Every four years, something strange happens to the world. Offices empty out in the middle of the afternoon. Strangers in bars scream at screens together like old friends. Streets in cities thousands of miles from the host nation are painted in the colors of teams that most of the locals will never see play in person. For one month, a single sporting event manages to do what no war, treaty, or diplomatic summit ever could: it gets almost the entire human race looking in the same direction at the...
