Soccer
drorzel | July 12, 2006Via Dave Sez, a Sports Illustrated columnist says that Zidane's head-butt was understandable because of all the flopping other players do:
So Zidane slammed a guy. He lost it. Writers all over the world are competing with themselves to heap scorn on France's greatest player. You know something? I don't blame him for getting sore. Almost every time I could find him on the screen, he had someone tugging at his shirt, tripping him or messing with him in some sneaky way.
The problem is he doesn't hit the canvas as the rest of those prima donnas do. So the ref must figure nothing is happening.…
drorzel | July 10, 2006I didn't get to see either of the weekend's games, other than about five minutes at the start of the second half of the championship, so I have very little to say. I haven't even seen highlights, as I had to spend the morning at the hospital for an intensely boring test, and they didn't have SportsCenter on. I have seen the infamous head-butt, though, which I have to say is a fairly unique way of knocking a guy down.
The big topic of conversation is, of course, the fact that the title was decided on penalty kicks. In fact, something like half of the games after the group play stage were…
drorzel | July 5, 2006I didn't get to see much of the World Cup games over the weekend, as we were in Chicago at a friend's wedding, with drinks and dancing and socializing, and various other things that were more attractive than watching penalty-kick shootouts. A few scattered observations all the same:
Appearances: not always decceiving. See Wayne Rooney's attempt to geld a Portugese player.
Some really sweet goals in the recent games. Germany's two-header against Argentina to tie it up was amazing, and France's goal against Brazil was pretty sweet as well.
By the way: France? Over Brazil?
I loved the German…
drorzel | June 26, 2006It was a lazy Sunday in Chateau Steelypips, what with the party Saturday afternoon, so I watched a fair amount of soccer. I saw nearly all of the England-Ecuador game, and the second half of the Portugal-Netherlands game. This has made something clear to me:
The most difficult thing to find in international soccer is not a good goalie, or a great midfielder, or a skilled striker. The most difficult thing to find in international soccer is a good referee. Because otherwise, I can't explain why the idiot working the Portugal-Netherlands game was drawing a paycheck.
Miscellaneous other…
drorzel | June 23, 2006So, the US lost to Ghana yesterday, ending the World Cup for the Americans. I watched most of the second half, and it was pretty frustrating. Amazingly, Ghana was actually more theatrical than Italy, with the flopping and the flailing and the writhing on the ground as if in agony-- there should've been about fifteen minutes of injury time added.
In the end, the US was done in by an apparent lack of fundamental skills. I couldn't begin to estimate the number of lead passes that went five yards too far for their intended target, or crosses that sailed four feet over everyone's head, or just…
drorzel | June 18, 2006I was awakened rather too early yesterday by the dog, so wound up dozing on the couch for a lot of the Portugal-Iran game. Which was pretty doze-worthy, actually-- Portugal approached the game sort of like an NBA team, and played eleven loosely connected games of one-on-one, and while Iran was game, they just didn't quite have the players to keep up.
We had a bunch of shopping to do in the middle part of the day, so I missed Ghana's stunning upset of the Czech Republic, but we did make it home in time to see the entire USA-Italy game. The US team played with a lot more energy than they showed…
drorzel | June 12, 2006Between graduation yesterday and a trip to Williamstown Saturday (to see the Clark brothers exhibit, which was very cool), I didn't actually get to watch much soccer over the weekend. I caught most of the second half of the ancestral homeland's humiliating loss to Ecuador, and most of England's one-nil victory over Paraguay (though not the actual goal).
Scattered thoughts below the fold:
Boy, do American soccer announcers suck. The guys doing the England game for ESPN were just dull. In contrast, the YooKaydain team they had for Poland-Ecuador (One English, one Irish) was a hoot. At one point…
drorzel | May 29, 2006I gained about fifty pounds my freshman year in college (from ~190 lbs in high school to ~240 labs by the end of the year), owing to taking up rugby and a beer-heavy diet. Since then, people who meet me generally assume that I played football in high school-- in fact, that was probably the biggest indicator of the weight gain (other than, you know, clothes fitting differently)-- people stopped asking me whether I played basketball, and started asking what position I played in football.
In fact, I never played organized football-- basically because the coach when I was in Jr. High was a jerk,…