Romain Sinclair, Sciences Po Exchange, Fall 2013
Having been in Paris for 3 months, it becomes apparent that France is a soccer country. It’s called football or “foot” (pronounced F-ooot) for short. Everyone’s a fan of foot. This is both surprising and welcoming for a soccer fan like myself. Back home there would be very few people enthusiastic enough to talk about football with. In the remainder of this post, I will describe the advantages that living in a soccer-centric culture presents
1) Everyone plays soccer well here. The average person from The States isn’t very comfortable playing soccer. This doesn’t mean there’s a lack of skill. There are many people both back home and at Northwestern who have worked hard to become great players. Many of these players blow me out of the water. However, the average person has trouble. If I randomly selected someone out of my friend group (most of whom did play sports in high school), chances are that person cannot even do basic movements that are essential to the game. Not in France. The average person here has played a lot of soccer in his or her childhood. This happens mostly through informal games of soccer. In a singly walk in Paris, one is bound to see at least five groups of kids playing some kind of soccer game. It’s such that even the kids who may seem nerdy are actually really good (read: better than you).
2) The increased skill makes it easier to schedule pick-up sessions. I’ve not actually played that many pick-up games in my time here (refer to my post about how often it rains here). However, I’ve definitely had the opportunity to do so a number of times. Think of basketball in the U.S. Consider the amount of people who play basketball and the frequency of pick-up games there are. Then, you have soccer in Paris.
3) People want to go see soccer games! This is by far the best highlight of living in a soccer nation. Most of the European friends that I’ve made since coming here have a team they support. They can also discuss in some depth their home country’s soccer league. This is really cool because when it comes time to go to a game, there is no issue in finding people to go with. An added bonus is that Paris has a really strong team. It’s called Paris Saint Germain (PSG) and it plays in the north-western part of Paris. The stadium is very easy to get to, and the atmosphere in Games is phenomenal!