Watching World Cup Alone

It’s 11:47 PM on a Wednesday in November and the stadium in Doha is exploding. 80,000 people screaming, arms up, faces painted, strangers hugging strangers. Mbappé just scored and the entire city block in front of my laptop screen is erupting. I close the tab. I look around my one-bedroom apartment. The fridge is humming. That’s it. That’s the whole soundtrack.

I didn’t plan to watch it alone. That was supposed to be the joke of the year — that someone like me, who writes about burnout for a living, would actually find a bar to watch the World Cup final in. My friend Joon in Berlin sent me a text at 9 AM his time: “bro we have a table at the corner pub, come over, get on a flight.” I read it. I bookmarked it. I never booked the flight. I never even opened the booking page.

That is, I think, the most honest thing I can tell you about myself right now.

The Thing About Other People During Big Games

The thing nobody tells you about being a “knowledge worker” or whatever HR calls us now is that your social calendar becomes this weird spreadsheet of obligations. Coffee chats that are actually interviews. Slack threads that are actually therapy. Birthday dinners that are actually networking. Every interaction has a tax attached to it, even the fun ones, even the ones with people you genuinely like. By the time the World Cup rolls around every four years, the tax collector inside my head is exhausted. He’s done. He doesn’t want to negotiate another round of small talk with Joon’s friends from his startup accelerator. He doesn’t want to do the “oh you’re a writer, what do you write about” loop three times in one evening.

So I stayed home. I told myself it was a choice. It felt like a choice at the checkout line of my local grocery store when I bought a single bottle of beer instead of a six-pack. It felt like a choice when I unplugged my monitor from the wall and dragged it onto the coffee table so I could watch the match from the couch like a normal human. It did not feel like a choice at 11:47 PM when the goal went in.

There is something crushing about watching 80,000 people be happy at the same time and knowing that the closest human to you is asleep in the unit next door. You can hear them through the wall, actually. They were watching it too. They cheered at the exact same moment Mbappé scored. I heard the muffled thump of what I think was a couch cushion being punched, and then a voice — male, mid-30s sounding, American accent — yell “LET’S GOOOO” at a volume I would never yell at anything. I sat there with my beer. I didn’t move. My chest was doing that thing it does when I’m pretending to be fine. Palms sweating. Stomach tightening. The whole deal.

I’m Not Going to Tell You This Is Okay

I’m not going to tell you this is okay. That would be dishonest. I read a lot of those “it’s okay to spend New Year’s Eve alone” essays and they all have this very clean bow at the end where the author discovers they actually preferred it. They went for a walk. They called their mom. They journaled about gratitude. They ate a fancy single-serving dessert. They felt empowered. They had a realization.

I did not have a realization. I had a beer. I had three beers, actually, by the time the final whistle blew, and I had not moved from the couch except to use the bathroom once and to retrieve a second bottle from the kitchen. My posture was the worst posture I have ever held while conscious. I was folded into the couch like a piece of laundry someone had forgotten about. My eyes were doing that thing where they sting because you’ve been staring at one screen for three hours without blinking enough.

I called my mom at midnight. She picked up on the third ring. She said “are you okay, it’s late.” I said “yeah just wanted to say hi, France won.” She said “the World Cup? I thought you didn’t like soccer.” I said “I don’t, I just watched it anyway.” She said “okay honey, get some sleep.” That was it. That was the whole conversation. I put the phone down and it felt like putting down a hot pan — like I should have held it longer, like I should have said something real, but I didn’t know what the real thing was.

The Part Where I Tried to Pretend

Around 9 PM I tried to break the spell. I opened Twitter. I typed “anyone watching the World Cup alone tonight lol” into the search bar. The results were almost entirely people posting from bars, people posting from living rooms full of friends, people posting from watch parties with branded backdrops. There were no replies for me. There was no community for people like me. The internet is great at manufacturing the appearance of company. It’s terrible at finding actual company.

I tried the next thing. I opened a Discord server I’m still in from a writing group that dissolved in 2023. There were seven people online. The active channel was a debate about whether to use Oxford commas. I typed “anyone want to talk about the match” into the general channel. Nobody replied for eleven minutes. Then a moderator bot replied with a link to the rules of the server. I closed Discord.

I tried one more thing. I opened Hinge. I scrolled. I matched with a woman whose bio said “looking for someone to watch the game with.” I thought — okay, this is a sign, this is the universe intervening. We matched. I did not message her. I put my phone face down on the carpet and stared at the ceiling for what I think was fifteen minutes but might have been an hour. My palms were sweating. My stomach was tightening. I kept thinking — what would I even say? “Hi, I’m Dave, I can’t even watch a soccer game by myself, want to come over?” That sentence felt like it would crush me if I said it out loud.

The Stuff Nobody Writes About

The stuff nobody writes about is the half-hour after. France won 3-0. The highlights were over. The post-match interviews were on. I had run out of beer. I sat in the dark living room with the TV still on, just the sound, and I did that thing where you lie to yourself about going to bed soon. I said “I’ll get up and brush my teeth in a minute.” I said “I’ll do the dishes tomorrow.” I said “I’ll text Joon back tomorrow.” I said a lot of “tomorrow”s. Tomorrow is where I keep all the things I can’t do today.

I got up at 2:14 AM and brushed my teeth. I went to bed. I did not sleep. I lay there watching the ceiling fan turn in slow circles. I thought about Joon’s table at the corner pub. I thought about the American guy next door punching his couch cushion. I thought about my mom saying “okay honey, get some sleep” in that tone of voice she uses when she knows something is wrong and chooses not to push. I thought about the Hinge match I never messaged. I thought about how I have not been on a plane in fourteen months. I thought about how I have not hugged anyone outside of a professional setting in nineteen months. I thought about how the World Cup is supposed to be the most watched event on earth and there I was, alone in my apartment, with the fridge humming, watching it on a screen that was slightly too small.

The ceiling fan stopped at 4:08 AM. I think it has a timer. I don’t remember falling asleep.

The Morning After

The next morning I woke up at 9:47 and felt like I had been hit by a bus. I made coffee. I scrolled the post-match coverage on my phone. Every single post was about togetherness. Every single post was about “where were you when Mbappé scored.” Every single post assumed you were somewhere. I closed Instagram. I opened my laptop. I had twelve unread emails about work. I had a Slack notification about a project deadline that moved up by two days. I did not respond to any of them.

I sat at my kitchen counter with the coffee going cold and I tried to figure out what had happened the night before. It wasn’t the soccer. I don’t even care about soccer. It wasn’t the beer. It wasn’t even the loneliness exactly, because I’ve been lonely before and I’ve known what that felt like. This was something else. This was like — the absence of a thing I’d never had. Like I was mourning a friend group I never made. Like I was sad about a party I never got invited to. Like I was watching a movie about a version of my life that doesn’t exist.

I think the word is “phantom.” Phantom loneliness. You feel it for a thing that wasn’t ever real.

Verdict

I know this isn’t right. I’m conflicted too. But I just keep showing up to my own life one person short.