The 2019 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Asuncion, Paraguay
Somehow soccer led me to being on the U.S. Beach Men’s National Team support staff for the 2019 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Asuncion, Paraguay. Yea, a nice gig (although…I’ll just point out that…this is a landlocked country! So the tournament was not actually played on a beach, but rather on a permanently build sand stadium at the Paraguay Football Federation complex).
Anyway, this was also another ‘new’ country in my travels, and the 10th World Cup I’ve attended as a fan or working.
This was the 10th edition of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, and the fifth one in which the U.S. team participated - but the first since 2013.
We didn’t get the results we wanted: losing the opener to Switzerland, narrowly dropping the second game to Japan - which featured the best player of the tournament in Ozu Moreira, and then lost the group finale to host Paraguay in front of a packed Estadio Mundialista Los Pynandi.
On the work front, I got to work on a cool project called “12 Stories,” - video profiles of each player on the team.
We didn’t get to see much of Asuncion. We arrived Nov 17 after a short training camp in Argentina, played three games, and departed late on Nov 26 (er, flight was at 2am on Nov 27). We stayed in a hotel in Las Lomas and walked frequently to the nearby Paseo de la Galeria (mall). Down the street to our right was the Plaza Moiety, which featured a number of nice restaurants. We did visit this a couple of times, and one night ventured into an area full of bars. It’s hard to get a feel for a country when you don’t see / do much, aside from work. But it was fascinating to hear Guarani spoken, and see people walk around with big thermoses drinking the traditional cold mate called ‘tereré.’ I tasted it, but didn’t quite hooked.
