The best name in the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations is unquestionably Junior Agogo. I watched Junior and his Ghanaian teammates lose 1-0 to Cameroon, who scored in the second-half, against the run of play. The game was spirited, and got a little ugly when Cameroonian defender Andre Bikey bizarrely pushed over a medical official who was attending to a fellow player.
On my way back from the bar, I suffered some serious cognitive dissonance. A guy was sitting on a cardboard box, selling cigarettes in ones and twos. He was wearing a batter Calgary Flames hoodie. If I had better French, I’d have chatted with him about it.
I just got an email which finished with “Go Giants!” The Super Bowl is today, isn’t it? I don’t even know who’s playing. The Giants, apparently, versus…the Patriots.
I haven’t been a fan of the NFL for about two decades, but I’m usually slightly more attentive than this.
Coincidentally, I was watching a different kind of football this afternoon. We went for a walk on the beach, where there were at least a dozen games of soccer ongoing. Most were informal, but some were the equivalent of little league back in Canada. They don’t have any grass fields (that I’ve seen), so they play on the beach.
Morocco got ousted in the group phase, so the locals seem to be pulling for neighbouring Tunisia. They face an uphill battle against Cameroon tomorrow.
I just watched the highlights from this weekend’s match between Portsmouth and Reading. Don’t visit that second link if you’d prefer not to learn the result in advance of the highlights. The game features a lot of goals–more than any other game in the Premier League’s fifteen year history–and several of the excellent variety.
Caterina wrote a nice little essay about her failed soccer career, and ended with this charming anecdote:
They don’t let little kids compete these days, because it might ruin their self esteem. I see it all the time. A friend of mine at work said her 8 year old son played soccer, and one day he came home from playing and she asked him how many goals he’d scored. “There are no goals,” he said.
I don’t have much exposure to children’s sports. Parents, is this anti-competition streak common these days?
I’ve just returned from the local pub, where I watched Malta and Turkey play to an exciting 2-2 draw in Euro 2008 qualifying. I’m not aficionado of Maltese international play, but given the difference in populations (400,000 and 71 million) and FIFA Rankings (115 and 22), I assume this must be a historic result. Unimportantly, Malta’s squad may also be the baldest team in international football.
It’s extra sweet, because today is the 442nd anniversary of the lifting of the Siege of Malta, when the Ottomans were sent packing by to what’s now Turkey.
Hopefully some highlights will be available tomorrow on FootyTube, my newly-discovered source for football highlights on the web.
We don’t have a TV, so it’s nice to be able to get my fill of goals and incidents from the English Premier League and international play. The site is unquestionably illegal, so we’ll see how long it lasts. If anybody knows of similar sites (besides good ol’ BitTorrent), let me know.
I’ve also got a question for my Maltese readers: during the game, I saw that some people in the crowd were wearing black t-shirts with big white Maltese crosses on them (and no text, as far as I could see). Do you know where I might procure such a shirt?
UPDATE: Here’s the second Malta goal. Unquestionably, it’s the ugliest goal scored last night. But, as the saying goes, they all look the same on the score sheet:
Yesterday I watched the FA Trophy Final at a snooker club/opera house named Teatru ta’ l-Opra Aurora in Rabat. It was English football at its finest–a lot of hoofing the ball forward, long stretches of boring play, and a late (admittedly skillful) goal to spare us the horror of penalty kicks. John knows a lot more about football than me, so you can read his summary.
I’m a casual football watcher (and by football I mean soccer), partially out of frustration. At least half a dozen times a game I scoff when a player takes a ridiculous dive. When a player does stay down, he’s often feigning injury, because minutes (sometimes seconds) later he’s back up and ready to play.
As a dedicated ice hockey fan, I often scornfully mutter things like “when a hockey player goes down, it’s because he’s unconcious or lost a limb”. This is more or less true. A player will hobble, glide and even crawl to get himself off the ice under his own power if he’s capable. This is because hockey permits on-the-fly line changes, something that football doesn’t.
In essence, the football player has two options:
Stay down and force a stoppage in play.
Shrug it off, get up and keep playing.
If only it were that simple. The officials never penalize a player for feigning injury, so the system begets a fair amount of chicanery. Players abuse this practice to stop play for a variety of reasons (get a breather, kill some momentum and so forth).
It’s unfair to alledge that hockey players (or rugby players or whoever) are tougher than footballers. They’re just stuck with a system of rules that encourages them to dramatize minor injury.
I’ve got no idea how to fix this. I wonder what other sports do. What about rugby? I only watch one rugby game a decade, so I’ve no idea.
After an enjoyable time wandering around Herbert Park, I’ve returned to our Dublin hotel room to watch a very eventful second half of a Scottish Premiership game between Celtic and Hearts. Andrew Driver just scored on a gorgeous free kick to put Hearts up 2-0.
I learned about the SPL when I lived in Dublin, and it’s always struck me as the most lopsided sports league in the world. The league was formed nine years ago, and features the twelve best football (that is, soccer) teams in Scotland. In each of the nine seasons (including this one), one of two Glasgow squads–Celtic or Rangers–has won. In all but one season, the runner-up has been the other Glasgow team.
Isn’t this a bit predictable? And, I’d imagine, tremendously frustrating if you’re not a supporter of Rangers or Celtic? There’s such a thing as dynasties, but this is enough to make one a figure skating fan.
There’s a similar, if less rigid, phenomenon in the English Premier League, where only four different teams have won over the past fourteen years. And, practically speaking, there’s only about a half-dozen teams that can realistically challenge to be league champions.
We address (and usually solve) this problem in North America with the salary cap system. I’m not about the prescribe such a solution for UK football–I don’t know enough to suggest whether it’s remotely viable. In fact, I don’t even know if English and Scottish fans consider the current league structure a problem.
Over on the Hollywood Reporter, they’ve got a piece on the possibility of a biopic about Pele, the, uh, Wayne Gretzky of soccer…er…football:
Dubbed the “king of football,” Pele’s life is ripe for cinematic treatment. He reportedly was responsible for a 48-hour cease-fire during a civil war in Nigeria so that people could watch him play. He officially was declared a national treasure by the government of his native Brazil.
Okay, in truth it’s more like Gretzky was the Pele of hockey, but you get the idea.
I’m a huge fan of Chiwetel Ejiofor (you may have seen him in Serenity, Inside Man and Dirty, Pretty Things), and I think he’s ideal for the role. I don’t know what his soccer skills are like, though.
