Date: Monday, June 7th, 2010

Location: Port Authority, New York, NY

In anticipation of the tournament ESPN had a series of advertisements made up in the form of  a mural representing each team in the World Cup.  Each ad conveyed some sense of the nation’s history in the tournament, and in some ways the significance of the World Cup to that nation.  The ads covered the windows of the old Virgin Super store at the Port Authority bus terminal so I walked over to look at them in the afternoon.

Fernando Torres represented the favorites, Spain.  He ended up losing his starting spot, finishing the tournament without scoring a goal, and injuring himself yet again.  But he left with a winner’s medal so while it may not have been a perfect tournament for him I think he’ll survive.

England is depicted with Lamps, Rooney, and Stevie G trying to tear down the pressure of 1966 (the last and only time England won the World Cup) under the guidance of Fabio Capello.  It didn’t really work out, and this mural could probably be used unchanged for the 2014 World Cup.

Karim Benzema was depicted as one of the Three Musketeers in the France mural but wasn’t even selected to the team.  Henry’s face is vandalized with the word “CHEAT” and he didn’t even play until the final match after France had completely imploded.

Messi looks like the savior of Argentina, and while Higuain scored all the goals, Messi is pretty much the shining light of  Argentine football.

While Japan didn’t slay the Netherlands they did manage to make it out of their group.

Kaka didn’t have a particularly stellar tournament.

The Elephants of Ivory Coast may have been the biggest African disappointment.

Australia didn’t really do much at all.  I guess this is what a Socceroo looks like.

South Korea managed to break through the group stage again in 2010 but it wasn’t quite the 4th place finish of 2002.

Cristiano didn’t really work a whole lot of magic this tournament.

Aguirre led Mexico to what is becoming a pretty standard second round exit for them.

North Korea played surprisingly well against Brazil before getting thumped by Portugal.

New Zealand had a player who wasn’t even a professional.  I wonder if he’ll do the Haka before business meetings at his banking job.

Cameroon.

Honduras carried the hopes of a nation.  We met some Honduran guys in one of our hotels.  They were really cool, and they told us that the president of Honduras offered American player Jonathan Bornstein a free vacation to Honduras because the late goal he scored gave Honduras the last World Cup qualifying spot from North America.  He’s a hero in Honduras.

On the way to dinner we found this mattress in the street.

In the evening we went to B Café.  If I recall correctly I had a steak which I enjoyed and Tracy was prepared to give it a solid 3 star review on yelp.  She even ordered this cool Belgian beer that came in a glass with a spherical bottom so it was served with a cool handle so it wouldn’t fall over!

I saw this ad on the way home.  Brazilian clubs make most of their money by selling talented players.  Apparently some banks make money by financing that.

On my walk home from the bus today I felt extra compelled to make something of myself as a blogger. I decided (like I do every other time I feel this way) that the most significant trait of a successful writer/blogger/sharer/internet media person is that they provide a constant a reliable stream of content. In order to create content you need topics, or even just one topic. I set out to obtain such a topic via twitter.

Now when Hitesh responded he wanted me to write a post about “How soccer explains the world” I assume he meant he wanted my view point on how you can explain the worlds happenings, troubles, etc through soccer. I’m going to take the cop out and state what many of you already know. How Soccer Explains the World is a book. Now that I’ve stated the dull fact I can proceed to briefly share some of my thoughts on said book.

It’s a moderately compelling read. Even if you’re not a huge soccer fan, you’ll probably want to finish the book once you start just because it mostly contains interesting stories rather than “solely soccer material.” You’ll come across stories of Red Star Belgrade essentially being used to proliferate genocide. Later you’ll get into anti-semitism expressed towards Tottenham Hotspur and how their fans decided to embrace it as part of the cultural identity of the club. Religious ties continue during the discussion of the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, and you can’t helped but be entertained by the strangeness of how the clubs have embraced players of religious faith different than each of their historical basis.

Towards the end of the book you’ll hear about how the writer really mainly became interested in the book because he took a walk through Barcelona’s museum. At that point you’ll realize he did some good research but isn’t connected to the game with the same intensity you are. You’ll have decided the rest of the book is now less interesting. That’s how it will go, now you can go read the book and tell me I was right.

A ball is played cross field, where 1 defensive and 1 offensive player are within a playable distance of the ball. The defensive player makes the first touch on the ball out of the air, knocking the ball beyond his control. The offensive player runs straight through the ball heading it forward towards goal. The ball rolls clear and the defensive player hits the offensive player from the side, sending him tumbling to the ground, and eliminating his play on goal. The referee blows the play dead for a direct free kick, no booking is made. The referee has made a number of questionable and uncertain calls through the first half up to this point in the 42nd minute. The conversation with the referee proceeds in a completely calm and conversational manner as follows:

Offensive Player: “Of all the calls you’ve made in the game, that is the one that should be a yellow card.”

Referee: “There’s no yellow there.”

Offensive Player: “Well I didn’t expect you to know what you’re talking about.”

Referee: “That’s a yellow right there!”

