Once every four years, eyes are glued to screens to watch the world play soccer (or as everyone else calls it, football). However, as our Reach NC Voices team discovered, many North Carolinians are actually not keeping up with the World Cup. Was this because the U.S. didn’t qualify? Or are we just not that into soccer?

In our June 21 Reach Roundup newsletter we posed our Question of the Week: “The U.S. didn’t qualify for the World Cup this year, so how are you deciding who to cheer for?”

Response options included:
a team with star players
the underdogs
no side, I just want to see some awesome goals
I don’t really watch soccer anyway
other 

Here’s the breakdown of how participants answered our question and some of the comments we received:

A whopping 56 percent said they didn’t really watch soccer anyway. Sixteen percent of respondents said they were rooting for the underdogs, 14 percent said they were on the lookout for awesome goals, 6 percent said they were backing teams with star players, and 8 percent said “other.”

“Go Central and South American countries! If not US then let’s go Americas!”
-Ben from Raleigh, NC

“Nobody!! I won’t watch a minute of it. Boring as watching grass grow.” 
-Greg from Moravian Falls, NC

“I am disappointed that some people took Landon Donovan’s statement about pulling for Mexico as a lack of support for the US. Being hypersensitive and hypocritical is why our country is so divided right now.”
-Respondent from Clemmons, NC

The World Cup wrapped up its group stage last week. Saturday kicked off the knock out round for the top 16 advancing teams. With Germany—2014’s World Cup champions—already out of the running, this year’s games are set to be full of more surprises. The final match is set for Sunday, July 15.

Interested in participating in Reach NC Voices? You can sign up below to share your thoughts on our weekly questions. We’d love to hear from you!

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Yasmin Bendaas

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Yasmin Bendaas is a Science writer.  A North Carolina native, she received her master’s degree in Science & Medical Journalism at UNC Chapel Hill, where she was a Park Fellow. She received her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 2013 from Wake Forest University, where she double-minored in journalism and Middle East and South Asia studies. As an undergraduate student, Bendaas gained insight into public health when she interned at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, a statewide grantmaker focused on rural health, including access to primary care, diabetes, community-centered prevention, and mental health and substance abuse. 

As a journalist, Bendaas has been funded twice by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for fieldwork in Algeria — first to cover a disappearing indigenous tattoo tradition, and again to look at how climate change affects rural sheepherding practices.