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I’ve been a World Cup enthusiast for longer than I care to admit, but I still don’t consider myself any kind of expert on soccer. I have, however, become an expert on watching World Cup matches during work hours. I’m taking the risk of getting fired for that last sentence becausesomebody needs to point out that we’re presently experiencing the most watch-at-work-friendly World Cup ever. (Even the cultural authority Google Doodles has tacitly acknowledged as much. See below.) And it’s all thanks to the technological evolution in the ways we watch, communicate, and bond. My Cup obsession began at a time when catching every game meant watching a fair number of them on Spanish-language cable. By the time I entered the work force and moved to New York in the mid-1990s, the Cup was more thoroughly covered in all the languages I’m fluent in (English) through cable packages available in many homes and not a few sports bars. The problem: Depending on the host nation, crucial Cup games often unfold at some moment inconveniently situated between 9 am and 5 pm US time. In the old days, the only solution involved physically sneaking out of the office and decamping for two hours or more with workplace confederates — almost certainly in a place where beer is sold. This was always fun, but side effects included 15 voicemails from the boss and the need for a short nap before answering any of them. Gradually, as connection speeds improved, the Internet became a plausible alternative. But access to any particular match could be a crapshoot. And, even in the best scenario, it’s not easy to follow a contest in one browser window while convincingly interacting with something that resembles work elsewhere on one’s desktop. | 
