Football : It's More Than Just Your Team's Name

During my stay in Prague, which is located in the Czech Republic, I witnessed the public viewing of a world cup game in the center square. The Czech Republic is an Eastern European country which used to be part of Czechoslovakia. “Following the First World War, the closely related Czechs and Slovaks of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire merged to form Czechoslovakia.” In 1993 the two countries decided to separate back out into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is a great example of how boarders and territory have changed overtime. The median age of the people in The Czech Republic is 38.9 years for males and 42.4 years for females. This age in my opinion is one that leads to much pride and nationalism for their country during the World Cup. They are old enough to remember old times but young enough to show emotion and pride for their country. The Czech Republic is made up of 59% unaffiliated and 26.8% Roman Catholic. 94.9% of the language spoken is Czech followed by a 2.3% in the other category. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ez.html)

We arrived at the Old Town Square in the early afternoon and found “Hyundai Fan Park Praha.” This fan park consisted of food stands, a blow up football kicking game, a football ball riding pin as well as a gigantic screen that was playing World Cup games. I didn’t give this much thought as we passed it because not many people were there. However, most of the people in our group joined in the mood and rode the football. You could look around the Old Town Square and really see how important Football and the World Cup was to the people of Prague as well as the tourists. Later that evening we made our way back to the square for some dinner. As we were arriving we experienced a completely different atmosphere. The France vs Mexico game was just beginning. We grabbed some food from one of the Hyundai Fan Park Praha food stands and went over and watched part of the game. The French team has appeared in 12 final tournaments, winning in 1998, finishing third in 1958 and 1986, and finishing fourth in 1982. (http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/teams/team=43946/profile.html) The Mexican team has qualified for FIFA World Cup finals 14 times in all, their best finish was reaching the last eight in 1970 as well as 1986. This is their fifth appearance in a row to the finals and they have been beaten out in the Round of 16 all five times. (http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/teams/team=43911/profile.html) Thus we can see that both teams have a lot of emotion and desire to win. You could witness much nationalism from the fans of both teams. I also witnessed nationalism and team pride from the players of the Football teams. As we took our spot I looked around and the entire square was full of jerseys of either French players or Mexican players. You could both hear and feel the emotion filling the square. You could smell the mixture of hot dogs and sausages with the stale smell of beer. As the game progressed you could feel the tension and emotion grow. After Javier Hernandez scored the first goal for Mexico, you could have heard the roaring and felt the rumble for miles. After watching most of the game in the square we decided to divert from this scene and head towards a bar to watch the last few minutes of the match. While we were walking away from the square we could hear the fans and crowed for a long way. They would get really loud and then they would go quite and this pattern continued the whole time. After arriving at the bar, we watched the last bit of the football game. I felt the same type of atmosphere while watching the game in the bar as I did while sitting in the square. It was a true experience to witness a World Cup game in Europe. In the end Mexico came out on top 2-0 and I felt like most people were very happy about this.

Map to Old Town Square

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Größere Kartenansicht

Other Links

- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ez.html

- http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/eu_members/czechrepublic/index_en.htm

- http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/eu_members/czechrepublic/index_en.htm