What's with the football?

I never understood one thing about football (apart from the rules of the game). How can people watch some 22 players kicking a football for it to eventually enter some rectangular net? And all this for over a good (boring) 90 minutes. Okay, I can understand about the players, they are busy defending / hitting the football, and so they do not get bored. But the spectators… where do they get all the patience from. I always feel like a patient if I watch the game for over 5 minutes.

I mean cricket is fine, someone is scoring a run or taking a wicket or getting caught or whatever, almost at every ball (that too I find bearable for a one-day match, test matches are still unbearable for me). But soccer!!!

But things changed a bit recently. Thanks to my being in advertising. Got a brief for an ad that had to do stuff related to soccer. Now what… soccer-ignorant Annu had to do some basic research to understand the basic fundas! So I went to the FIFA site. Edgar, Ravi and Chintu, like some football experts, explained me the basics. I discovered some unknown-to-me facts. Like the yellow, red and green cards. Like the historical goals. Like there are millions of soccer-crazy people. Like 36 countries are participating in the World Cup and people are trying really hard to get a hotel booking. Man… people do have great deal of patience.

And now, I am getting impatient to watch a match or two and see if I can be more patient in life. Who knows tomorrow I will become a soccer fan too, who knows I won’t. In any case, advertising helped me learn something new, once again.