Me

which was slated to take place in France. I have to admit that the challenge made me a bit nervous, but the massive growth potential for my career was such that I decided to accept. Once again, life was offering me an opportunity and I swiftly ran to meet it.
    Right away, I joined forces with K. C. Porter and Robi Rosa, who had worked with me on A medio vivir and were now working with me on Vuelve . But for the World Cup song, we were also joined by Desmond Child. From that moment on, we began to look at the album as part of a global strategy to promote Latin music worldwide, so we chose and arranged the songs with the sole mission of getting the entire globe to dance and sing in Spanish. It was a unique opportunity to introduce the charms of Latin music to the rest of the world.
    And that’s how we embarked on that adventure. The single that resulted from that collaborative effort was “ La Copa de la Vida” (“The Cup of Life”), and it served as the official anthem of the 1998 World Cup. It was a huge success that hit number one on the music charts in more than sixty countries. Another indication of what the future would hold.
    Vuelve was released in February of 1998, and in April I started a concert tour through Asia, which began in Tokyo. More than one year later, when I was starting to wrap up the tour, a journalist from Rolling Stone magazine asked me: “Why did you choose this path? Why Asia and Europe before the United States?”
    The answer was easy: Because this was the path that life had offered. All I had to do was follow it.
    The night of July 12, 1998, was one of the most important nights of my career, and the entire time I was fully aware of how much was at stake. It was the World Cup final. Not only were there hundreds of millions of people watching me perform “The Cup of Life” on television in all the corners of the world, but some of the most recognized and respected names in the entertainment industry were right there in the famous Stade de France. Among them were Dustin Hoffman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Douglas, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, and Plácido Domingo. My performance was scheduled for immediately prior to the game, and would only last for four minutes. That meant I only had four minutes to turn one quarter of the world population into fans, or possibly lose them forever.
    Before the show I was very nervous. Despite the fact that I had performed tons of live shows in front of hundreds of thousands of people on stages and in theaters throughout the world, this was the first time I had done anything quite so epic. And no matter how much experience you may have, a stage like the Stade de France on the night of the World Cup final is beyond intimidating. It was almost unimaginable!
    Besides, what no one knew—except for the FIFA officials and a group of my closest friends—was that my performance during the ceremony almost didn’t happen. At some point, FIFA had told me that there was a chance I might be able to perform at the final, but before they had a chance to confirm it, I went ahead and announced it to the press. Bad call . FIFA, of course, was supposed to make the announcement, and my faux pas made them angry. Very angry. Instead of either confirming or canceling my appearance, they decided to punish me by leaving the whole thing unresolved—until five days before the game, and the whole time they didn’t say a word about my performance to me or to anyone else. I, of course, was dying. I really wanted to perform, and I didn’t want a stupid announcement to the press to ruin that chance! They finally gave me the green light, but with one condition: For the show I would have no stage, no dancers, no lights, and no special effects. I would have none of the things that are standard for a concert of this caliber. I was supposed to do a global performance without a global production, or any production at all.
    But I was so happy to hear that they had confirmed me that I didn’t really care about anything else. What mattered most to me was to perform, and I knew I would find a way to turn it into something spectacular.
    And that’s exactly what we did. At the last minute it occurred to me to assemble some twenty musicians and dress them all in white shirts and black pants, so that the audience could see them from far away. We all came out onto the soccer field, all of them playing their instruments, and I grabbed the microphone and yelled out to the crowd: