We’re three weeks away from the world’s largest sporting event dedicated to one sport: the FIFA World Cup. I introduced myself here in January and before we go any further, let me go off topic briefly. My name is Randy Paul, not Rand Paul. My father anglicized his name from Polsky to Paul while living in a small town in southern Georgia (the US one), so there are only three people alive with the surname Paul to whom I’m related: my sister, my half-brother and his son. I have no relatives in Texas or Kentucky.
I’m writing this post for those of you who are not fans of the game, but who are open-minded and willing to give it a shot. Tomorrow afternoon, on your local Fox affiliate, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League championship, a sporting event that last year enjoyed a larger audience than the Super Bowl. Nearly forty teams start out in the initial qualification that, if I recall correctly, has its opening rounds in early August, and with all due credit to Michel Platini, the President of UEFA, we’ll be able to see it for the first time on a Saturday, a refreshing change from having to either take an afternoon off, record it and watch it later or surreptitiously follow it on the internet at work. I also thank Fox for putting it on their main network and not Fox Soccer Channel, thus enabling those who don’t have cable to see it.
The two teams contesting the title are Bayern Munich, the newly crowned German champion and Inter Milan, the Italian champion for the past five seasons including the most recent one. The game will be played at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid. Bayern is coached by the Dutch Louis Van Gaal and Inter is coached by the Portuguese Jose Mourinho, both of whom are either loved or hated, usually depending on how one feels about their team.
Some players to keep an eye on for Inter: Samuel Eto’o, a tireless Cameroonian striker, Lucio, a tough Brazilian central defender who often comes up on the attack and who scored the goal that defeated the US in last year’s Confederations Cup Championship, Maicon, an attack-minded Brazilian right back and Diego Milito, a gifted Argentinean attacker. Inter will be missing Thiago Motta, their central midfielder due to a red card he picked up in the semifinal against Barcelona. For Bayern, key players should be the relentless Croatian forward, Ivica Olic, the tenacious Dutch winger, Arjen Robben and their German winger, Bastian Schweinsteiger. Bayern will be missing French midfielder, Franck Ribery due to a red card suspension.
For those not that familiar with the sport, look to see the teams, when they’re attacking, attempt to spread the defenses out by driving the attack down the sidelines. The advantage here is that it unpacks the defense a bit, as opposed to bunching them up in the penalty area, while enabling other attackers to still move towards the goal. Also on set pieces (free kicks and corner kicks) see how closely the defenders mark (i.e., cover) their assigned player. In addition, on corner kicks the defending team ideally should have a player on each goalpost while the goalkeeper remains in the middle ready to either punch the ball out or catch it if possible.
Another key will be how effectively each team mounts a counterattack. A good defensive midfielder – and I give Inter the edge in that department with the Argentinean, Esteban Cambiasso – can dispossess the attacking team effectively and start the ball moving for his team’s attack. Finally, keep an eye on Inter if they score early on. If they do, expect them to pack the penalty area and attack sparingly. It makes for dull watching sometimes, but it can also come back to haunt them.
Full disclosure: I don’t like either team, nor do i like the coaches. I suppose this gives me some solace as I really don’t care who wins. I do love the game, however, and I hope you’ll get a chance to watch. It starts at 2:30 p.m. EDT on your local Fox affiliate. Enjoy!
Martin
Here’s a question from someone who enjoys the occasional match but doesn’t have time to really invest in the sport – why so many players known only by a single name? I know it’s not a new phenomenon, but where/when did it start, and why is it so broadly done? I don’t think we really have any equivalent to it outside of WWE.
Bill E Pilgrim
You do realize that this will just make the jokes in this thread even worse, right?
Not your fault of course, it’s just your name.
Let the games begin.
Randinho
It tends to be Brazilians who mainly do that: Pele, Garrincha, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Romario, Rivaldo, Maicon, Kaka, Dida, Zico, Socrates, Rai, Bebeto, Adriano, Luizao, etc. I guess the feeling is if you are truly great, one name should suffice for everyone to know who you are.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Martin: A lot of pop stars in Europe are also. Maybe in the US also, I’ve lost track. But I think it’s just a style, in a similar vein.
Randinho
Bill E. Pilgrim,
Yeah, but if I ignored it, it would only make matters worse.
