World Cup Ruminations

As a self-proclaimed World Cup novice (apart from this year, I've watched about .5 games a tournament since the early 90's), I hesitate to burden the interwebs with my poorly conceived Cup commentary. That said, I've never been big on restraint (I did, after all, popularize the side cup) and thus feel compelled to add my own two cents.

For those of you off at baseball games, church, and such, I'll bring you up to speed on Sunday's matches. England beat Ecuador 1-0, "whilst" Portugal survived a disgraceful display of officiating (and something like a gazillion yellow and red cards) against Holland - also 1-0. I wound up picking Portugal to win it all in one of my office pools, so I've developed a bit of a vested interest. (It became difficult to find a suitable underdog winner due to my stated distaste for local favorites England, real favorites Brazil, France (just because), the Axis of Evil teams, and any team without at least one player sporting a euromullet (that's Spain's Fernando Torres in his longer mullet days).

Anyway, as we've progressed through the nascent stages of this year's tournament, I've become more and more enthralled at how player "injuries" are handled. Does anyone else find footballers as adept at melodramatic displays of pain and anguish (often after tripping on their own feet) as their NBA counterparts? I particularly enjoy watching the replays, when the fallen Striker realizes the match has moved on and quickly returns to his feet to continue play. In those instances when the player is actually injured, I've been surprised by a few things. For one, the trainer always brings out a stretcher, which alarmed me until I realized that it carries no correlation to the severity of the injury. In fact, it's quite likely you'll see the player sub back in minutes later. As well, the trainer appears to carry with him a magic spray, which does wonders when applied to the area of injury. You know it's only a matter of time until they start selling that isht at Walmart. Which means, of course, that it's only a matter of time until suburban American teenagers try out a new household inhalant.

I'll save my other thoughts for later, in hopes of spacing out the ignorance into more manageable pieces...