HANOI, Vietnam — The Jaspas Bar was definitely not a place to find, well, much of anything. A well-known sports pub in the Hanoi Towers, it was supposed to be a good spot to watch the start of the World Cup. But it was 1 a.m. and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

In Hanoi, a government-imposed midnight curfew sends a lot of businesses packing by 11 p.m., making it difficult to find a place to catch the day’s action as it began to unfold in Brazil, where it is 10 hours earlier. At one point it looked as if there might not be any World Cup games on TV here at all after the television networks initially refused to pay the price for FIFA’s broadcast rights.

Welcome to the World Cup in Vietnam, where soccer, no matter what the obstacles, is the most popular sport, beating out, among other things, sepak takraw (basically, volleyball without the use of one’s hands) and martial arts, sports that Vietnam excels in at the Asian Games.

Set against that enthusiasm is the fact that Vietnam has never qualified for the World Cup. In 1974, South Vietnam’s national team was in the qualifying rounds of the tournament, but failed to advance. A united Vietnam team has never gone that far,, and it doesn’t appear that it will anytime soon.