Comrade Luke
Here’s a World Cup commercial from Nike that’s been making the rounds today.
Awesome.
BTW, thanks A LOT for mentioning it was on my local Fox affiliate. I had no idea.
Ailuridae
This blog keeps getting better and better.
I have the luxury of being able to work my own hours so I watch a lot of the Champions League games at one of Chicago’s many soccer/football bars. Once you get to the point that you can see a pass ahead its incredibly engrossing (but like hockey and lacrosse incredibly confusing before that).
That’s about it. Also, Blackhawks win!
arguingwithsignposts
My son’s team got to play at half of a Chicago Fire game last season. That was pretty cool. Continue on.
jeff
Why do players writhe in pain until they realize the referee is elsewhere, at which point they are totally fine??
Steeplejack
@Martin:
A lot of them are from Brazil, where it is something of a tradition to compact a lengthy name–e.g., Edison Arantes do Nascimento–down to a catchy nickname–e.g., Pelé.
Maicon = Douglas Maicon Sisenando. Lúcio = Lucimar Ferreira da Silva.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Randinho: True.
I haven’t followed recently, I was in Paris in 2006 during the semi-final with France in it and then a week later in Rome where I lived when the Italians returned from winning, a couple of blocks away from the Circus Maximus where the festivities took place.
They had some sort of mobile fireworks unit and were shooting them directly over my building at one point, I almost felt like I got what WWII must have been like at times.
Randinho
Comrade Luke: loved the commercial, although Ronaldinho won’t be in the WC and I don’t believe Cannavaro will be either.
Jeff, it’s just gamesmanship. Ugly, but it happens.
Comrade Luke
Yea, I think the single name is often (always?) a reduction of a much longer name. I think it might have to do with them being Catholic, and adding names for things like Confirmation in addition to the names they already have.
Hey, wasn’t Inter the team that was involved in a major gambling and/or game throwing scandal? Or was it paying off referees? I seem to remember a major scandal in Italy that resulted in the team getting demoted at least for a time.
JenJen
@Comrade Luke: Saw that earlier today and just loved, loved, loved it. World Cup ads are teh awesome; I still love the Adidas “Jose +10” ads from 2006.
So stoked that another World Cup is almost upon us! As far as the Champions League championship tomorrow afternoon, though, great to get the heads-up, but I’ll be watching Habs-Flyers on NBC…
@jeff: On that note, this never gets old. :-)
CJ
@Steeplejack:
Brazil speaks Portuguese, and Portuguese naming involves both parental last names. You’ve got two first names, two last names, etc, stuff that doesn’t fit on a jersey.
Hence, Fred.
Warren Terra
You realize that’s the actual name of the distinguished Republican nominee for the Senate in Kentucky, right? The one running on the “Legalize institutionalize racism! I wish i could have marched for civil rights! Don’t legalize institutional racism! ! 1 ! one” platform?
Well, the diminutive name of his actual name, anyhow:
I haven’t been reading all the Rand Paul threads … has anyone made the obvious joke about how this opthamologist clearly lacks moral vision? It’s almost like a recommendation of him, if you take it as a metaphorical opthamological version of the old joke where in a two-dentist town, you should seek the services of the dentist with the worse teeth – though to actually do so would be stretching an already dangerously overstrained metaphor too far …
ETA: how I despise the WordPress “interpret multiple exclamation marks as calling for some smileyface graphics” code.
eastriver
Bayern lucked into the final. If Inter fucks this up, they should be forced to play in Milan.
Oh, they do.
(Confession, I actually love Milan.)
Go USA!!! (please don’t embarrass us too much. Just one goal against England would be lovely)
Randinho
CJ,
There’s another Fred who played in the last WC and scored against Australia. He’s also from my wife’s hometown.
Comrade Luke, it was Juventus, Fiorentina and AC Milan. Juventus was the worst offender and was relegated to Serie B. The other two were docked points IIRC.
Bill Pilgrim, I lived in Germany in 1974 when they won the WC. I lived in the US during the 1994 WC and expect to be living in Brazil during the 2014 WC. That would mean I would have lived in three different countries on three different continents during World Cups.
Randinho
Warren Terra,
That’s my full name as well, but I spell it thusly: Randall. Vive la difference!
Breezeblock
I’ll try to catch the match, but frankly, Italian football is unwatchable.
