Monday, June 24, 2019
Lessons of the Women's World Cup in the wake of Australia
Why am I watching so much of The Women's World Cup? It's a multiple choice question!
A. Because it's the beautiful game!
B. Because I am running an office pool and have to be able to discuss it all thoroughly and intelligibly with my co-workers even if they remain largely uninterested and vaguely ignorant of the whole thing.
C. Someone has to watch The World Cup or they might just give up and stop covering it on my computer.
D. I won't let the h8ers win! Suck it h8ers!
E. The more my heart breaks the stronger it becomes (RIP Australia).
And what have I learned this World Cup. This is also multiple choice!
A. It's only the beautiful game until I become invested in who wins.
B. I'm the only one who cares so it's only right that the teams I want to win should win!
C. The more I want a team to win the worse the officiating becomes.
D. The Zen soccer phrases "All to play for" and "It wasn't meant to be" might as well mean the same thing.
E. I just keep learning the same things over and over.
6 comments:
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I just watched the USA v Spain. If you have not watched it yet, please STOP READING. Scroll down for my thought.
ReplyDeleteI have only one thought, but it's not about the game on the pitch, being no so insightful about the game to warrant commentary. My thought is this: Why the )*&@#(^*$#( can't the announcer let it go for one second that losing to Spain would be a monumental, gigantic, enormous, T-Rex-ish loss for the US? I mean, the guy would *not* shut up about it! He would announce the movement of the ball and then boomerang right back to the narrative of what a HUGE MONUMENTAL ASTONISHING MIRACULOUS possibility of a US loss is before us. Mercifully, the other commentator, when she was allowed a word in, continued with insights about the game on the pitch. I'm actually a little nervous, because I think the guy's going to enter my blog reply to say something about the INFINITY OF POTENTIAL OF DARK MATTER AND STRING THEORY OF THE US POSSIBLY LOSING THIS GAME! Be careful, Feldenstein! He might take over the blog!
As a heavy soccer viewer (as you know), I can only say I suffer terribly from the announcing!!! So, I understand. Though their USA obsession was, well, understandable, as this is the soccer community they are deeply wound into, it was still irritating (yes, I watched it too!). In men's soccer having to endure the usual English announcers' combination of blandness and hometown rah rah rah is agonizing. The only one I sometimes like (and sometimes love) is Ray Hudson who is a passionate Scottish commentator doing La Liga games. He is full of colorful turn of phrase, is a Messi fan, but, most of all, is interested in beautiful soccer and often manages to focus his commentary on that exclusive of all the "who wins" narrative. Check him out (say, via youtube "ray hudson messi" for instance). It's a lot more how it should be done.
DeleteI am currently watching Canada v Sweden and pulling for Canada. I will be writing a blog post about USA game for tomorrow. Spain really did great, though that won't be my main point.
I loosely watched some of the Canada Sweden game so far. It is halftime. I rummaged around the house and did some cleaning and admired the kitchen cabinets, which I painted a few weeks ago. They came out so nice! This kind of deep blue against bare wood!
DeleteI will try to deliberately watch the second half. Anything I should look for? I will also YouTube that Scottish fellow.
Well, my response is late so I can't tell you what to watch for. My team lost again! Well, Sweden truly deserved it, and it came down to the goalies. Sweden's was great, Canada's not so much with Sweden's goal partly down to her bad judgement. It also came down to an aging legend being, sadly, over the hill as far as I could tell.
DeleteBlue sounds nice. I like blue.
Rooting for Germany now cause I get money if they win. But I like Netherlands too. All this seems to mean is that they'll both lose (I get pretty eeyorish about soccer).
Big game for Argentina men on Friday too (spoiler alert, Argentina will lose!).
"Hey could shave a mouse in his sleep and it won't wake up!"
ReplyDelete"Get that man an alfajores!"
"I tell you what, if Issac Newton was watching this man, he would be saying boy was i wrong? Astonishing from Lionel. Sweeter than a mother's kiss at bed time."
Delete