World Cup

[redmedicine]

It's probably time to split off from the EPL thread.  It seems that the stateside media is finally giving the WC respect, I don't remember even in 06 this much attention being given with three weeks left to go.

Either that, or Deuce's mad skills are finally getting the attention they deserve.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp52oY25FW4[/youtube]

[cutout]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE


I'm headed over on Jun26 and staying with a friend in Jo-burg to see 4 games there and in Pretoria. Haven't been this excited about something in a long time.

[Martin]

That's really cool, cutout - friends and I were considering it, but then Sweden didn't qualify, and... you know.

Don't get murdered!

[cutout]

Yea... I've been to Cape Town before and only sensed danger once or twice, otherwise it was like a more exotic version of San Fransisco. The friend I stayed with there said he'd migrated from Johannesburg because he'd been mugged not once but twice with a machete.

[samir]

I'll set up a Fantasy League for the FOT, as promised, sometime in the next week.

[redmedicine]

I'll set up a Fantasy League for the FOT, as promised, sometime in the next week.

Thanks, Samir!

If today's UEFA match is any indication, Julio Cesar may be the goalkeeper to beat in South Africa.

[samir]

Yo,

PM me your email addresses if you want in the Fontasy League. I don't think you can actually pick your teams until the 4th, which is the deadline for countries to submit their final 23.
Theo, we hardly knew ye.

Let's DO this.

[Big Plastic Head]

DOI'N IT! Thanks for setting it up, Samir.

[senorcorazon]

I want in on the league, but only in the understanding that I don't know anything about soccer. Or handball or whatever you call it.

[cutout]

Discovered this by accident, but I always knew I didn't trust Chuck Klosterman -

Soccer fanatics love to tell you that soccer is the most popular game on earth and that it's played by 500 million people every day, as if that somehow proves its value. Actually, the opposite is true. Why should I care that every single citizen of Chile and Iran and Gibraltar thoughtlessly adores "football"? Do the people making this argument also assume Coca-Cola is ambrosia? Real sports aren't for everyone. And don't accuse me of being the Ugly American for degrading soccer. That has nothing to do with it. It's not xenophobic to hate soccer; it's socially reprehensible to support it. To say you love soccer is to say you believe in enforced equality more than you believe in the value of competition and the capacity of the human spirit. It should surprise no one that Benito Mussolini loved being photographed with Italian soccer stars during the 1930s; they were undoubtedly kindred spirits. I would sooner have my kid deal crystal meth than play soccer. Every time I pull up behind a Ford Aerostar with a "#1 Soccer Mom" bumper sticker, I feel like I'm marching in the wake of the Khmer Rouge.

[Martin]

Fuck that guy.

[Christina]

That paragraph has no proof in it. It's just "everyone in the world loves soccer except the US, so I say they're a bunch of nazis". He knows that soccer isn't played with severed human heads, right?

[senorcorazon]

Yes, no other world leader has had pictures taken with sports figures. Ahem.



I understand that this guys hates the lack of competition in youth soccer (a stupid argument to make because that's the point, duh, teamwork and sportsmanship) but to say that professional soccer is "enforced equality" is just plain dumb. I comprehend about 3% of soccer but even I can tell when a team is getting smacked around.

[senorcorazon]

Also, not every citizen in Chile cares about soccer. Many of them don't give a shit at all. In two trips there I've heard absolutely zero conversations about soccer.

[samir]

Fuck that guy.

This is accurate.