Jenny
I think the blogosphere should start calling him Rand Palin
Bill E Pilgrim
@Randinho: Very cool. People in the US rarely grasp just what a big thing this is outside of it. I never took any interest until France won in 1998 and it was all around me, you just couldn’t avoid it. It was watching the Brazilians that hooked me though, my god.
Actually my understanding was that the French never had quite the kind of mania about it all that say Italy or Spain had, until that year, so at least some of them were having the same conversion that I was.
MTmofo
I want to know where ho is, rand in ho. Enjoy the footie. I just can’t get into it.
Warren Terra
OT, but there’s an awful story up at the NYT (in the small print) about a paranoid anti-gov’t nutball who gunned down two cops in Arkansas yesterday, a horrific event I didn’t even hear of till now.
Steeplejack
My favorite Nike Brasil soccer ad. The ending is priceless.
Yutsano
VIVA ITALIA!!
That is all.
(Oh, and this is coming from a semi-fluent German speaker who absolutely adores the city of Berlin.)
Oh and FYWP for making me like a new poster.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Warren Terra:
I think he has one, it’s just become more apparent which one, as the young Emperor Paul has made clear this week.
Liberty + Aryan = Libertarian.
Any questions?
Brandon
Dude, you tell people to watch and introduce the teams, but fail to mention the best player in Inter’s team? Wesley Sneijder. Seriously.
Also too, basically for those not familiar with the sport, fussball/futbol/football is the capitalist dream. You win, you win a fortune. You lose, you not only fall to the bottom of the league, but you play in the equivalent of the minor leagues the following season. Thanks in large part to the Champions League, It is moving from a sport that had the haves and the have nots, to now being a sport that has the royalty and the serfs.
For those who have seen the film The Damned United, the idea that a manager could step into a club today and transform that club from a second tier club to being European champions is farcical. Brian Clough did it with Nottingham Forest and Alex Ferguson took friggin Aberdeen of Scotland to a European Cup final, before moving on to Manchester United. That will most likely never happen again.
If you folks thought the US financial system was over leveraged, you shouldn’t take a look at football finances. It’s a joke. Portsmouth in England (who incidentally played Chelsea in the FA Cup final last Saturday) was almost ordered to shut down for good and sell off all its assets. They finished last place in the league, thanks in large measure to a huge penalty they received for going bankrupt. The fifth placed team in Spain, Real Mallorca just announced that they were going bankrupt as well. And thanks to Malcolm Glazer (the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), Manchester United are over a billion dollars in debt and increasing daily. A couple other American businessmen, Tom Hicks and George Gillette, have financially destroyed Liverpool. A reckoning is coming.
And speaking of finances, we have Jose Mourinho. He first won this competition with Porto a few years back. Then he was hired as the manager of Chelsea, who at the time were just purchased by a Russian oligarch as a toy. The man subsequently pumped about a billion dollars into the club to buy the best players and Chelsea won everything the years Mourinho was in charge, everything except the European Cup/Champions League, which is what Abramovich coveted most. Mourinho is perhaps the most obnoxious person on the planet who self referentially calls himself “the great one” and he got himself fired at Chelsea only to land at Inter, where he could basically now immortalize himself as actually one of the greatest managers in the game by winning tomorrow.
Vincent Vega
Planning on watching with a contingent of Dutch expats tomorrow. Big Dutch influence on both teams this year.
Comrade Kevin
A couple of the best sporting events I remember going to are an England-Yugoslavia “friendly” at the old Wembley, and the World Cup matches at Stanford Stadium in 1994.
Then, there are a couple of surreal experiences, one watching Charlton Athletic playing someone at Crystal Palace, when they were godawful, and another seeing Linfield playing some English team at Windsor Park in Belfast, when I was a kid.
srv
I would try to be excited, but when I drink late at night and switch to the high UHF HDTV channels, I get Australian Rules Football, not the other un-American Football.
It’s like more confusing than cricket. So I’ll just keep drinking until it makes sense.
ken
Comrade Luke, no, it was Juventus (Juve, or ‘the old lady’) that got pinched (among others), and were demoted for a year. Its a tough one for me this year, as Morihno is an ass, and Bayern, are, well Bayern, you just can’t help hating them.
east river, one goal for the US would be fine, as long as the English score nowt! As a Scotsman, our WC team is anyone but England!
