Many Kansas Citians will soon know what it is like to attend a World Cup match. But if you are looking for a sneak peek at the experience, few people are better suited to explain it all than Simon Kuper, the author of the new book "World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments."
A journalist who currently writes for The Financial Times, Kuper has covered every World Cup since 1990. He says because there are so many countries in the tournament, the quality of the soccer improves dramatically as it moves from the group stage to the elimination rounds.
But ultimately, for those in attendance, it is all about the experience.
"You go for the experience, for the joy, for the fans singing on the streets and beating drums, for the fans of both teams partying in the city afterwards," he said. "It is much more an international festival than it is a top quality tournament. The best soccer gets played from the quarterfinals and on, and then it gets pretty good."
The United States first hosted the World Cup in 1994, at a time when soccer did not have nearly the popularity that it does now in the country.
"The U.S. is much more of a soccer country now than when I was living there in 1993 and 1994, working for ABC TV as a very junior flunky at the World Cup. So (now), the U.S. already is a little bit of a soccer country. It has its own league, they watch the Mexican league, the English league, women's soccer is very big, there's all sorts of things going on."
- Simon Kuper, author of "World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments"
