Tag: sports

A few emailers have chastised me and demanded MORE SOCCER POSTS. So, how can I deny them. First, I have to admit that I haven’t watched all of the games, but only the ones that interested me. So, I have nothing to say about Slovenia-Algeria, New Zealand-Slovakia or Côte d’Ivoire-Portugal. Here’s what I’ve noticed thus far:

South Africa is, as I thought in the first game, pretty terrible. They’re okay technically, but have literally no clue what they’re doing tactically. France is not a French team, it is an African team in French uniforms and their manager Domenech is dreadful. It wouldn’t shock me if they lost to Mexico and failed to make the second round. Uruguay is a decent team, but South Africa made them look better than they are. If the Mexicans bother to show up this time, they have a good shot at beating France.

Greece is as boring as ever but now they don’t have a keeper upon whom they can ride to the second round as they did in winning Euro 2004. Argentina will be dangerous once Messi stops getting cute and starts shooting the ball at the goal instead of trying to nip the corners. In the meantime, they should be feeding the ball more to Unfrozen Caveman Striker. It drives me crazy when strikers insist on aiming for the corners, shooting wide, and depriving their team of rebound goals, which make up around one-quarter of all goals scored. Nigeria isn’t getting talked up as the Great African Hope for once in light of South Africa, but I don’t think they can hope to play with South Korea. I very much like the way the South Koreans play; they’re aggressive, fit, and disciplined. They’re not going to beat the Argentines, but they should take second.

There’s not much to say about Group C. It’s England, USA, and that’s about it. Slovenia might surprise one of them with a draw, but I’d expect both teams to win their next two games. Group D is Germany and the three dwarfs. The Netherlands are easily the class of their group, as they toyed with the Danes throughout. I expect the Japanese to finish second in Group E behind the Dutch; their 1-0 game against Cameroon wasn’t as close as the score indicates.

Both Italy and Brazil looked relatively bad against Paraguay and North Korea, the difference was that the Brazilian strikers are better. Italy should be starting Camorenesi on the wing; the game turned around when he came in. Buffon’s injury really hurts the Azzurri, but an Italian team that is counting on its goalie is not an Italian team that is in contention anyhow. Portugal is a shadow of its former self and I join the rest of the world in hoping for an embarrassing injury to Cristiano Ronaldo. Irina Shayk may be no little hot, but not even a Sports Illustrated girlfriend can hope to counterbalance that ubercheesy cheeseball, his whining and all those needless stepovers. Speaking of annoyances, I thought the Brazilians were infuriating; they kept trying to unlock the North Korean defense by passing around the ball outside the box instead of sending it in for crosses against a very short defense. Like the South Koreans, the North Koreans outperform their talent. I had the idea that the Brazilians felt sorry for them, Lucio in particular appeared to be going out of his way to pat them on the back or otherwise encourage them.

And finally, Hop Schwiiz! The Swiss defeat of Spain wasn’t a big surprise to me because the temperamental, individual-centered Spanish attack is very vulnerable to the Swiss catenaccio strategy. I fully expect Switzerland to win the group now; the loss of Alexander Frei was never the big deal that everyone appear to have assumed it would be. In fact, they’re better off without him making their attack overly one-dimensional. Torres was the only Spanish player who looked consistently dangerous; he’s coming back from injury but should be starting anyhow. Some notes:

1. Ban the vuluzelas.
2. I find myself fantasizing about watching the games from the stands with a large caliber sniper rifle and picking off midfielders when they a) refuse to make through passes to a waiting striker with 50 yards of empty grass in front of him, b) pull up and dribble the ball in a circle in transition to permit the defense to get set, c) pass up a perfectly reasonable shot in order to get a slightly better shot that only requires beating two, three, or sometimes four defenders. TAKE THE DAMN SHOT!
3. I hate most midfielders. Just in case that wasn’t clear. If your name isn’t “Zidane”, you are not going to be able to beat more than one international-class defender. Don’t even try.
4. Aside from the terrible red card given to the South African goalie, the red that should have been a yellow given to the one Australian who actually knows how to play soccer, and the second yellow not given to Jamie Carragher for clotheslining a US striker, the refs have been surprisingly good.
5. The ball isn’t the problem with the low scores. They are the result of defense-oriented strategies combined with an extreme reluctance on the part of attackers to shoot the ball if it is more than three meters away from the goal line. Here is hoping the goals scored by Clint Dempsey and Diego Forlan encourage attacking players to shoot more quickly and more often.
6. Managers desperately need to lose their fascination with big, fast physical specimens who can’t score. For example, Emile Heskey has scored 7 goals in 59 games with England. Why in the name of the third lion is he on the team, let alone starting? I would expect to score more goals than that in 59 games, especially playing against powerhouse teams like Kazakhstan and the Faroe Islands.

