Someone (hi there, Magnus!) asked me if it’s any fun watching the World Cup in a far-away place like Timor-Leste (more known as East Timor), a country which is not likely to reach the World Cup Finals in the lifetime of any of us. The short answer is: “yes, it’s actually quite a bit of fun!”, but since I’m not much of a short-answer man, I’ll elaborate a bit.
Two main factors make following the 2010 World Cup in Timor a both different and fascinating experience. One is the massive UN presence, which means that there are people from pretty much every World Cup nation here in Dili. So what, you may think, isn’t that true of London, New York or any other major cosmopolitan city? Well, of course it is, but Dili is different. The city is so small (some 150,000-200,000 inhabitants) and the options of places where to watch the games are so few that UN staff from all countries tend to end up enjoying the games in the same places. This means that people share the same experiences from the same places, which makes for great football conversations and quite a bit of friendly football rivalries at the UN compound. There’s always someone to console, to encourage or, most likely, to give a hard time!
(Last night I desperately wanted Brazil to teach Portugal a lesson, but even more desperately I wanted Brazil to avoid an unexpected defeat. There are, of course, lots and lots of Portuguese people around in this former Portuguese colony, and they would have become absolutely unbearable with a Portuguese win over football Big Brother Brazil. As you probably know, the game ended up being a not very thrilling 0-0 draw. Oh well, at least now we can trust Spain to kick out Portugal in the next round! 
The second factor is the fact that the Timorese are extremely football-crazy – and absolutely “anarchic” in their way of following the World Cup. It might seem surprising that the Timorese are so passionate about a game they hardly ever get to play on an international level. After all, Timor-Leste has never participated in World Cup qualifying games (the country gained independence as late as 2002 and has faced its unfair share of social, political and civil unrest since then) and there is no organized national football league, so where on earth does the football frenzy come from?
One convenient answer would be RTP International, the Portuguese broadcasting company. Since chronically understaffed TVTL, the only Timorese broadcasting company, doesn’t have the resources necessary to broadcast more than a few hours per day, the programmes transmitted by RTP International are shown by TVTL, probably for free. This means that you can catch not only Brazilian telenovelas (marathon soap operas) but also football games from the (not very inspiring) Portuguese league.
A more convincing but also a lot sadder answer is that the Timorese are definitely not spoilt for entertainment choices. The simple truth is that there is not a whole lot of other things to do, and if all of a sudden you can watch World Cup football for free during a month, that’s what people will do. All the time, no matter who is playing or at what time they are playing (quite a few of the games start at 3.30 am).
Now, your average Timorese football fan is rather different from most other football fans I’ve met. I’d say that an overwhelming majority of fans roots for ONE team: their own national team (if it’s participating in the World Cup) or some other country that you particularly like. Sure, lots of people also have some mild sympathies for one or more other countries, but they still do tend to support only one team whole-heartedly, with passion, right? I mean, in this World Cup I have, for different reasons, positive feelings about a variety of participating teams (Ghana, Denmark, Spain, Holland, most of the Latin American teams, any team playing against Argentina or Germany), but there is only one team, Brazil of course, that makes my heart beat faster and my voice go missing. It’s almost like an unwritten rule that you can only FULLY support one team, isn’t it?
Well, not so in Timor. Here people tend to be rather anarchistic football fans, faithful like the neighbourhood Casanovas, loyal like stray cats. Some Timorese feel, much to my dismay, equally strong about Brazil and Argentina. I try to explain that it’s biologically, genetically impossible to support BOTH of these teams, but my Timorese friends don’t understand what I’m talking about. Others, a majority of the Timorese, support Portugal but will no doubt, without batting an eyelid, shift their full passion to another team (Brazil, Argentina and England tend to be the other nations having a rather big fan base here) as soon as Portugal is eliminated (and if you ask me, that can’t happen early enough . They’ll go all in, during the whole World Cup, for one team at a time!
So far, they have gone absolutely bananas every time Portugal has played. The random and incredibly noisy processions of hooting cars and motorbikes start roaming the streets a couple of hours before the Portuguese games, they will reappear during the short halftime break and they’ll take to the streets for another couple of hours after the games. I promise you: you’d have been excused for believing that Timor-Leste had won the World Cup Final after Portugal’s 7-0 thrashing of poor North Korea!
(So, why do so many Timorese support Portugal in the World Cup? Now, that’s what I’ve been asking myself. After all, Portugal ruled Timor-Leste for more than 400 years, and while not as brutal as the Indonesians during their occupation of this tiny country, nobody can claim that Portugal did much to develop Timor, so why support Portugal now? Most Timorese fall silent or just giggle when I mention this, some have even, good anarchists as they are, shifted their support to Brazil! So far, the best answer I’ve received is that Portuguese football is the only football that most Timorese people know, because of the RTP broadcasting Portuguese games on Timor’s national TV channel. Maybe the support of Portugal will decrease over time, as more Timorese get access to satellite channels showing football games from the English and Spanish leagues).
I have to admit that this “disrespect” of normal footfall fan ethics sometimes annoys me, but the more I think about it I realize that these Timorese anarchistic supporter nomads are doing exactly the right thing. They are simply making the most of every second of the 2010 World Cup, enjoying every game as passionately as possible, using the World Cup fiesta as a much-needed, much-deserved opportunity to relish, to think about anything but the dire circumstances of everyday life. Maybe it has bothered me a bit because I secretly, deep down inside on a subconscious level, wish that I could be that anarchistic and “unfaithful” myself? Maybe we are all Timorese football fans at heart but too rigid to admit it? Well, until the unlikely event of myself coming out of the anarchistic supporter closet, I’ll keep rooting passionately for Brazil. Vamos, canarinhos!