Yutsano
@srv: We haz a few Aussie posters who would be more than happy to give you a crash course. I don’t pretend to understand it all myself but I can at least figure out who’s winning. Cricket, regardless of the number of times it has been explained to me, still escapes my kenning.
srv
And I like the Aussie stuff. None of this drama queen flailing around soccer players pretending there are more fouls than a Kansas State vs Colorado game.
I get the impression if an Aussie acted like that, they’d get the crap beat out of them.
Comrade Kevin
Oh yeah, my brother reminded me of another weird experience. One summer we were in the Netherlands and our dad took us to a double-header friendly, featuring FC Amsterdam (who no longer exist), AZ 67 (also Dutch), Fluminense from Brazil, and Anderlecht from Belgium.
Yutsano
@srv: Rule number one: NO POOFTERS!!
MTmofo
@Jenny:
or Rand Paulin.
superfly
@jeff: The same reason basketball players flop from the slightest contact, to con the refs.
Brandon
@Yutsano: I know I am going to make a hash of it, but there is a saying, that references something about the fact that rugby is a violent sport, but it is the sport of the elite, while football is the sport of the masses, but it is all about diving and played by metrosexuals.
Yutsano
@Brandon: I know that ruggers think football players are wusses because they wear tons of protection. They don’t use pads in Aussie rules football either, so it’s more of a take-off of rugby than our game, or a strange hashing of the two. I think you should watch that statement, though (although I think I’ve heard some strange variation of it somewhere) because rugby players regard themselves as salt of the earth and the only real metrosexuals in football are the quarterbacks.
@superfly: We used to have a chant at our college when an opposing player got a flop call and we knew he was selling it. “I’D LIKE…TO THANK…THE ACADEMY!!” (single hand clap). We got kinda brutal, but what else is there to do at an ag school in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday night in winter?
(I actually refuse to answer that question, even if statute of limitations keeps me from any real legal trouble.)
Corner Stone
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Yes. Why do accidents happen?
Yutsano
Damn. Even when Bush had fucked lives up, some folks still manage to rise above:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37278541/ns/health-more_health_news
Viva BrisVegas
@Yutsano:
Only about half would be able to, since that brand of football is only really popular in the southern states. The other states prefer a different brand of football. The attractions of the game are a mystery to me.
Cricket is easy, baseball is confusing.
Australian Rules (aka aerial pingpong) is actually played on cricket grounds. The ostensible reason for its creation was to keep cricket players fit over winter.
Corner Stone
@Yutsano:
I can not begin to describe how intensely funny the thought that this might be considered “brutal” is.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Corner Stone:
Because people don’t use protection, of course.
Ayn Randall Terry Paul is wishing there were a morning after pill for giving honest interview answers about now, that’s for certain.
Yutsano
@Corner Stone: That was the easy insult chant, more a mocking of the refs than the players. We once drew Bugs Bunny on a large placard where he was wearing glasses with an eye chart on the other side of the fold. The quote from Bugs was, “What’s up Ref?”. Most player insults were individual in nature, especially if they had made national news for some antic (playing USC every year made this happen often), but the refs we tore into pretty much nightly. It could fall under the category of you had to be there.
Incidentally, the guy who was responsible for that moved on to become the assistant communications director for the governor of Arkansas. I doubt that came up in his job interview however.
Corner Stone
@Bill E Pilgrim: What you did there?
I am seeing it.
Corner Stone
I’ve been wondering something. And this seems like the right time to ponder it.
Has anyone, in the recorded history of moderndom, found Minnie Driver to be a) a good actress, or b) attractive in any mildly sexual way?
Viva BrisVegas
@Yutsano:
True. I think its the helmets that get the most giggles.
Aussie Rules derives mostly from Gaelic football, although apocryphally it was inspired by an Aboriginal game.
Gridiron football is a direct descendant of Rugby Union. The elements of the game have undergone some spectacular evolution, but they can still be seen. Rucks, scrums, field goals, conversions, the shape and size of the field, the ball, are all there in changed form, and all derive from Union.
The main divergence is the ability to throw the ball forward.