And for those of you who hate soccer, the Onion has come through again.

Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay

Korea dominated Greece. Just dominated them. They looked fast, sharp, and capable of pestering the elite teams. I can’t see them winning the group but they should go through easily.

Argentina toyed with Nigeria. It wasn’t anywhere nearly as close as the 1-0 score indicated. Messi was absolutely awful and should have had at least two goals. He was shooting so badly that I kept thinking he was a midfielder.

England was better than the USA throughout, but the USA should have actually won it. The referee showed himself to be England’s 12th man when Jamie Carragher wasn’t given a red card after pulling down the US player by his neck on a through ball at the end of the game. Both teams should go through without any trouble. The US midfield played too defensively for my liking, but the defense was sturdy and did a great job of controlling both Heskey and Rooney.

I thought South Africa was a little better than I expected them to be and Mexico was downright lazy. Neither team has a striker capable of finishing; Mexico in particular was plagued by the dread Midfielder’s Disease. There must have been five or six occasions when a Mexican player passed up the opportunity to make a shot in search of the perfect opening, the defense closed, and the ball was lost without ever a shot being fired. A good result for South Africa and a poor one for Mexico. Based on the talent difference and Mexican control of the ball, it should have been 2-0 or 3-1.

Although Nicola Anelka had one great season for Arsenal about 12 years ago, I have long considered him to be a downright negative. France would have been better playing with 10 players than starting him up front. I’ve never seen a player at the International level ignore more passing opportunities in favor of trying to beat three defenders at once. He’s a physical specimen, fast and strong, and still less than worthless on the pitch. Once the ball went to Anelka, it was as good as turned over to Uruguay. Given the red card, it was a great result for Uruguay and disastrous for France. Even England after Rooney’s injury last time around looked more capable of scoring than this French team.

The quadrennial carnival starts tomorrow and it promises more excitement off the pitch than on it. Here are my predictions:

1) The USA upsets England and wins Group C.
2) The number of World Cup-related deaths in South Africa exceeds the number of goals scored.
3) South Africa will not get past the group stage.
4) Australia will finish last in Group D after being upset by Ghana.
5) The Italians will argue vociferously over which strikers should be starting and who was substituted too soon/late. Before and after every game.
6) Holland will finally claim the Cup.

I’m not a huge Rick Reilly fan. But his piece on going up against the great Timo Kaukonen in the World Sauna Championships is hilarious:

Okay kids, today’s activity is to go down to your local Pizza Hut, have the oven set for 261° and insert your body into it. The tips of your ears start to ignite. The backs of your arms scream. Your throat burns as if somebody had stuck a tiki torch down it. Your lips feel bitten by large, unseen raccoons. And you haven’t hit 30 seconds.

Now do it for 10 minutes or more, and that’s what it’s like to compete in quite possibly the world’s dumbest sport: the Sauna World Championships.

I know. I entered.

I’m looking forward to the inevitable Onion piece. “Does Cambodia threaten our world dominance of sauna?”

It was certainly interesting. And for Vikings fans, a little disappointing, because I would very much have liked to see the Vikings draft Tim Tebow. Unfortunately, Denver’s unexpectedly bold move means that they may have to get by with Clausen, assuming that they go for a quarterback with the second pick in the second round. Obviously Tebow has some doubters, but as Cold Hard Football Facts points out, if you don’t buy into the “mechanics” voodoo, Tebow has been the best SEC quarterback since Peyton Manning and cannot possibly be as likely to turn out a bust as JaMarcus Russell was.

I trust passing accuracy, character, and championships a lot more than the dogmatic insistence on a model that has regularly produced the likes of Russell, Leaf, and Harrington. The scouts didn’t think much of one Francis Asbury Tarkenton either, and he only retired with every major passing record in the books. Bradford was probably the right pick for the Rams, but it was a high risk/reward pick that they had little choice regarding. Quarterback is simply so much more important than every other position in the modern NFL that if there is even a 20 percent chance that a quarterback is genuine long-term starter material, a team has to take it.

Which means Clausen even though I suspect he is a little prick of a prima donna. Which is all right, since he’ll be nicely suited to step into Brett Favre’s when old Number Four finally retires for real after next season. Or maybe the season after that. Prior to the Sheppard signing, I’d expected the Vikes to draft a cornerback, but despite Sheppard’s loss of elite status, he’s still a definite upgrade to the secondary once Griffin returns. I would like to see them pick up Clausen with 2(34) and Myron Rolle at S with 2(62), assuming he’s still available. And, since Pat Williams won’t be around much longer, it would be interesting to see them pursue a trade with Washington for Haynesworth.

