In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a small event going on in Brazil this summer called the World Cup. We’ve already got the first times and dates for the Germany games in our calendar here — the last of which is against the US. So you can be sure this major soccer event won’t be overlooked in our home.
The tournament is one of those “Marmite” things — you tend to either love it or hate it. And after 12 years in Germany where football fever runs rampant (yes, I still call it that even though it’s not the American football I grew up with), we definitely learned to love the games. The trouble is, you often get people on both sides of this particularly difficult fence in the same family. And whilst it may also be slightly sexist to suggest this; it is, nevertheless, generally the male side of the family that tends to love it and the female side that finds to find it all a little tedious.
So here are a few ideas to help get the whole family on board when it comes to enjoying the games.
And as the tournament wears on, more and more people tend to get caught up in it, anyway. So here’s the thing to do – “go early”.
By this, we mean it’s best to force the interest slightly, well in advance, for those members of the family who might be slightly less than keen. Because once someone has taken a stand against the World Cup, they’re often too proud to retract their views. And yet the World Cup final is always one of the most watched TV programmes in the world with an estimated one in ten of the entire world’s population tuning in.
This enthusiasm tends to have a knock-on effect during the tournament itself with people previously uninterested in the beautiful game getting caught up in the whole furore.
So by going early, everyone in the family can get enthused from the opening game of Brazil versus Croatia on June 12th, to the final at Rio’s Maracana stadium on Sunday July 13th.
One of the best ways to drum up enthusiasm is to organise a little sweepstake within the family, where you each put a nominal amount into the hat and draw out a number of teams on a winner-takes-all basis.
The adults in the family may decide to take this a stage further by having a small bet on the World Cup.
Just so you know what the odds are, Betfair currently has Brazil installed as World Cup favourites at around 3-1, with Argentina at 4-1, Germany 5-1 and holders Spain at 7-1.
And because Betfair is an exchange in which it’s possible to lay back bets as well as place them, you can profit from making a good selection early on if that team then does better than expected and the price narrows. Four-time winners Italy, for example, are currently very generous 28-1 with Betfair.
Other ways of achieving the same thing are to collect World Cup player cards, or put a chart up on the wall of the games – or for the females, to have a few pin-up footballers to follow.
Whatever else happens remember; you can’t beat them, so you might as well join them.