Yutsano
@Viva BrisVegas: Old time football helmets were absolutely ridiculous, so I think they have a point there. The modern ones aren’t quite as bad, but they do obscure the facial expression element of the game that can make sport so entertaining to watch. How the game evolved into its final form is a fascinating historical exercise, I’m not certain if anyone has done a history of football. There are enough about baseball that it would be astounding if there wasn’t. I’m just not aware of any off the top of my head.
BTW throwing the ball forward actually wasn’t done until the 1920’s, and there was a large debate about its legality at the time. It was ultimately ruled legal (by Talmudic rules: it wasn’t explicitly forbidden so therefore it was allowed) but it really did change the tenor of the game.
@asiangrrlMN: Nothing huge, just battling incoherence one post at a time and discussing the various origins and differences in American vs Australian rules football (which I guess should be properly called Southern Aussie football, but I digress). Welcome to the Friday Night Funnies.
asiangrrlMN
@Corner Stone: Yes to the latter, though not to the former in recent years.
Hi, Randy! I like futbol, but I don’t get to watch much as I have no cable. I will be watching tomorrow’s game, as it’s practically the only one available on network TV.
What’s up, late-night Juicers?
P.S. A tribute to Gaelic football from The Saw Doctors.
Corner Stone
If this isn’t the best damn headline I’ve seen in a while, I do not know what is:
Clapper leading choice for intel job
Of course Clapper is!
Please click the link to see the awesome headshot of Clapper.
asiangrrlMN
Damn. I will be at tai chi. I will have to DVR. Which, is actually a good thing as then I can skip the commer–oh wait. Soccer doesn’t have ’em.
I can fast-forward through all the flopping, then. Ah, the fast-forward button. My second favorite button on the remote–right behind the mute button.
r€nato
FORZA AZZURRI!!!
Corner Stone
@r€nato: EVA LASKARI
Yutsano
BTW TBogg has been en fuego lately. I just peeked over there and he has a nice collection of the massive fail (so far) that is Rand Paul. Definitely worth the page click.
/blogwhore
HeartlandLiberal
Student who works for me as a computer tech is from Brazil, and has asked for time off so he will miss no televised games in which Brazil participates.
His carefully crafted proposed schedule assumes they will go all the way to the championship.
I therefore tell you advance, just give it up, and prepare for Brazil to triumph.
I have it from an authority.
LGRooney
Full disclosure: don’t care for either team but enjoy, and have great respect for, both managers. Any mgr able to lead, organize and control such massive egos (same goes for Ferguson) as they do with consistent success deserves my admiration.
Onkel Bob
Lobotomies, bleeding, and potions made from henbane were also popular at one time. Does one need all three to enjoy the nuances of that particular game? ;^)
Laertes
@Brandon: A buddy of mine puts it like this: “Football is a sport for hooligans, played by gentlemen. Rugby is a sport for gentlemen, played by hooligans.”
(When he says this, he’s talking about proper Football, not the local American variety.)
Bill E Pilgrim
@Laertes: I’m sort of astonished that I found this, from a Guardian article that I read while living in London in 2001, but your comment made me think of one part in particular that I always loved and remembered. This was written by a UK writer posted in the US:
Bill E Pilgrim
Forgot the link
woody
I happened to have been in Liverpool in ’66 (on leave), when the Brits won “The Cup.” The whole city was ecstatic, and it was an incredible party. A delicious young woman bestowed her favors on me as we rode atop a double-decker bus at about 4 am. Memorable…
Alien-Radio
@Laertes:
That’s backwards, it’s “Rugby is a sport for thugs, played by gentlemen, Football is a sport for gentlemen, Played by thugs.”
It has to do with the class division, Rugby was the Sport of the elite Public schools, and didn’t go professional until recently, so you would tend to find that all the players were lawyers, stockbrokers, and bankers with cauliflower ears, whilst football was the game of the working class, and has been a professional sport for much longer.
woody
@HeartlandLiberal: Watch out for Cote d’Ivoir. They could rise up and win it all. The bookies –even the non-brits– have the Brits favored.
El Cid
Waka waka!
mellowjohn
i was in italy during the ’98 world cup (and, oddly enough, will be there again this summer) and the hush that came over towns – even rome – when italy was playing was eerie.
wish i could be in new zealand next year for the REAL world cup: the rugby world cup. (and a shout-out to my old team, the chicago blaze, as they enter the next round of the division II national championships today in columbia, sc.)
