Back When Football Was Innocent—And the World, Too

There’s a particular rhythm to the World Cup, a progression. It begins as an all out bacchanalia, a frenetic all-you-can-eat football buffet of multiple games each day. There’s a wonderful sense of serendipity in the wildly mismatched pairings: there is no other context in which Panamanians will all collectively channel their national fervor into temporary animosity against Croatia, and yet there it is, playing out on your screen.