Put in the proper wider context, the attendance issues that have emerged during the tournament perhaps aren’t quite as embarrassing as they seem
If there’s a lesson to be learned from the Club World Cup so far, it’s that images of nothingness can still generate hysteria. Empty seats – which are apparently a festering scourge upon the game of football, a tragedy representing the plastic bankruptcy of American soccer fandom and/or the Club World Cup, an issue demanding alarmist coverage delivered with brows fully furrowed – have been commonplace in the competition’s opening dozen games. Headlines (including from this very publication) have followed. Social media is awash in panoramic photos from a nation of press boxes, informing you incredulously that this image, so obscene in its emptiness, was taken a mere 45 minutes before kickoff – or (gasp) even closer.
Why do we, the fans, observers, journalists, and other people who simply watch these games, care? What is it about the sight of a whole lot of plastic folding chairs with nobody in them that inflames our passions? Since when did we all become Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Republican National Convention?