RSA
I once knew a good guy named Randy Boys. The first time I heard him introduce himself to an English person, it was very funny. To us, of course; he’d heard it all before.
rknight44
@Brandon: Jose is “The Special One”. I can’t pull for the Huns; they beat my United.
p.s. Waiting to see the Wembley pitch come up in chunks again.
Bill in Portland Maine
Bayern Munich? Bayern Munich????
Phhht.
If it ain’t Fortuna Dusseldorf, it’s pussy league.
Great thing about fussball…it’s the only sport you can play with “JAZZ HANDS!”
Okay, I’ll leave now before I get banned.
–
fucen tarmal
i’m sorry soccer, its not you, its me.
you see, i just had to break up with baseball, after a long tumultuous relationship. it wasn’t for most of the usual reasons, though they did play a part, though not really in the way you might be guessing….but anyway…
i just don’t think i’m looking for a relationship with another sport right now. sure, you can talk about how much the rest of the world loves you, and how much fun it could be, and i’m sure all of that is true. lets be honest, soccer, its not a fling you are really after, you simply aren’t that kind of sport. you have leagues in many countries, your world cup, your champions thing, you have a lot to keep up with, just to know the basics. you don’t really want all that complexity to be wasted on a casual fan.
sure many people will allude to violence in your past, and try and remind you of your unsavory reputation in some circles as a reason to not want to get involved. trust me, that isn’t the case, i would like to think i am the kind of fan who is above all that…i guess in the end,soccer, it really comes down to the simplest explanation, cliche though it might be.
i’m just not that into you.
New Yorker
Ah, the World Cup. Like all Real ‘Murkans, I don’t follow soccer, but I played it in high school and will casually follow the World Cup.
The 2006 World Cup led to maybe the funniest thing that I’ve seen in the 7 years I’ve lived in the heavily Polish Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. In the first round in 2006, Ecuador defeated Poland. I just happened to be walking down one of the main drags in Greenpoint when a car with 3 guys waving a huge Ecuadorian flag from their sunroof drove by, with each of them loudly chanting “Ecuador! Ecuador!”.
Considering how few Latinos live in my neighborhood, it seems apparent that they had driven over from Jackson Heights or Corona or somewhere to taunt the Polish after the game. They got a lot of middle fingers and a lot of cursing directed at them (some English, some Polish) from people on the street. One burly dude even stopped the car at an intersection (who cares about the green light?) to start yelling into the drivers’ side window while his wife tried to pull him back onto the sidewalk.
calling all toasters
This is going to be the worst World Cup ever. The brain-dead South African fans are going to blow on their stupid plastic trumpets constantly. We’ll all have to watch with the sound off. The only hope is that the SA team gets humiliated in their group and the morons are too depressed to show up for any other matches.
slightly_peeved
I think the closest US analog to Aussie Rules is Ice Hockey. It doesn’t have the stop-start motion of rugby league or gridiron; the ball is in constant motion and teams rapidly shift between offense and defense. Some people prefer that unpredictability. Also, back in the 70s, there were almost as many fights as in Ice Hockey, but the fights in Aussie Rules are pretty pissweak these days. My personal fave form of football is Rugby Sevens; it has the strategy of rugby union, the unpredictability of ice hockey or Aussie Rules and isn’t watched almost entirely by bogans.
slightly_peeved
@Yutsano:
I think that Corner Stone may be referring to some of the more unsavory English or Scottish football chants. Such as the three chants (all done to “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain”) of:
We hope it’s fifteen storeys when you jump
We hope it’s spikey railings when you land
We hope it’s catholic doctors when you die
used by Celtic fans to Rangers fans.
Or possibly the chants that Liverpool or Man City use referring to the Munich Air Disaster in which a large number of Manchester United players died.
The best football chant in the world is from New Zealand, however.
ellie
@Comrade Luke:
That was an awesome commercial! And I say this not knowing who those people are.
Comrade Darkness
If Milan is playing doesn’t the Mafia decide the final score?
burnspbesq
@srv:
So sorry to hear that you’ll be dying of alcohol poisoning. ;-)
slightly_peeved
@srv:
1) Kick the ball through the big sticks at the end.
2) You catch a kick and you get a free kick.
3) If you get tackled, you must let go of the ball.
4) If you tackle, you have to let go of the player once they’ve let go of the ball.
