With the U.S. soccer team defeat to Ghana on Saturday, I thought I would note some things I noted from the World Cup this year.
1. From my readings on the internet and twitter, it appeared that the U.S. soccer team was coached by Gary Kubiak. The team had bad first halves. There were multiple defensive lapses and questionable roster exclusions.
2. As bad as baseball umpires can be, they still appeared to be much better than soccer refs.
3. And as backward and tradition-bound as baseball is, at least it’s
making use of modern technology like replay to overturn some bad calls.
4. It is hard to fully embrace a sport that encourages flopping,
diving, and faking injuries in order to stop play. Especially since the
clock doesn’t stop.
5. How anticlimactic is it to see the clock reach 45:00 or 90:00 and
yet the teams still keep playing because no one really knew how much
time was left on the clock?
6. It is probably just me, but no world-wide championship event should
have teams advancing to another round because they were able to tie two
games.
7. Seriously, after watching countless shots fly wide of the nets, I
can’t be the only one who was thinking that Houston Texans’ kicker Kris
Brown had decided to play soccer for his new career
8. I mock soccer, but at least in soccer, unlike in American football,
they really do use their feet on the ball most of the time.
9. Hey, that’s an idea. Maybe we should flip the names so that soccer
in the U.S. becomes football, what it’s known as around the world, and
American football becomes known as soccer. Maybe then soccer really
will become America’s sport.
10. The French really are cheese-eating
surrender monkeys, aren’t they?
11. I think we can safely add the vuvuleza to the list with the
Thunderstick as the most annoying things ever allowed inside a sporting
venue.
12. That said, knowing how the Houston Texans love to rip off things
from others, I would expect vuvulezas to be handed out before the
Texans home opener versus the Indianapolis Colts with the goal of
distracting Peyton Manning.
13. The vuvuleza will be deemed a success by the Texans after Manning
is only able to dissect the Texans defense for three touchdown passes
instead of his usual five. The Texans will still lose since, this being
a Gary Kubiak-coached team, they will do their best impression of the
U.S. soccer team and fail to show up for the first half.
14. U.S. soccer coach Bob Bradley should probably be happy he wasn’t
coaching Columbia’s
1994 World Cup team.
15. The North Korean soccer team failed to follow the successful
formula developed by the Cuban national baseball team. Other countries
will only pay you millions of dollars to defect if you’re a good player.
They ignore bad players on bad teams.
16. I probably watch too much hockey, so…with the score tied 1-1 and
time supposedly running out on the clock, is it not possible to pull the
goalie and add an extra attacker?
17. It’s nice to see that Dean Smith’s four corners stall offense can
be applied to turn any sport so that watching concrete dry suddenly
becomes the most exciting thing on the planet.
18. Speaking of all of the divings and flopping about on the grass…I
haven’t seen that much overacting since Al Pacino’s last movie.
19. At least there’s one guy on the U.S. soccer team who was able
to score.
20. Now maybe ESPN will return to broadcasting some legitimate sports
programming, like the World Series of Poker.
21. Seriously, poker makes NASCAR look like a real sport.
22. The Brits seem to be taking their departure from the World Cup in
stride.
23. Hey U.S. soccer fans — all 10 of you — take solace in this: we’re better
than the French.
24. Thankfully, it’s only four more years until we again have to
pretend that soccer is relevant in the U.S.
25. And this just in…while you’ve been distracted by soccer, the Astros
have continued to suck.
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.
