WC2006: Start 'Em Young

SONY CENTER, BERLIN (6:45pm local time) -- The Sweden-Paraguay match had a different energy than Brazil-Croatia. It was more festive, which is a testament to how the Croatian fans overpowered teh normally ebullient Brazilians. It was also a testament to the sheer number of yellow-clad Swedish fans. The sold-out stadium holds 72,000, and about 50K of those must have been Swedish. After missing far too many chances through most of the match, I think it was the force of the transplanted home field crowd that pushed Sweden over the edge with a late Freddie Ljungberg (spelling approximated 'cause I'm lazy) goal.

I happened to be sitting behind an entire family of outnumbered Paraguayan fans. There was an older, white-haird couple, two younger women who seemed to be their daughters and quite possibly twins, and two girls who were the daughters of one of those women. The two girls were maybe between 10 and 13 years old, tops, and they were both in tears after the match. The grandfather noticed me noticing them and gave me a bittersweek, but proud, smile.

Any hope of avoiding a sweat-soaked train ride this time evaporated as I descended into the U-Bahn station and the temperature rose about 15 degrees on the collective body heat of several hundred very drunk and very happy Swedes. I took a break at an Internet shop near Zoo Station to keep clearing the blog backlog (backblog?) and rest my weary and blistering feet. I did have a Coke at the stadium, but aside from that, managed to go the entire day without much caffeine at all.