentina won the whole thing in 2022?
Norway, though, at least right now, is in the perfect sweet spot: They are good, but don’t have the reputation of established giants. They have instantly recognizable stars and a mythology that everyone already understands. Most importantly, they’re in on the joke. They are having fun with this, their social media team is having fun with this, and they haven’t done anything to make anyone feel like they shouldn’t deserve our love.
They are still the lovable group of Viking warriors that America fell in love with, and they probably will be at the next World Cup, which is coincidentally taking place in Morocco, Spain and Portugal (along with some games in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. Logistics!). Whether a slightly older Norway can recapture its same magic in the next tournament will be interesting. Haaland will be turning 30 around the end of the tournament. Ødegaard will be 30. But the young rising stars like Nusa and Bobb will still be in their prime, to say nothing of the crop of talent that will likely come through clubs like Bryne, Molde and Bodo/Glimt.
This was the Norway World Cup, and it will go down like that.
And we in America will tell the tales of the Viking raiders who came in, brought about a new chant and stadium celebration that will be copied with diminishing returns just as the Icelanders brought the “SKOL” clap, until the next tournament when a new fun underdog, perhaps Scandinavian and perhaps not, understands that a good marketing gimmick can go just as far as on-field talent, as long as you have at least one generationally talented talisman of a player who is also a fun character and visually idiosyncratic.
If you have all that, you can conquer just about any place you want, and you can cement yourself into myth. Every World Cup, there’s some unknown player who thrusts himself onto the international stage and probably lands a big move to a big club for big money. But, when your new hero already has all those things, how do you reward the man who already has everything?
Today’s Snakes & Sparklers musical guest is Twisted Teens.