Creativity Quote by Art Garfunkel

Garfunkel lands this like a small confession disguised as tour chatter: he didn’t “discover” soccer through some epiphany or allegiance, but through proximity. “After all these years” carries a wink of lateness, the mild embarrassment of being culturally out of sync until the biggest possible moment arrives. The World Cup isn’t framed as sport so much as ambient reality, the global broadcast you can’t avoid once you’re moving city to city.

The clever pivot is the band. By calling it “an international group,” he’s not selling diversity as a virtue; he’s describing the social mechanics of how fandom spreads. Soccer becomes a communal language inside the most transient, anonymous setting imaginable: hotel bars. Those spaces are where touring musicians live between shows - nowhere and everywhere at once - and the World Cup turns them into instant public squares. “They’re all around me” suggests he’s not leading the chant; he’s being absorbed by it, drafted into a shared mood.

There’s also a quietly revealing contrast: Garfunkel, a voice associated with carefully crafted harmony and an older American pop lineage, enters the soccer fever late, not through U.S. sports culture but through international companionship. The subtext is soft globalization: culture isn’t only exported from the stage; it’s imported backstage, through friends, schedules, televisions in lobbies, and the irresistible pull of other people’s joy. The line cheers for a world where belonging can be as simple as standing close enough to the shouting.