The excitement of going to the World Cup, wearing my Saudi flag colors, and being a girl that was given a chance for the first time to attend her country’s football match against Tunisia was extremely exciting, yet curiosity filled my thoughts.
I was worried I would feel out of place and get some odd glances? Did I? Yes...At first I did see some questioning expressions...as I analyzed these expressions I assumed they were wondering what and why and how I was there. Despite the glances I was hit with a sudden disease. A fever.
As soon as I stepped out of the Munich train station at 12 p.m. that day coming from Vienna, Austria, green, white, and red colors blinded my eyes! People’s painted faces, walking flags filled the sky! Cheers and football anthems filled my ears! Smiles, words of encouragement were flying past me so consistently! TV screens filled up the walls, restaurants, hotel lobbies, and radios! That is when it happened! That is when I realized I had been hit with what they called “soccer fever.”
Can you imagine the sight of Saudi women and men sharing smiles, wishing one another luck, their sympathy, their congrats, their condolences, their happiness with their neighbors, better yet, with anyone who is wearing white and green!
The feeling you get of watching a live game does not come close to the feeling you get while watching it on TV, they are basically two different feelings.
The minute Yasser Al-Qahtani scored his first goal happiness enveloped the audience, the rows behind me, above me, and in front of me did not stop singing and dancing. And that mutual atmosphere lasted all the way till the second goal that was scored by Sami Al-Jabber.
That is the time when I realized that there was no difference regardless of the status, gender, race, or age of whomever was there. And it occurred to me that during soccer games of our national team we are all one. We all shared the same feelings, from the King to the children.
Islamists, liberals, and those from different sects and cultural backgrounds shared the same amount of happiness, enthusiasm, and disappointment.
And oh how I wish I had felt this in my own country. In my every day life I have never felt such unity as I felt that day. Football united all of us! There are people in our society who perhaps generalize and judge Westerners and maybe specifically Germans of being judgmental of us, however, I saw the contrary. I was astonished by the Germans’ support during the game.
How they dressed up in Saudi T-shirts and carried our flags. Some of them actually took an extra step and dressed up in our Saudi cultural “thob” and applauded as if they were one of us! In addition to the German support we also had the Tunisian fans being friendly with us saying “it doesn’t matter who wins we are all Muslims, we are all winners.”
So it seems that football unites societies together. The question is what such powerful element does football contain? And what is its substitute? If football brings about such happiness, and brotherly love regardless of our differences in our society, then maybe we should all start playing football more often.
(Samar Al-Zayer is a Saudi university student in Vienna, Austria)
