In the end, my Cup is empty once again
SAO PAULO — Well, I tried, I really did. But Brazil has defeated me, 4-0. I am a broken man. More precisely, a broke man. I lost my ATM and MasterCard in Manaus. That was on me. But now somebody in Recife cloned my Visa card and attempted to charge $46,000 on it within 24 hours. Woman on the phone said she’d never seen anything like it. They reached $6600 when Visa figured out something was wrong. Anyway, all that fraud was knocked off the card, so that’s not my problem.
My problem is that I had to cancel the Visa. Luckily, I still had one card left, my ace in the hole, my American Express. Pulled it out of my wallet, and to my horror it was an old Amex card that had expired long ago. I have no idea where my new one is — probably at home. But again, that’s not my problem.
I am here until the U.S. team is knocked out of the World Cup and this is my personal inventory: One passport. Eighty U.S. dollars. A blank check from my bank. Now, that last item is interesting and might yet rescue me. I just have to find an American journalist, or maybe a U.S. Soccer official (conflict of interest?), willing to cash a check for me that will somehow get me through an indefinite period. For now, things I can’t get without money: Food, bottled water, taxis, laundry.
I figure this is poetic justice, how my last World Cup should end, full circle. All my luggage was stolen at the Rome train station on Day One of Italia ‘90, and I was soon pickpocketed in Turin. I had nothing left except a passport. Pretty much the same now. You come into the World Cup with a passport, and leave the World Cup with a passport. Nothing else is guaranteed.