Experiencing the World Cup in Tajikistan

The pregame ahead of the USA/Wales group state match of the 2022 World Cup. 
Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State from United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Soccer is my favorite sport to watch. The game's signature event, the World Cup, just concluded on Sunday with Argentina's dramatic defeat of France in perhaps the greatest-ever final.  In this post I'll share my experiences watching the tournament here in Tajikistan. 

 

Before starting, let me again plug this story that I've written over on Medium about the Tajikistan national soccer team and the amazing 2022 they experienced.  Mentioning this piece and the Tajik team is also a decent segue into this post.  While Tajikistan did enjoy a great year, neither it, nor any other Central Asian country, participated in the World Cup.  Indeed, none of the teams from this region have ever participated in the tournament.  This doesn't mean that the World Cup wasn't a big deal over here.  Far from it.  

Throughout the World Cup I don't think I went a day without chatting about the tournament in some way.  It's always helpful to find conversational comfort zones as a language learner, and the World Cup was just that for so many people I've talked with recently.  It seemed everyone wanted to talk about the World Cup, not just soccer fans.  It also surprised many people that I follow soccer and could talk about it, never mind love it.  There is definitely still a perception out there, to varying degrees, that Americans don't care for and know nothing about soccer.  It gave me great pleasure to help shift that view.

As for watching the World Cup, it seemed to be a real family event over here, much how NFL or college football games are for so many families in the US.  With Tajikistan only two hours ahead of Qatar, the match schedule was also very friendly.  Group stages matches were played at 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, and 12am while knockout games were at 8pm and 12am.  All three of the US's group stage games were in that midnight time slot and you know I stayed up to watch them!

Like many Tajiks, I too typically watched at home.  I did go out for three matches, including the final.  I watched those three matches at three different places but all in a similar manner--in a private room at a restaurant.  This is something you see a fair bit of here, even to the point that some places are exclusively collections of private rooms.  I liked it well enough--it's intimate and conducive to good conversation and  noticing details of the game at hand--but I certainly missed the "big crowd energy" of American bars or city squares that I've enjoyed in World Cups past.

The broadcaster over here was Match TV, a federally-owned Russian sports channel.  My Russian is gradually improving.  Slowly, I'm catching more and more commentary during matches.  That said, I still miss the gist of things nearly all of the time.  What wasn't lost on me was the absurdity of Match TV's World Cup studio, complete with a fancy CGI backdrop.  

Match TV's eye-catching studio set. 
Photo background: our Tajik wallpaper.

Shifting to moral self-reflection here: It doesn't feel great to have watched the World Cup via a state-owned apparatus of a nation committing genocide.  That said, you can pretty much characterize American broadcaster Fox the same way, for what that's worth.  As Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers so frequently says, soccer is a mirror held up to society, reflecting back our values.

In a similar vein, it was interesting to discuss various cultural aspects of this World Cup with Tajiks.  This tournament was rife with controversy and conflict as well as some gentler points of interest.  Topics of conversation included:

• The corruption and bribery behind the bidding process 
• The abuse and deaths of migrant workers in Qatar over the past decade
• Qatar and LGBT rights, including the armband controversy and fallout from it
• Rooting for Morocco
• The absence of Russia from the World Cup
• Celebrating (or not) the first World Cup in the Muslim world 

As always, one of the reasons to live abroad is to experience different viewpoints.  I especially appreciate the harder conversations I've had in recent weeks.  It's also not lost on me that such conversations were always been in English, not Russian or Tajik. 

All in all, I'm very glad to have been here in Tajikistan for the 2022 World Cup.  Soccer is always an important part of how I look to learn about and explore the world.  This latest World Cup was another memorable chapter of life as seen through the prism of "the beautiful game."