Some great games on Thursday. Even if the rest of the tournament is boring, it has already been one of the best tournaments in a while.

This would be your NCAA tournament thread. Unleash the bracket hounds. CBS has kindly provided an online live stream.

Even if you don’t care about baseball, you have to loathe the Yankees after reading this tale of attending a Yankees game:

My father-in-law was thrilled when we reached our seats. He couldn’t believe it. He’d never had seats this good. “Hey,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “maybe we’ll catch a foul ball.”

I looked around. “We got a shot,” I said.

“You know,” he continued, “I’ve been coming to Yankees games for 65 years. Never caught a foul ball.”

Never caught a foul ball? Celebrating his 71st birthday? My father-in-law? Kids, we have a mission.

So we got to the seats, and remember, these were crazy good, expensive seats. Sitting behind us in Row 2 were four kids who I’d guess were between the ages of 8 and 10. A couple of things immediately stuck out about these kids:

1. They were bragging to one another about all the different toys, vacations, servants, whatever they all had.
2. There were no parents in sight.

Apparently, they were just dumped there or something. I know baseball is America’s pastime and kids are cute, but let me tell you something, and I’m not gonna lie. These kids were superannoying. They came across as spoiled, rich kids. They were loud, demanding and, just like you would expect of unsupervised children, completely without a care about anyone around them.

They were discussing foul balls and bragging to one another about how many they had. This one had five, this one had three, a third had four, so on and so on. They apparently came to these seats a lot.

The game started, and we were close enough that the players could hear us. The kids knew this. And started screaming at the players.

“Throw us a ball! Give us a ball! Hey, mister, we want a ball! Give us a ball! Hey, throw the ball here! We want a ball! Please, mister, throw us a ball!” On and on they went. “Hey, mister! Mister! MISTER! GIVE US A BALL!”

If you think that is annoying to read, imagine it being screamed during the game, constantly, inning after inning, directly behind you. In the bottom of the fourth inning, the Yankees went 1, 2, 3 with the final out a ground out. As the Blue Jays ran off the field, first baseman Carlos Delgado (told you it was a while ago) tossed the ball up into the stands. Many folks went for it, but I came down with it.

I turned to my father-in-law, all smiles. “Here’s your ball, Joe.”

As he looked at the ball, the kids started yelling. “Can we have the ball? Hey, mister, we want that ball. Give us the ball!” “We’ve been yelling,” and so on. My father-in-law turned to me and said, “If you want to give the kids the ball, that’s OK.”

Hells. No.

My father-in-law was a softy. I’m not. And I was not going to give up Joe’s first foul ball in 65 years so some spoiled brats could add it to their collection. Just because you beg for something in an annoying manner does not mean your efforts are rewarded. Learned that while dating in high school.

But some wise guy a few rows behind the kids started a chant. “Give-the-kid-the-ball. Give-the-kid-the-ball.” It picked up steam. “Give! The Kid! The Ball! Give! The Kid! The Ball!” Soon, the whole section was chanting this. GIVE! THE KID! THE BALL! GIVE! THE KID! THE BALL!

I ignored it and tried to watch the game. The kids turned from annoying to nasty. “Hey [mouth-washed-out-with-soap word No. 1]! Give us the ball, [mouth-washed-out-with-soap word No. 2]! He was throwing the ball to us, [mouth-washed-out-with-soap word No. 3, which, frankly, I’m not sure where an 8-to-10-year-old kid would learn].”

We continued to try to watch the game.

Then the food bombardment started. Peanuts, hot dogs and beer were thrown at us. Repeatedly. Security was nowhere to be found. We asked folks to stop, which made it worse. We tried to ignore it. But the food, beer and insults kept coming.

Order was finally restored a half-inning later when the first-base umpire came over and handed the kids some balls. The kids bragged to us. “Told you we’d get a ball, a–hole.”

And that’s why I hate the Yankees.

It’s not just the team and the way it is run. It’s not just its owner or the cheating, performance-enhancing drug users A-Rod and Andy Pettitte.

It’s the collective known as Yankee Nation.

I came away from that game with a hatred of the Yankees and was absolute in this belief: Yankees fans are subhuman. Everything they and the Yankees stand for was represented during that half-inning. Like the kids, they are spoiled and demanding and see things only from their self-indulgent point of view. Like the adults, they act out when they don’t get their way.

Of course, there is a better reason to despise the Yankees. They are, after all, the New York Yankees.