Or is it eight days? Does today count? Whatever – the World Cup starts June 9!Blah, blah, I know you don’t care about soccer. But you need to shut your facehole and give it a chance. I make fun of it to, y’know. 2-0 means it was a high-scoring game. Half the players have Fabio-hair. I know all this.
It’s still a lot of fun, though. Have you ever watched a soccer game with other soccer fans? You’d think Pele was serving the nachos.
And it’s got to be better than what we Americans get worked up over. Football? A bunch of heavily padded dudes stand in a line, then run into each other while someone throws a ball. This takes about three seconds, then the players stand around for a half-hour patting each on the butt.
You want to throw baseball at me? Fine. I know it’s “America’s pastime,” and I’m up for a game if it’s 10-cent hotdog night and the Famous Chicken is there. Other than that … booooring!
Whoa – sorry to get all 12-year-old on you there. It’s just that baseball is really, really dull. It’s what golf would be if there was someone out on the green with a catchers’ mitt and an itchy crotch. There’s no drama. Have you ever noticed how relaxed baseball fans look out in the stands? It’s because they know. They know that this, this right here, is as intense as it’s going to get. They’re just hoping a foul ball knocks someone out in the stands. It’s the perfect sport for heart patients. Or insomniacs.
Basketball is equally boring, but for different reasons. Imagine a group of kids with two trash cans, and they’ve put one trash can at either end of the driveway. Now imagine they’re running back and forth with a tennis ball, and they’re putting the ball in the trash cans over and over and over. Sometimes they throw it, just to make it interesting, but mostly they get right up to it and slam the ball in, all dramatic-like. They do this until the score is 352-354. Oh, and their shoes squeak.
This is basketball.
Soccer – non-stop action. There aren’t any time-outs. If a player is thrown out of the game, well, tough shit ‘cause you don’t get to replace him. And it doesn’t take 3 hours to finish a game. Start to finish, you’re done in 90 minutes. Even if there is an overtime, it’s relatively brief. And after that it goes to a shootout! And if for some reason there still isn’t a winner, SUDDEN DEATH!
Lopez! and I were dragging ourselves to a local Irish pub at five in the morning to watch games during the last World Cup, and we even got to see the US-Mexico game (we’d been wondering where all the Mexicans in Austin had been hiding). And this year we’ve got a chance to see a World Cup game in person, so we’re even more excited than usual.
I know it’s not just us. Every Tuesday night, I drive home and see a group of guys playing soccer in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. I think they’re restaurant employees blowing off steam after closing time, but even after working a shift they play fast-paced and aggressively. There they are, 11 o’clock at night, playing soccer in a parking lot and using their car’s headlamps for lighting. Sometimes they play in the dark.
And that is the spirit of soccer.
7 comments:
I hope you guys have an awesome time! I've flirted with all of the sports you discussed above and have enjoyed playing them or watching them all at various times for various lengths of time. In general I am pretty much bored with sports in general though. However, who can't get behind the cultural phenomenon that is World Cup? Most of the overly testosterone-laden populace of the world is fixated on this one group of games, that is an insane amount of focus shared by an insane number of extremely frightening individuals (especially those damn Scots with their hooliganism). Anything that repeatedly and regularly causes huge riots in the streets is wicked awesome in my book.
Ha! Well, we're hoping for more celebrating and less rioting in the streets, but it is crazy how into it people get. I know I'm getting pretty damn excited, and I'm a neophyte.
Speaking of hooligans, did you hear what England's doing? They have a list of 3,500 Britons who are banned from traveling to any major soccer matches, and they've been notified that they're expected to turn in their passports before the Cup starts. About 90 percent have handed them over so far, and the cops are saying that anyone on the list who is caught trying to leave the country will be arrested. England, apparently, ain't screwing around.
Well, you say tomato, I say tomato...sometimes celebrations and riots are nearly indistinguishable. Wow! That is some serious anti-hooligan intensity. Of course, you are talking about UK hooligans here, they REQUIRE serious preemptive measures.
On another note, while typing this comment, I just noticed for the first time WHAT an amazingly great job the colorist did with the eyes in that Dead Girl panel...
That post made me go unconcious.
Double-digits make you go unconcious!
Not to mention those damn single digits!
I say - Tomatillo!
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