OK footylovers, we're at the end of the group stages and what a whirl wind trip it has been. As I wrote last week, Fans all over England have been thankful to the French for putting the ass into embarrassing and the func into dysfunctional. Well the french truly went the way of waste water by jumping the South African shark. Will anyone really take them seriously ever again? Italy, the team of old, looked like the team of old. They played like a bunch of old men arguing over bocce ball in the park. To get kicked out of the group stage after being put in the weakest group is just plain sad. Note to Robert Lippi, if you're going to play defensive footy then you need to have good defenders.
As for our boys of the St. Georges Flag. Well, its been a roller coaster of emotions. As you should know I am a Mancunian that has lived in the New York area for 25 years. I bleed Man United and world cup soccer. You can imagine my upset at realizing that my company's kick off meeting was being held at exactly the same time as the England vs Slovenia game. The only thing helping was that the US was playing Algeria. That allowed me to be the official keeper of all things "soccer" for my colleagues in the room. I knew that my iphone would make me look like i was distracted and that I was suffering from "Crackberry-itus" however by having my netbook open it would look like i was taking notes. This was a great plan as it worked out. I positioned myself at the very side of the room, FYI students if you hang out at the back of the room it's assumed you're goofing off if you hang out at the side then everyone assumes that you couldn't get close enough. With my netbook open I had the gamecast running for both games, even I'm not ballsy enough to run ESPN3 with it's live coverage.
When Defoe scored it coincided with someone's speech finishing which allowed me to jump up and applaud. I will admit that I may have looked a little over-enthusiastic, which goes against my grain. I'm a bit of a renegade that works for a very conservative bluechip company. Sarcasm is usually my style, that and an acute ability to use profanity whenever and wherever possible. When the USA scored at the dying end, I slowly walked up to a close friend, and lead speaker, with a small note that gave him the score and also recommended that we take a break so that we could at least check out Youtube.
I was so proud of our boys, both teams. However all I could think was why the heck did we finish 2nd in the group with Germany and most likely Argentina ahead of us. Whilst Team USA will face Ghana & Korea (no disrespect to either nation) but bloody hell!!!! Yes our games will be great, and a world cup where you have these types of match ups is brilliant but couldn't we for once have it easy. Or perhaps its better, we don't do "easy" very well. In fact we get distracted and become lethargic and disconnected. The idea of a England vs USA Semi-final will do great for the game here in America.
so here's to a really great weekend of footy. In the words of Rik Mayall - C'mon En-ga-land, you noble Englishmen!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment