On Thursday, June 12th, the 2014 FIFA World Cup kicked off in Brazil. For one month, even those who do not consider themselves soccer fans join the rest of the world in supporting their countries as they celebrate successes and commiserate losses. As Simon Kuper said in his book Soccernomics*, “It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.”