WHAT are these promdis, led by no less than President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, doing in Europe at this time of the year when ¾ of the world’s population are hooked on the FIFA World Cup that’s exploding hot in Germany, its power and intensity reverberating all over Europe and the rest of the civilized world, the Philippines excluded.

        With her entourage of 50 or so government officials and legislators who are incurably suffering from wanderlust, the petite chief executive of the Republic, just like many Filipinos, appears hardly bitten by the World Cup bug as she jets her way to soccer-mad countries of Italy and Spain, supposedly for bilateral agreements that would serve the higher interest of her people.

        Was GMA ignorant about the indescribable intensity of the World Cup which would make her an unwelcome guest in these countries when its entire people, including its prime ministers and perhaps the Pope, are all glued up to the excitement and raw thrill of the world soccer championships? Or was her entourage wishing to make side trips to Berlin later, for the quarterfinals and then the finals on July 9, at the expense of taxpayers’ money?

        Do not her advisers know that the World Cup in times of peace is next to nothing in terms of national pride and glory? That among the world’s 32 billion people they find it difficult to describe what is about soccer that so enthralls them; so please never dare to disturb them with such trivial matters as state visits, or you would be bowled out like an odd ball in a field full of nothing but action and drama.

        No less than Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote a full article on the May 8, 2006 issue of the Newsweek to make it clear that as a soccer fan he had “arranged his schedule to accommodate its (World Cup’s) necessities.”

        No wonder GMA had to wait for 30 minutes before Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi could come out to see her on the date that Italy was winning a place in the quarterfinals by edging Australia, 1-0. And when GMA arrived in the Iberian Peninsula, Spain would halfheartedly receive her, as Spaniards anxiously wait and root for their cousins, Brazil and Argentina, in the run-up to the quarterfinals.

        Would GMA be thinking right that because her hosts had nothing in their minds but football, she would have her wishes about Fil-Europe OFW relations, tourism, and bilateral understandings transformed into memorandum of agreements without so much ado on the part of Italy and Spain?

        While traveling when the rest of the world are cheering on the stadiums or in family living rooms, bars and cafes, GMA only betrays her lack of sense of delicadeza, and worse, her ignorance of the magic and power of the World Cup.

        Left out in the cold, the Philippines which remains an odd ball in the global economic and political power game, is once again missing the joy of the World Cup which is “watching 32 nations, most times playing by the rules, bringing the planet together.”

        Always an odd ball, is she?