The World Cup begins this week.
48 countries will compete in a tournament to determine the world's best soccer team.
It's the world's favorite sporting competition.
A tournament full of euphoria, heartless prizes.
With this year's World Cup happening in North America,
we're going to be seeing wall-to-wall soccer for the next several weeks.
But for a lot of Americans, soccer isn't their go-to sport.
I mean, I'm a basketball guy.
So I sat down with the Wall Street Journal's two soccer
experts who've been watching the game since they were young lads.
"The earliest memory, World Cup memory I have is from the 1990 World Cup." Jonathan
Clegg is executive news editor and England fan.
"Nine years old, England lost in heartbreaking fashion in a penalty shootout in the World Cup semifinals.
It is my earliest sports memory. Just heartbreak. It was just, you know. Perfectly prepared me for the next,
you know, 35 years where it was just more of the same." "My first real memory of the tournament
was USA 94." And that's Joshua Robinson, sports editor.
"I grew up in England, but I'm also French. So France is my team. And then the moment
that kind of sealed it for me was France winning it in 98. Their winning
the World Cup in 1998 launched me on a life of sin and sports journalism." Sin and sports.
Also a fitting way to describe FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup.