our world cup derby

We have been closely following the successes and disappointments of our two home teems during this summer’s soccer World Cup. As it happened, Sweden and Japan were drafted to the same group and when they played their game last Friday, it was to determine which team would get the second place in the group and thus a more favorable match for the first round of the knockout stage of the tournament. The game started at 8 o’clock Japan time, and I was planning for us to watch the first half of the match live before it was time for my wife to get to work and for me to take our son to the kindergarten. As it happens, weather happed.

I woke up earlier than usual to make sure we had time to have breakfast and do the normal morning preparations before the match started. But as we were eating, there was a beep on my phone. The whole week, it has been raining quite heavily but since Thursday night the rain had been literally pouring down and so it had been decided that the schools in Fukuoka would be closed on Friday for safety reasons. So just before the game was set to begin we were alerted to the fact that today suddenly had become a holiday, and I could not imagine a better day to get an unexpected holiday. Now we could watch the whole game live together!

Before the clock had turned eight, we had put on our team-shirts and gathered in front of the screen. I was wearing a Japanese team shirt I got for the World Cup in 2018, just after my wife and I got married. She was wearing the Swedish team shirt I gave her for that same tournament eight years ago, and our son was also wearing a Swedish team shirt he got from his cousins – I root for Sweden, he instead before the match began. The score was 0-0 at half time and by then our son had gotten a bit restless, so he decided to immortalize the game on paper where he, mum and dad were the main players. The match itself turned out to be an even one ending 1-1, seeing Japan take the second place in the group. But Sweden also advanced to the knock out stage so we can continue rooting for both teams and hope they both are successful so that they will end up meeting each other one more time. That would be a treat!