cklablog

Notice: If you believe your flavor of God(s) ha(s/ve) the power to make this dream a reality, please let me know and I will personally make a donation of money, blood or animal entrails, as appropriate.  All wild-eyed, froth-mouthed true believers encouraged to apply — no superstition too implausible, no horribly flawed rationalization too transparent.

Thank you, and thank your [all-powerful/reasonably-powerful/capricious and emotive] God(s) in advance for making the World Cup what it should be — not completely fucking annoying.

It’s official.  I hate the Vuvuzela. How it became the “symbol of South African football” is beyond me.    Hopefully the ESPN sound guys will slowly pull the crowd down lower and lower in the mix, although that would normally be the exact opposite of how to mix a football match.  Guh.

Come on you Bfana Bfana!  Let’s send Mexico home.

The only way this gets any better is if security is a step or two slower, and Golden Balls catches a little LA hospital-ity.

What, did he think we’re all stupid?  That the LA fans don’t know a “fuck you” move when they’re on the end of one?  The experiment is over, and he blew it.  Point in fact, he didn’t even really try, which puts the lie to his self-aggrandizing claims of “professionalism.”

One thing even the haters have to admit is that Beckham plays for the shirt — the England shirt. Talking about how you travel thousands of miles for your national team in order to white-wash how you shafted your club team makes even less sense than a Spice Girls reunion.

“I did not shoot Joel. For proof, let me introduce you to Bob, whom I have never shot.” Luckily, he’s good looking.

“I’m an honest person” . . . except for all the parts where I said I was dedicated to developing soccer in the US. Oh, I’m sorry, your American football terminology has confused me again.  I said “the sport of soccer,” but I meant, “my fanancial holdings and Q-quotient.”

Beckham made money for the Galaxy hand over fist — too bad they can’t use any of it to buy their way out of mediocrity. How many years will it take to repair the damage Becks did?

Sadly, probably only 2 or 3.

Jason Gay, for the Wall Street Journal, sums it up:

It was done. Biggest United States soccer victory ever. After all, the score was 2-0. No one comes back from 2-0 in soccer, just like no one ever leaves a Michael Bay movie without tinnitus. It was a safer bet than a lousy Knicks draft.

But then Brazil became, well, Brazil. It was cruel and mesmerizing to watch. The yellow-and-green soccer juggernaut scored early in the second half and relentlessly pounded U.S. goalie Tim Howard until they finally prevailed 3-2. When it was over the American players were crestfallen. They’d come within one half of a Wheaties box. Now they had to watch Brazil celebrate a title, which is like watching Derek Jeter celebrate getting a phone number.

My Wizards got their asses kicked this weekend, too. Turns out that what every Wizards fan believes is true after all — without Jimmy Conrad, we’re not going to win much.

Luckily for my general levels of bile this morning, Em and I missed this game, as we were at a party for a friend deploying this week to go fight some of the worst people in the world. Therefore, I’m giving him my man-of-the-match award for doing the real hard work.

Of all the ways you can end up at 3-2, going up 2-0 and taking that lead into the halftime break has to be the most painful.

Landon Donovan has been my man of the tournament — for me, he’s been the only player to play well in all of our matches, even the horrible opening two. After the game, asked that same old question about progress and the growth of the game in the United States blah blah blah (officially over that entire topic, thanks), Landon said that he felt we were at a level where it wasn’t enough to compete, we want to win. Well said.

Clint Dempsey had tears in his eyes as he accepted the second-place medal, a mark of pride in my opinion. He clearly wanted it badly, played accordingly, and had a legendary victory in his grasp before watching Brazil reassert itself and prove that the much-ballyhooed talent-gap was no media fiction.

When it mattered, they had much more than we did on both sides of the ball (save for in goal), and nobody who watches this sport could really be surprised by the result. But for it to come after such a hope-filled first half was torture. We’d rode our luck against Spain, but the same by-the-skin-of-our-teeth defending wasn’t going to keep Brazil out of the net.

When Luis Fabiano’s first goal went in, the belief fizzed out of me with a trickle. For that goal to come so early in the half, and leave them essentially 45 minutes to get the second? Gutted.

Rocket Love

Fearless US Braced for Brazil

I’m almost but not quite peeing my pants right about now.  I think we need a respectable showing, and after the emotional uplift from the last couple games, I really hope our guys don’t crash.  Hopefully our American sticktuitiveness, grit, determination, hustle, etc. will be enough to keep it close.

South Africa kept Brazil off the score-sheet for 85+ minutes, and we’ve a bit more quality about us than they do, so you have to think, “miracles can happen!*”

*Statement not intended to tempt fate by expressing any expectation of miraculous victory.

I’m a fan of Argentine football — I would love to see Boca Juniors vs. River Plate before I die, call it a dream.  And, as a fan (from afar) of criminal consipracies, I thought this was pretty interesting.

The supporters groups (Barra Brava) have long since strong-armed their way into the club’s pockets, demanding free tickets, a percentage of concessions, even skimming off the top of gate sales and player transfers.  But as the money in the game gets bigger, the tension changes focus from rival Barra Brava competing against one another (the English hooligan paradigm), into internecine fighting over the slice of pie various gang factions are getting.  And as we see anywhere else in the world, once the money gets big enough, the weapons come out and the killing starts.

There is a lot of discussion going on in England right now about the recent transfers of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo (who went for a staggering $112 million) and how this level of spending might have inflated the player market — but what isn’t getting discussed is how that inflation, the big, big money is trickling down into places like Argentina or Brazil — nations that function as de-facto “feeder nations” for the top European clubs.

If C. Ronaldo is worth $112m, and a player like Gremio’s young starlet Douglas Costa is worth $25m, the question then becomes, what is that amount of money worth . . . to the gangsters and extortion artists who plague South American football?

It’s worth your ass, you can bet that.  If I were a club chairman at Gremio, or Palmerias, or Newell’s Old Boys, or Colo Colo for that matter, I’d be seriously thinking about retirement.

Or about hiring some ninjas.

From the Guardian:

The New York Times called it “a miracle on grass”. It was a very deliberate allusion to the legendary Miracle On Ice, when the USA’s band of amateur and collegiate ice hockey players beat the fearsomely omnipotent Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. That spectacle is fondly regarded as perhaps the greatest day of the underdog in the history of US sport. And what Bob Bradley’s footballers achieved at Spain’s expense at the Confederations Cup is not far behind.