My son, 11, is a die-hard soccer fan who did the impossible: He got me to love soccer and soccer culture. Long before the World Cup began, he begged me to go to a match. He typically plays soccer five days a week, often following a skills class with travel team practice. He almost exclusively wears soccer jerseys and knows minute facts about soccer players and teams.
I assumed getting tickets to the World Cup would be difficult but possible. I entered every ticket lottery and opened a credit card that promised priority access, but struck out at every turn. Because I am a storyteller, I wrote about our quest to see a match. When getting tickets proved far harder than I anticipated, my son was despondent but still hopeful.
Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith
We still planned a great World Cup experience — until a concussion thwarted our plans
Even though we didn’t have tickets to the World Cup, we decided to make the best of the tournament. We planned to attend watch parties and tune in to as many games as possible. My son, a graduating 5th grader, was looking forward to an all-day World Cup-themed extravaganza at school to celebrate.
However, the night before the World Cup started, an angry teammate threw a soccer ball directly at my son’s head, leaving him with a concussion. Instead of a joyful World Cup opener and the end of elementary school, my son was coping with a raging headache, nausea, and fatigue.
He missed celebrating the World Cup’s first match with his friends. Because he had to significantly limit screen time and loud noises hurt his head, we couldn’t go to watch parties or view more than a few highlights of early games. My son also missed playing with his soccer team for the last match of the season and spent much of his graduation ceremony with a splitting headache.
We spent my son’s time convalescing, sorting through Panini World Cup stickers, and swapping with other soccer fans so he could fill in his World Cup book with all 980 stickers. We built Legos, including a new Ronaldo set released for the World Cup.
My son’s grace in handling the loss of so much he had been looking forward to made me even more determined to get him to a World Cup match. However, sky-high ticket prices, combined with loss of income from having to take off work and medical expenses, meant a match was more out of reach than ever.
Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith
A too-good-to-be-true email landed in my inbox
In the midst of World Cup excitement that seemed out of reach, an unexpected email landed in my inbox. A representative from Sugar Land, TX, just outside the World Cup host city of Houston, read about our determination to see a World Cup game. “Would my son and I like to attend a game in Houston and visit Sugar Land?” they asked.
My response was an immediate and enthusiastic yes, although I didn’t tell my son about the offer right away because it seemed not just improbable but impossible. If I could get my son to Texas, Visit Sugar Land, an official supporter of the World Cup in Houston, would provide us with tickets to a match, and I could bring my daughter too. I spent several hours wondering if the offer was real. However, after a few days of ironing out logistics and no odd requests for our Social Security numbers or my mother’s maiden name, I bought our plane tickets. We started counting down the days until the match.
Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith
The match was so much better than we expected
When it was time to fly to Sugar Land, my son wasn’t completely recovered, but his doctor cleared him to travel. He boarded the plane in complete shock that he was actually headed to see Brazil face off against Japan in a knockout match.
My son barely slept the night before the game. When the hour to head to the match finally arrived, he wore a customized Brazil jersey that a friend brought for him straight from Rio de Janeiro a few years ago. The jersey was a little too big then, but it fits perfectly now, perhaps a sign that this was meant to be.
My son insisted that we get to our seats over an hour early so that we didn’t miss a second of the pre-game ceremonies. He screamed when the countdown clock hit zero, and the kickoff began. The energy in the stadium was electrifying. After about 30 seconds of play, my son turned to me and said, “This is a thousand times better than I was expecting,” a bold statement since he had impossibly high expectations to begin with. At half-time, my son told me that our trip to Sugar Land was the best one he had ever taken. That night, drifting off to sleep, he said “the whole match” was his favorite part of the day.
Our World Cup trip turned into an unexpected getaway
Courtesy of Jamie Davis Smith
Although our trip to Sugar Land started as a pilgrimage to the most storied soccer tournament of all time, it turned into a fun family trip to a place we might not otherwise have visited. We saw the Sugar Land Space Cowboys win a minor league baseball game, explored the city’s natural history museum, and enjoyed a ropes course in a forest.
We ate delicious food, from Thai to Tex-Mex, that reflects the Houston metro area’s reputation as one of the most diverse parts of the country. Throughout it all, my son and I were on a high that lasted well past the match, almost erasing everything we had to cancel during the worst of his concussion. This is truly the spirit of the World Cup: learning about new places and bringing people together.
Thanks to the kindness of strangers, my family had a World Cup experience we will never forget — and I fell even deeper into my love of everything soccer.
