Before Sunday, it had been at least eight years since I'd watched an entire soccer game. I know I was mildly interested in the 1998 World Cup, but even then, I'm not sure if I watched an entire game, start to finish. It's not out of the realm of possibility that I've never seen all 90 minutes of a soccer game.
So I decided on Sunday, with nothing better to do and with my beloved Phillies in a free fall, that I'd watch the World Cup final game between Italy and France. I'd been following, in my own half-assed way, the results of the tournament so far, without actually watching much other than highlight reels; I was aware that many people hated the ESPN announcers, that people were paradoxically concerned with both the excessive yellow- and red-carding and the excessive thuggery and violence (not to mention excessive diving), and, of course, that the United States didn't make a whole lot of ripples (by the way, Ghana, if you think you're so tough, you wanna throw hands, military style?). I also noticed that my buddy Jim Noir is starting to make inroads in America in the form of adidas commercials. You've got to start somewhere, I suppose...
Anyway, the first problem I encountered, which comes up so often in championship bouts in any sport, was that I didn't care at all who wins. Unless you're a die hard obsessive fan, you need somebody to root for to stay interested in the game. Only somewhat arbitrarily, I picked France's side. I'm closer to being French than I am to being Italian (French Canadian blood on my mom's side of the family, no Italian at all), I disliked Italy because of that nasty elbow from a guy whose name I think was de Rossi (no relation to Portia, I'm assuming) into the face of my fellow American Brian McBride, and, above all, the French were underdogs. Plus Zinedine Zidane's name sounds like a James Bond villain, and his sharp widow's peak helps with that image.
Of course, anybody who watched the game knows that there was a good reason to dislike France that came up in about the 110th minute, as Zidane, the superstar... Well, you probably know what he did, and words fail me when trying to describe how absurd, idiotic, and inexplicable his actions were. I guess "absurd, idiotic, and inexplicable" work. (Unintentionally hilarious side note: note that on the linked video, the French announcer immediately begins shouting "Why?! Why?!" after the headbutt.)
So Italy won in penalty kicks. Penalty kicks struck me as a stupid and anticlimactic way to end a game, especially a final game. My thinking was: they just played for 120 minutes to decide on a world champion in soccer. Shouldn't they finish it by, you know, playing soccer? On the other hand, it was clear that both sides were completely exhausted by the time the extra periods ran out. France seemed to have to take out their two best players (not counting the red-carded Zidane) because they were too tired to play on. If the teams had to play any longer, the winning goal would likely have come on a stupid mistake that never would have been made if not for the exhaustion, and that would have been even more anticlimactic. So I guess I'm ok with the penalty kicks.
So did I learn anything? Am I a soccer fan now? My overall impression was pretty much what I had before: for the casual fan, soccer is a game of mind-numbing tedium, interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliant excitement (the two goals and Zidane's oh-so-close header come to mind). I'm sure that there are layers and layers of nuance and subtlety that make the game interesting to the hardcore fans (I'm constantly explaining this to the people who mindlessly say that baseball is boring), but I'm not willing to devote that kind of time or effort to soccer. I'll probably be watching in 2010, though.
Final note: some people may be riled by my constant use of the word "soccer" instead of "football." Here's the thing: In America, it's called soccer, not football. Football means something else here. If you're going to get upset about that, you might as well also be offended by the fact that I call the host nation of this year's Cup "Germany" instead of "Deutschland." Got it?
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