Photos by Tanya Keith

The Firing Incident

In 1998, Tanya Keith’s boss gave her an ultimatum: Change her vacation dates, or get fired.

She chose getting fired. Now she was an unemployed interior designer, and on her way to France for the FIFA World Cup. She has no regrets.

Initially a fan of the German national team, Keith became a fierce supporter of the U.S after they fought to a credible 4-3 defeat against Germany’s then-world champion team in a match before the 1994 World Cup.

The United States finished dead last in France, but Keith’s favorite memories from her World Cup trips between 1998 and 2014 have never been about her team’s performances. Instead, it was the anecdotes she shared with other fans, like reactions to her being fired, or sacked, as Keith calls it, that made the real memories.

‘Sacked…sacked, you got sacked! Oh my god, we’re buying you beer!’ was a memorable response she says she elicited from a couple of Scotsmen in the French subway.

Riding the Market Crash and Pregnancy in South Korea

“If I declare bankruptcy, I won’t have a credit card to go to South Africa, and that’s what I need. I just need to fight my way through this.”

After 1998, Keith resumed her career, but soon found out interior design was not her passion—soccer was what made her happy. She started her own business and began counseling clients like her who needed to find their passions. Her business underwent tough times during the 2008 market crash, but it was the goal of reaching South Africa for the 2010 World Cup that kept her going. She was not going to break her cycle of attending consecutive World Cups.

Keith says at the time she thought, “If I declare bankruptcy, I won’t have a credit card to go to South Africa and that’s what I need. I just need to fight my way through this.”

That wasn’t the first obstacle she had to overcome to get to a World Cup. In 2002, Keith was pregnant for the first time, but flew halfway across the earth to the World Cup held in South Korea.

“I suddenly realized that these women looked like the players on their backs…oh my god these were the World Cup moms, these were the moms!”

Keith said one of her favorite World Cup travel memories was from that trip. She met the women who raised her heroes from the United States men’s national soccer team.

“I was in line for the bathroom, I had my pregnant belly going. I looked and I had these bunch of women in front of me in line and they all had official, expensive kits [jerseys] with player names on the back,” she says. “I suddenly realized that these women looked like the players on their backs…oh my god these were the World Cup moms, these were the moms!”

This was her chance to learn the secrets to raising a soccer star child. She did not waste it.

“They were like, ‘Oh you know, you just love them and you just help them find their passion and pursue it,’” Keith says. There were no better people to give better advice for her first pregnancy.

Raising soccer fans and Russia 2018

Keith has kept those words in mind as she raises three soccer-loving children with her husband, Doug. They traveled to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil as a family for the first time before the birth of her youngest daughter, attended the Women’s World Cup in Canada as a family of five in 2015, and plan to go to the 2018 World Cup in Russia too. Much to Keith’s disappointment, the Stars and Stripes failed to qualify this year.

Nevertheless, she wants to be in Russia for the celebrations and cultural exchange, even if she won’t be painting her face like the American flag and celebrating a last-minute Christian Pulisic winning goal.

“I still want to go to Russia because I want my kids to have that experience of seeing the world,” Keith says.

Looking further forward, Keith hopes to one day see the United States competing in the later rounds of the tournament. She envisions a World Cup final featuring Uncle Sam’s Army and the U.S.’s greatest soccer rival, Mexico. With the tournament seeing more dark horse victories, a potential 2022 World Cup U.S.-Mexico final in Qatar might not be too far-fetched.

Tanya Keith is the author of Passionate Soccer Love: A Memoir of 20 Years Supporting US Soccer. The book chronicles her travels through seven World Cups. For more information about her book, visit www.passionatesoccerlove.com.