How do you handle a sporting event when you honestly care less who wins?

When it comes to the World Cup, I find the world of international soccer to be interesting – moreso than the hype we have surrounding the Super Bowl or NBA playoffs that seem to last forever.

Yet with the world of international soccer reaching a peak this weekend – and the World Cup tourney bringing a month’s worth of activity to an end with a championship game Sunday, I have to admit I’m not all that enthused.

WHEN THE NATIONAL teams of France and Croatia take to the pitch to try to stake their claim to having the best football club in the world, there will be those thousands of fans packing their way into a stadium in Moscow, and many thousands more gathered around television sets for a lifetime experience.

I’m likely to be watching on television, hoping something will happen to make the game itself memorable.

But I honestly can’t say I’m rooting for either side. The idea of France vs. Croatia brings about a bit of a “blah” in me.

I’m sort of glad to see that in the semi-final match on Wednesday, England fell short of Croatia. Mainly because I can’t think of anything less interesting than the idea of an international championship coming down to a brawl between England and France.

I KNOW THE history.

I don’t doubt that to the English (and only the English, not anybody from Scotland, Wales or Ireland), it would be a moment of great historic significance if they had been able to win a World Cup championship against their historic arch-rival. Instead, they’ll settle for playing in a consolation game Saturday against Belgium – a match I won’t be able to watch, because I’ll have to do reporter-type work that day.

But perhaps I have too much of an all-American Yankee Doodle Dandy in me. I was interested in the World Cup this year for the vision it gave us of the rest of the world. Not to see the one-time world powers try to pretend that history remains the same and that the world revolves around a London/Paris axis.

While some might think that makes me a natural to root for Croatia to win come Sunday, I just don’t see it happening.

LARGELY BECAUSE I have had friends in my lifetime who are of Serbian ethnic origins. Somehow, I suspect they’d pay me a “surprise” visit and feed me a meal of knuckle sandwiches if they thought I was somehow rooting for their nation’s historic rival.

I know for some people who think of themselves as soccer fans, their interest in World Cup ’18 diminished last autumn when the U.S. national team couldn’t even qualify to be among the 32 teams that played this year.

Trinidad and Tobago will be places that get demonized in their minds, what with how it was their team that managed to knock the United States out of the running, and which spared fans the world over the sight and sound of the “American Outlaws” group leading “U-S-A” chants all over the one-time Soviet Union.

For me, I am a fan of el Tri, the national equipo de futbol of Mexico, and usually find myself taking interest in all the teams from nations that are a part of the Americas. When Hirving Lozano (nicknamed “Chucky”) scored the lone goal against Germany, that was my personal highlight of the 2018 version of the World Cup.

SO WHEN MEXICO got knocked out of the running by Brazil, then Brazil lost in the quarterfinals to Belgium, my own intense rooting interests in this year’s World Cup declined. They diminished altogether when Uruguay lost to France – who may wind up winning their third World Cup tourney ever come Sunday.

Putting them behind Brazil (with five titles) historically, but well ahead of anybody else in the Americas.

The World Cup is one of those periodic athletic events. We’ll get it again come 2022 in Qatar. We’ll get to see Middle Eastern sheiks staging the event in all the opulence possible for matches played out in the desert.

Yet I don’t doubt there are those fans of soccer who already have shifted their attention to 2026. That’s the year we’ll get to see World Cup activity in the United States – the first time since 1994. Along with Mexico (which had it in 1970 and 1986) and Canada (never before). We’ll have to see if the nations of North America can play nice with each other while the world watches.

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Do we give a fig about royal wedding?

“If George comes to Chicago, I’ll crack him in the snoot” – William H. Thompson, former Mayor of Chicago

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I’m sure by now, many of you are sick and tired of hearing this line, spouted in the heat of the 1927 election cycle as Thompson ran an anti-British theme throughout his campaign for re-election that year.

Do 'we' really wanna 'read all about it?'

Because the “George” he refers to was then-King George V – as in the grandfather of current Queen Elizabeth II (who having been Queen since 1952 has the kind of lengthy term that American politicos can only fantasize about) and great-great-grandfather to Prince Henry (more commonly called Harry), who on Saturday will have the world’s eyes on him as he marries one-time Northwestern University student Meghan Markle.

THAT LINE FROM Thompson is being used by many people who try to come up with some sort of connection between the English royals and those of us native to the “Second City.”

It also gets used by those of us intending to show our disdain for anything happening in London on Saturday. Some of us feel the need to spew trash talk about how we fought a war against those people to break our ties to the English king.

George III, to be exact.

George V, with his 'snoot' intact

While others will want to get caught up in the pageantry of the spectacle and will think it sad that some people will be “haters” – although whenever I hear the word used like that, I’m reminded of the various delusional, and youthful, women who dated Hugh Hefner during his final years of life.

PERSONALLY, I CAN’T say I feel either way.

“Hate” would definitely be the wrong sentiment, because in order to hate something, you have to care about it. You have to have a legitimate sense of feeling that, in some ways, could border on “love.”

Yet I also have the same feelings of apathy whenever anything involving the English royal family comes up. It just all seems so trivial.

All bluster from 'Big Bill'

At least if we were talking about an American power-play wedding, such as a White House-staged event involving President Donald J. Trump’s younger daughter, Tiffany – we could complain about the gross misuse of tax dollars during the Trump years in D.C.

IF ANYTHING, IT bothers me to bring this up because we then have to recall the 1915-23 and again from 1927-31 mayoral reign of Thompson – the man whose tolerance of Al Capone is the reason why a hood was able to achieve such prominence in Chicago.

Remember that scene from Kevin Costner’s 1987 take on “The Untouchables” when Costner’s Eliot Ness is stopped from arresting Frank Nitti for bringing a pistol into a courthouse – because Nitti produced a note granting him permission to legally have the weapon?

A note signed by none other than “William Hale Thompson” himself. That scene wasn’t exactly fictional – although the follow-up scene where Ness throws Nitti off the roof of City Hall to his death inside an automobile (“He’s in the car” was Ness’ response when asked about Nitti’s whereabouts) was pure fantasy.

Do we really want to be recalling the sentiments of a man who makes the political people of our era seem so meek and mild? One who would make Rod Blagojevich seem like a choirboy by comparison and would probably upset the conservative ideologues because Thompson was a Republican – the last GOPer to date to hold the Chicago mayoral post.

NO WONDER WHY our local voters don’t think much of the one-time Party of Lincoln.

The queen w/ Chicago 'royalty'

But the other “local moments” in our history include the July 6, 1959 visit of Elizabeth, herself, to Chicago – spending 14 hours in our city and even having a meeting with Richard J. Daley himself.

Or that three-day visit Princess Diana made to Chicago in the summer of 1996 – with its profound moment being the formal ball at the Field Museum where some local “gent” managed to cut in and got himself a dance with Diana herself.

Although that, at least, left a memento, as the Drake Hotel suite where she stood is now known as the “Princess Diana Suite” (which TripAdvisor.com puts at $187 per night – if available).

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