Just a note on the headbutt. Check out the Italian (Materazzi) after the shot: he should be stumbling backward. But no, his feet shoot out from under him and he plummets to the ground. Jeez, even when those guys get hit legitimately, they still dive!
With this final weekend of the World Cup, I can probably say my goodbye to soccer for the next four years. I’ve enjoyed it, but it going to be hard to watch “regular” soccer games now that the World Cup all-star teams aren’t involved.
Courtesy of our friends at Why Travel to France, allow me to clue you in as to who I am rooting for on Sunday:
Partly because I have developed a man crush on Zinedine Zidane (in spite of his bizarre / creepy hair pattern), and partly because I’ve grown to hate the Italian squad throughout the tournament. Allez les Bleus!
I can’t believe that I’m stuck at work without a TV while the Germany / Argentina game is on and about to go to penalty kicks.
I also can’t believe that I care. But I do. Yay football!
- Looks like I jumped the gun a bit on all of the Charlie Batch talk. Big Ben appears to be on the road to recovery already, and didn’t suffer any injuries to his knees or shoulders or anything else important. Well, the head I guess…
- USA is out of the World Cup. Ghana saw to that this morning. Well, Ghana and the blasted ref. I hate to bitch about refs normally when I watch sporting events–I am of a mind that most calls even out over time. But in soccer when you can be penalized SO heavily for a judgment call, in this case a penalty kick which is about as sure a thing in sports, well I just hate it. Especially when you consider how few and far between scoring opportunities are to begin with. I don’t like it one bit.
- Grimsley’s big take down has led to the first admission of HGH usage. From David Segui. That is not exactly the smoking gun that the anti-steroid-type-substance crowd was looking for:
Career HR’s – 139
Season high in HR’s – 21
Lifetime SLG% – .443
Maybe the next name will be a better catch for them…
Maybe it would have been better if the USA team had not qualified for the World Cup. Or at least gotten a better draw. From the looks of their performance against the Czechs, they are severely overmatched this time around. I think the Mighty MJD said it best:
I’m just looking for reasons to believe here. Someone who knows more about soccer… please, if you can, give me a reason to believe that we can get the full three points against Italy. Maybe the Czechs were a bad matchup for us, because of their size and physical strength. Maybe we’ll do better against a more skill-oriented team like Italy. Or maybe we’ll find our confidence and grow up, and stop the practice of getting the ball across midfield, and then being like, “DERRRRR, here’s the ball, you ugly Czech fuck.” We avoided the box yesterday like we were A.C. Green.
Emphasis is mine. Great stuff there for sure. Why should I bother to analyze a sport, that I am admittedly a neophyte at, when there are guys throwing out lines like that?
In other World Cup news, the finish to the Germany / Poland match was great stuff. Hard fought 0-0 game nearing its completion, Germany puts two shots off the crossbar in the 90th minute. All the wind is out of their sails, thinking that their best chance to win has gone by then -BAM- they connect on a long pass down the side and feed it into the middle for a game winner in the 91st minute. Dramatic is an understatement.
*update*
Highlights of the game. Enjoy them before YouTube takes them down…
You know, I think I’m actually a little excited about this World Cup thing. I’m not generally a “football” fan, but I think that has much to do with the fact that the soccer we tend to see in the country is of the MLS variety, which is a league made up of guys that aren’t good enough to play in Europe. Melrose Place’s Andrew Shue played there for cryin’ out loud, so the talent level just can’t be that great. But hell, I saw the first bit of the Chivas @ Galaxy game last night, and even this great goal got me fired up.
So bring on the World Cup! Whether it is to root for great players like Rohnaldinho, Ronaldo and Petr Chec, or for tall goofy guys like Peter Crouch(6’7″!) it just looks like fun. Add in the atmosphere of those wildly passionate fans, and you’ve got yourself an event that I’m actually looking forward to.
Got my PVR set for the opening match between Germany and Costa Rica, and then we’ll just see where it goes from there. If you need something to fire you up in the meantime, just head over to YouTube and plug in any of the above names for some pretty, incredible, videos, of just how talented those players are.