This afternoon Christopher declared to his mother, “I want to watch TV, please! I want to watch soccer, for a little bit.”
And he did: the first half-hour of the Newcastle-Machester United match that I had saved to the DVR over the weekend.
(This post could also have been titled “A Moment of Maternal Dismay.”)
Quick! Someone check Alexi Lalas’ beard for his stash of controlled substances! His recent comments labeling the Premiership as “inferior” to the MLS are clearly the result of a hallucination of some kind. Oh, wait, he doesn't have the beard anymore.
He seems to be engaging in some MLS boosterism, which is fine with me as far as that goes, but this is pretty clearly damaging to his reputation and credibility and, unfortunately, damaging to the league as well.
Dave O'Brien, while calling the England-Portugal World Cup quarterfinal match commented on the 79% market-share viewership in England for their previous World Cup match. Color commentator Marcelo Balboa, without apparent irony, said that "this is where US soccer is trying to get to...where we need to grow as a sport."
Soccer fan though I am, this naïve and quixotic comment had me doing a spit-take with my Ovaltine.
Kottke notes the New Yorker report on the early exit from the World Cup by the US and ponders what the US soccer team might be like if current NBA players like Allen Iverson had grown up playing soccer instead of basketball.
The US might actually live up to their 5th-place FIFA ranking.
So the US fails to advance to the second round of the World Cup. Perhaps a repeat of their exciting 2002 run was too much to ask, but I still can't help feeling bitter disappointment at their early exit.
They had a tough group. They got screwed over by the referees. Whatever.
Basically, only half the team showed up. The two players who showed so much promise in 2002 failed rise to the occassion. Landon Donovan and Damarcus Beasley were sluggish and disoriented. Bruce Arena deserves a huge chunk of the blame, though. His choice to go with Brian McBride as the lone striker was bizarre. McBride put forth a yeoman effort, but he's no speedster and the his hard work to win balls in the air was wasted due to the lack of support. I just heard the statistic of the tournament for the US team: 4 shots on goal in all of their 1st round games combined.
Oh, and can I tell you how awful the ESPN/ABC announcers are? Marcelo Balboa drives me nuts and Dave O'Brian means well, but he's just not knowledgable about the game. Adrian Healy and Tommy Smyth are the announcers to listen to. Them or the guys on Telemundo.
This year I'm getting a jump on planning for the RIJF by sifting through most of the acts on the RIJF website and entering them into my calendar. This has thrown a major prioritization problem into sharp relief. Not only do I have a couple of major milestones for a work project landing during jazz fest week, but the 2006 World Cup happens to open on the same day as the festival.
I had planned on recording the World Cup games anyway, but the problem is going to be finding viewing time. Not that I care all that much about Poland vs. Ecuador, but still, I'm in a bit of a panic. And then what if the Sabres advance to the Stanley Cup semifinals?
Oh yeah, plus, I have my family to think about.
While watching the excellent Arsenal v. Aston Villa match today, I was struck by this line spoken by the commentator:
It was a ponderous ball played by Arsenal, in a game with no room for ponderousness.
Now, where on the US TV dial (since Howard Cosell's retirement ) would you find an announcer who would even know the meaning of ponderous, let alone use it as part of the running commentary of a game?
I'm not trying to make an argument that soccer is somehow inherently better, or more intellectual, or superior in any way to American football. But the game of soccer is (in general1) more graceful and as such is more conducive to flowery prose. Luck and individual effort plays a large role in a game's outcome such that commentators may describe an individual effort as "ambitious" and the results as "deserved" (or not).
Again, I'm not necessarily picking on American football; after all, it's an entirely different sport and different sports culture. I reserve most of my criticism for US soccer commentators. I never cringe harder or yell at my tv screen more than when I'm watching soccer being called by US commentators. First off, they seem to feel the need to fill all the available airtime with something, anything, just so long as one of them is talking. English commentators, when the game is speaking for itself will just shut up, maybe calling out the names of players as possession changes. American commentators would discuss Claudio Reyna's hangnail problem or what Bruce Arena had for breakfast if they thought they could avoid a little dead air.
During the 2002 World Cup, I would sometimes intentionally listen to Telemundo's Spanish-language broadcast just to avoid the US announcers. Here's hoping ESPN hires some Brits for this year's World Cup. Or, better yet, just pick up the BBC's feed. That, or I need to learn Spanish.