MONTREAL -- Few Canadians have had the chance to see a World Cup up close, and none of us will likely see one on home soil in our lifetime.
But what began to unfold here over the long holiday weekend, the under-20 version of FIFA's big show, is - in all the ways that matter - pretty darned close to the real thing.
What makes a World Cup is the presence of the best players in the world giving their all for their countries.
What makes it, as well, is the unparalleled atmosphere, the real sense that most of the planet is indulging its single sporting passion at the same time, reflected in the bands of travelling supporters and in the euphoria that sweeps the host country, where the rooting interest is both for the native sons and for the event itself.
It is easily the greatest show in sports, a notch ahead of the Olympics, a whole bunch of notches ahead of the Super Bowl, because of all of that organic passion for the world game. All soccer tournaments take on the character of their surroundings, but in their own way the fact is they're all degrees of great.
Sitting in the Olympic Stadium on Saturday afternoon for the under-20 tournament opener, the pessimist could certainly find things that weren't perfect.
Though all 54,000 seats were sold for the opening doubleheader, and scalpers were doing a brisk business in the tunnel attached to the Metro, the building wasn't entirely full. Thousands of ducats that went out through recreational soccer networks obviously didn't wind up in the hands of people who actually planned to use them.
And then there was the artificial turf fiasco, another chapter in the sad history of the Big O, Canada's greatest sports boondoggle (the local organizer bought fake grass from a company that failed to win FIFA approval, which forced the purchase and installation of a new field, at an additional cost of $500,000, in the month before the tournament began).
But you'd have to be in a particularly mean frame of mind to dwell on that, with overall ticket sales for the tournament about to top one million - roughly double what had originally been anticipated - and in the wake of two cracking matches that offered plenty of action, and showcased absolutely world-class skill.
If Brazil is your World Cup team of choice, you didn't have Ronaldinho here, but you did have Alexandre Pato, the 17-year-old phenom who will wind up with one of the big clubs in Europe next season, and who in several sublime moments lived up to his billing.
You didn't hear much samba music inside the dome (Brazil's travelling supporters are presumably tied up fretting over their struggling senior men's side in the Copa America), but you did have nearly an entire stadium filled with ecstatic ex-pat Poles, watching their countrymen pull a 1-0 upset over the famous canary yellows.
The South Korean team that followed in the second game of the doubleheader looked every bit like a doppelganger of the one that made such a bold run at home during the 2002 World Cup - and its supporters, with their chants and thundersticks and drums and cymbals, inspired the same kind of headaches as their heroes played to an unlucky 1-1 draw with the United States.
All of this before Canadians had a chance to cheer on their own in Toronto when the national under-20s made their debut against Chile last night.
Those million ticket buyers, even if they didn't know exactly what they were getting into from the start, have got to be thrilled. This morning, with a long way to go, the tournament is already an unqualified success.
Which means there will be more to come for Canada, at least according to FIFA vice-president Jack Warner. (Yes, we've read Andrew Jennings, and we tend to believe what he writes. Yes, we understand that Warner may not be the most admirable representative of our species in the world of sports. But at least he is on our side in the FIFA inner sanctum.)
"All of us in our lifetime have dreams," Warner said on Saturday. "Sometimes our dreams come true. Other times our dreams do not come true. What we are seeing here is beyond our wildest expectations. ... I will put the same energy into 2011 that I put into this one. And I don't normally lose."
That would be the 2011 Women's World Cup, which on the heels of this event might well wind up being staged in Canada.
Who could doubt now that it would be a roaring success?
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