5) You can’t throw the ball, but you can punch it (including out of your own hand).
6) Jason Akermanis is a dickhead (google him).
7) Collingwood delenda est.
That’s about it. It’s easy to understand; if it wasn’t, Aussie Rules players generally wouldn’t be able to play it.
Brandon
@rknight44: Bugger, he is “The Special One” indeed. Which reminds me of the fantastic send up of Mourinho that Setanta Sports did using puppets.
@slightly_peeved: What fascinates me is the near absolute obsession with victimhood that seems to underlie a lot of football fans. Whether it is Munich Air for ManU or Hillsborough for Liverpool (funny how Liverpool fans don’t like to talk much about Heysel though or when they do they blame the stadium, the Belgian police, the insufficient “segregation” – caging – of Liverpool fans or UEFA for not totally restricting ticket sales). I personally have no problem with chants that mock teams on these issues. Which reminds me of this video.
Steeplejack
@slightly_peeved:
I like the team names. Footscray is my favorite, especially after I found out it is not a veterinary condition.
Pooh
@jeff:
There was a pretty amazing incident in the semi-final between Inter and Barcalona where Thiago Mota (who was red carded) more or less indavertantly swiped at the face of a Barca player, who fell to the ground as if shot, yet paused in the middle of gyrations to peekaboo through his hands to see if the ref had in fact sent Thiago off.
Pooh
@slightly_peeved:
Also, the umpires are fucking pimps.
(and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible)
Pooh
And as a last post in the sequence, since this game involves Mourinho, football/soccer fans might want to indulge of the youtube glory that is Special One TV
Mister Colorful Analogy
@Corner Stone:
Yes on both counts for the character she played in Good Will Hunting.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What do you think of the Civil Rights Act?
ThresherK
The main divergence is the ability to throw the ball forward.
…plus: Blocking and platooning, leading to specialization and the hypersizing of players, as many of them don’t need to handle, kick, catch, throw or run with the ball…
Randinho
@Bill E Pilgrim: You’re right. Cycling is still the number one sport in France.
Randinho
@MTmofo: Inho is the diminutive in Portuguese. It gets used as a term of endearment and my wife has called me that since we met.
Randinho
@Brandon: Fair enough, but Sneijder and the offense was invisible in leg 2 of the semifinal. I happen to think Milito is a stronger presence. He had more than three times as many goals as Sneijder and many more appearances.
Randinho
@Yutsano:
Rugby players eat their dead.
Randinho
@Bill E Pilgrim: Ayn Randall Terry Paul is wishing there were a morning after pill for giving honest interview answers about now, that’s for certain.
Please. One l in Randal for Dr. Paul.
Randinho
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I support it and believe it should apply to private businesses as well.
bystander
Hey, Randy! Good to see you here. I’ve been looking forward to this since you announced.
[aka “Listener”]
Randinho
@Brandon: As Milito just scored, I feel somewhat vindicated.
Pooh
Still shocked that Cambiasso and Zanetti aren’t going to the WC
Randinho
@Pooh: That’s Maradona for you.
Randinho
@bystander: Thanks!
Mark S.
I hope this win doesn’t go to Mourinho’s head.
Randinho
@Mark S.: There’s no more room in his inflated ego.
Mark S.
@Randinho:
I am actually afraid his head will burst.
firebrand
I am indeed not a fan of this game. And though I am open-minded, I’m not really willing to give it a shot. So, I’ll take my leave, and let you all enjoy your game!
gaderson
So is ‘Inho’ what I should yell out whenever Ronaldo goes down, or “hits the floor” as the English announcers say?
I must say a game with one side being the mind-numbing ‘Italian’ game has little appeal. Though maybe the hard-charging Huns would be able to make it interesting? Granted being a Arsenal fan anyone who beats Man-U gets my vote.
And to combine the two ideas above, I do have to grudgingly give some props to the Manchester (Utd/City) strikers Rooney and Tevez because they doesn’t always go down when the defender looks at them sideways.
Re: Nike ad, pretty good, (amusing US team cameo after ‘The Roo’ goes down) though I like the picking teams one from last WC (by Adidas “Jose +10”).
Norwegian Shooter
Anything in which a short general post mentions something as easy to do and as boring as standing next to a post is not worthy of being called a sport.