I saw someone say the best FIFA World Cup you’ve ever seen is the one you saw when you were ten. I immediately thought: Football Fortune-Teller! Soccer Sorcerer! How does he know about South Korea Japan 2002?! And I was sold
But that happened after I decided to compile this list. That decision happened when, 5 days ago, I watched the 1994 semifinal match between Brazil and the Netherlands, which I highly recommend, but that’s not the point.
I was texting my dad, who grew up in Brazil and is a massive fan of the national team, during the whole game, and I realized the graphics threw me into a nostalgic episode (mind you, I was two in 94).
These simplistic 3D blue block pop-ups with a flag on them did something, and that something was a time-space rift to when I was a 6 or 7(the kids can do the hand wave thing now)-year-old playing FIFA Road to World Cup 98 at a friend’s house after school.
From there, the distance to the obsessive search for the exact frame I remember from that day was very, very short. And here we are. Or at least I am.
Because personally, each of these pulled up a memory I didn’t know existed. Most, if not all of them, are either me celebrating a goal way too loudly, or a friend mocking me in an extremely inappropriate and disproportionate way – you guessed it, after a goal.
So look at these, call your dad, and talk about a game you saw together or one he talked about so much you actually think you remember seeing live even though you were two years old. Then go look up the friend you didn’t think about or talked to in decades – the one you teased way too loudly, considering his mom was absolutely hearing every word you shout, after a goal, that is.
Get yourself hyped up for the World Cup, or game 4 of the finals, or keep this in mind till early February and the Super Bowl is coming. Whatever you like. CALL YOUR DAD!! Mock your friends. SPORT! GUYS! MEN! USA USA USA USA!!!!