The World Cup draw this morning was great for two reasons.  The United States were drawn into a group they can make it through.  I fully believe the US is capable of advancing ahead of Algeria and Slovenia.

Secondly, we finally got to match teams to the group numbers we had for our tickets.  I have tickets to six matches.  I only have tickets to see one team twice, and that happened to be Brazil! Awesome!  Here are the games I’ll be at next June:

• Nigeria vs. Korea Republic
• England vs. Algeria
• Ghana vs. Germany
• Netherlands vs. Denmark
• Brazil vs. Korea DPR
• Brazil vs. Cote D’Ivoire

It would have been really awesome if the England vs. Algeria game had been England vs. United States and the Brazil vs. Korea DPR game had been Brazil vs. Portugal, but I will in no way complain.  We’re really fortunate to be going and we got some GREAT games.

I recently moved into a new apartment, so I’ve been doing a lot of unpacking lately.  This unpacking also includes a number of boxes I’d had packed up and stored in Boston for a while, some of the boxes had even stayed packed for a while when I was still living in Boston.  I think when you take your entire (material) life out of cardboard boxes you see a bit of who you are.  I already know soccer is and always has been a big part of my life, this image might do a bit better job of highlighting that to others.

In this picture are a few different generations of Adidas Predators going back to the Predator Manias (I even have a few older pairs somewhere back home in North Dakota) as well as the the Nike R9 chrome Mercurial Vapors made for the original Ronaldo (those boots are painful to wear, but they sure are light).  This is probably a bit over $1500 worth of gear, but it all got very good use…

Yesterday, Sounders FC announced their list of protected players from the upcoming MLS expansion draft, here’s a list I think is at least as equally interesting.  Here are all the players on Seattle’s roster not listed as protected going into Wednesday’s draft.

Possibly the biggest name on this list is defender James Riley (who started 27 games this season at right back).  Others listed that saw a the pitch a fair bit are Sebastien Le Toux (who had a 2 goal, 2 assist game towards the beginning of the US Open Cup but didn’t score much in the MLS campaign), Roger Levesque (who scored the winning goal in the US Open Cup final), Sanna Nyassi, and Peter Vagenas.

It would seem Riley is the most likely Sounders player to be at risk of being selected by Philadelphia, as he’s a defender with good experience.  This of course will depend on Philadelphia’s defensive needs and the availability of good defensive talent from other teams.

As far as I understand the rules of the draft, Philadelphia can only take one player from Sounders FC and may not take any at all.  I would prefer the latter.

I went to the MLS Cup final last night at Qwest Field.  The game had it’s ups and downs, but any match that ends in penalties is interesting.  I have a few thoughts I’d like to put down at some point in the near future, mainly “Why it sucks to be David Beckham” and “A “List of things every ignorant American should know about football (soccer)”.  I won’t supply a report of what happened at the game, you can read the MLS Cup final game report for that, the reporters are professionals after all.

For now I leave you to ponder, what is going on with these awkward posed photos MLS has on their website.  They look like strange, forced senior pictures for old dude professional athletes.  Personally, one thing I think American sports do really well is post championship celebrations (think Michael Jordan holding the NBA Finals trophy, with a cigar in his mouth, soaked in champagne.)  These post-MLS Championship photos are nothing like that, and don’t really cut it.

Also, to Real Salt Lake fans, good work traveling to the match to support your team, congrats on the win, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re tone deaf.

Suggestions for future writing/discussions are always appreciated

This part of the celebration however, was done pretty well.

A couple weeks ago a team I played on had a game at Newport Hills Park in Bellevue.  I thought the game was on turf, boy was I wrong.  This is what we were greeted with.  A pitch of pure mud.  This was sloshy, liquidy type mud also.  With each step your foot would sink between two and four inches into a puddle of dirty water and this stuff.  It was actually pretty absurd that the league even schedule a game on this, they should have rescheduled or canceled the game without question.

The condition of this surface basically meant that every touch had to be an air ball struck about as hard as possible.  And with pretty much every kick you got a reminder that this stuff also smelled and tasted absolutely wretched as it was tossed into your face off of somebody’s boots.

I suggest you dribble up the middle…

The end result looked something like this (and pretty much guaranteed those white shorts will be ruined forever…)

A lot of things happened that looked like this play times about a million:

France qualified for the World Cup today, and I’m sure every Irishman alive is filled with rage. Henry got the assist, but the play appears blatantly illegal. That said, Henry is going to play in the World Cup, something many, many people would do many, many things to have the chance to do in their lifetime. What would you do to play in the World Cup? Would you use your hand to keep the ball in bounds?

Yesterday’s rioting/violence/hooliganism at Upton Park was straight out of Green Street Hooligans, literally.  The movie even depicts fights between the firms/fans of the same two teams, West Ham United and Milwall.

photo by flickr user Annie Mole

I wonder how Elijah Wood would have felt had he been in attendance.  Also, acorrding to @killakam Green Street 2: Stand Your Ground is now available on Netflix instant streaming.  Unfortunately, it was released straight to video and features none of the original cast. Accordingly, it sounds as terrible as you would expect.