Soccer SuperFans

By: Laura Noel Garcia, Toronto

Like many of the best things in life, how much you enjoy football is more about the company kept than the time, place or outcome of the match.

This is the realization I think I'll remember most clearly about the 2010 Cup.
Throughout the tournament I enjoyed matches with new friends and old, co-workers and strangers gathered round TVs throughout the city.

I watched with the Twitterverse, often stealing moments with my phone during matches to hear opinions about the latest questionable call or to celebrate a win.

This, the most social sporting event of my lifetime, has afforded me many memorable days and valuable connections with the people around me.

It has introduced me to people the world around and reminded me of the essential similarities between us. It has also encouraged me, quite simply, to appreciate the company of those closest to me.

In the last few desperately uncertain moments of our match against Ghana, I cursed my viewing choice. My dad, brother and I had seen every possible match together. On this rare work-free Friday, I decided to stay close to home and watch at a local restaurant. My core viewing team had split up, and for a moment I contemplated blaming this for the unnerving unfolding of what threatened to become our last match. I was glad to have La Celeste prove me wrong, but would remember how I missed them that day.

Together again to see our squad take on the Dutch, all felt right around the set - although much was missing on the field. Without our captain and star defenceman Lugano, injured in the previous match, we lacked in stubborn strength.

A now infamous penalty left us without one of our top tournament scorers, Suarez.

This marked our last match in the running for the Cup and I was glad to have ended the journey with them.

Now that the tournament is behind us, the simple, almost instinctual, initiative to stop what we're doing and come together is missing. When I reminisce about our team's incredible resolve and unlikely success, I'll also take it as a reminder to pick up the phone and plan our next gathering. I'm sure many other football fans across the country share this sentiment and miss the unifying power of the Cup, but Cheering on La Celeste means something unique to each of us.

I saw some Uruguayan Canadians, who've been here so long and whose lifestyles would be unrecognizable to their pre-Canada selves, seize the Cup as an opportunity to reconnect with a forgotten facet of their identity. A time for reflection and introspection, the last month brought some closer to themselves.

While I take the tournament's lessons of togetherness as a reminder to make time for each other, I also eagerly look forward to the time the world will come together in Brazil four years from now. Determined to delight in that tournament live from the stands and streets of a country I've just discovered earlier this year, I wonder - who will I be then? What will Brazil 2014 reveal to me?

Today, I am certain of little but do know a few things. I live in a magnificent city and country. I have a world to discover. And the journey to Brazil - for me and for the rejuvenated and now globally known La Celeste - will be a life-changing one.