Guests
by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, June 30, 2006 9:34 AM
Oh hey Sean ? The thing is, I love the current refereeing system because it feels so much like real life: isn't what you call the referee's "absolute, flawed, subjective authority" also a perfect description of the way in which we all live our lives? We are absolute authors of our own destiny and yet so often wrong, so frequently blind to the obvious foul, the step out of bounds, the ball over the line! How many times have we all thought about a night, a day, a year of our lives: if only we could see that again, slower, to know what we got wrong? Except for the start of the game and the end, we are all referees. I'm just glad we don't have to wear those goofy orthodontal Q-tip microphones strapped to one cheek. I think soccer's relentless, Beckettian horror is part of its great appeal: it just goes on, the clock always ticking and the game full of moments that seem, and often are, unfair. No stopping, rarely any do-overs, and never a replay review. The clods of dirt and the accidental whistle are part of the game. When David Beckham skied his penalty kick against Portugal to help ensure England lost its Euro 2004 quarterfinal, he looked back plaintively at the penalty spot, which seemed caked with mud ? and moved on. (He and 50 million Englishman will be remembering that dismal moment when England plays Portugal on Saturday.) In this way too the game feels like real life; soccer is the arthouse documentary to other sports' Hollywood. Even the pitch itself is stripped of artifice, and is the nearest sporting equivalent to life's blank canvas ? none of American football's measured hash-marks nor baseball's rigid structure, with its pyjama'd players sidling round and round the basepaths like doped up donkeys round a mill, worried lest they be called out for going too far outside the lines. Only basketball comes close to soccer's free-form, near-naked combination of speed and force. But something has gone wrong with professional basketball: the relationship of the size of the players to the size of the court is out of balance, and so too is the scoring ? a basket is too cheap to measure. They might as well be trading electricity. Loving every minute of
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Guests
by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, June 28, 2006 9:10 AM
Hey Matt, Incredible second game today, between the French and the Spanish! Morning game, however, between Brazil and Ghana: a total bummer. I've begun to hate Brazil for always winning and never looking like they deserve to win. What happened to John Lanchester's Brazil, the Brazil that made doing something as if your life depended on it, and doing it beautifully, into the same thing? That Brazil sure ain't in Germany! Even Ronaldinho stopped smiling and started jumping up and down in frustration when he didn't get a pass in the box. Ronaldo's goal was opportunistic and effective, but far from pretty. Adriano was offside for his. And I don't even remember the third one. Ghana played better, deserved to win, and STILL LOST: it stank. Meanwhile, I am feeling the whole French thing. Seeing Spain's racist coach and his squad of children (talented children) get handed tickets home by a bunch of multi-culti old Frenchmen made me think that the dream of an integrated Europe could still happen. Of course, this is a ridiculous thing to think, but that's what I thought. To me it was like the French team decided to come back from the dead just to prove a point, and that point was that riots in the Paris suburbs don't mean secular humanist Western culture is dead! Yes, ridiculous of me, but it's my World Cup. As of right now my pick to win is Italy. What about
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Guests
by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, June 27, 2006 9:07 AM
Matt! New York ? and America in general, since I've been traveling all this month ? is such a strange place to be watching. I've been in bars for all the England games, and the fans have been pumped, caped, painted-of-face, generally obnoxious. For the opener against Paraguay I was at San Francisco's Mad Dog in the Fog, at 5:30 AM, next to a pseudo-skinhead/computer programmer who would shout, "Shut up, you yank!" and "Fucking wanker!" every time any announcer with an American accent said anything, intelligent or un. During halftime ABC told us to stick around after the game for an "essay" by one of the network commentators. An American guy turned to the pseudo-skinhead and said, with perfectly pitched sarcasm, "I think you're really going to enjoy the essay." I laughed. In response the ps started shouting at the American, "Are you stupid?! Are you retarded?!" I think the fact that he was far from his own people made him feel like he could behave like a caricature. Similar situation yesterday at Milwaukee's charmingly named The Highbury, which was full of enthusiasm, cigarette smoke, and bad soccer ? yes, the general level of play from England has been atrocious. Only Beckham has looked good to me. I didn't realize he was sick. What's the deal? Favorite games so far have been Ghana, Italy in the first round, where both played beautifully, and Portugal, Holland yesterday (I always like a red-and-yellowcardfest). Today's Australia, Italy made me think that FIFA needed to completely change the current system in which referees have absolute, flawed, subjective authority ? to go out of the World Cup, after playing heroically, on a bogus penalty: it's just not right! I also think Francesco Totti (despite his improved hairstyle) should be run out of the sport for not coming clean about the whole thing. How will he sleep? Disgusting. 32 years in the desert for Australia, they finally qualify, only to go out in the 93rd minute like that, while Totti sucks his thumb?! Of course, now Australians understand that soccer is all about tragedy, not glory. We Americans seem to be getting that, too. Great tournament so
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Guests
by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, June 26, 2006 10:23 AM
Dear Sean, Can this World Cup get any better? Great goals and great saves, drama and heartbreak, the thrill of individual genius and incredible team performances ? I won't soon forget Argentina's second goal against Serbia & Montenegro (it seems ridiculous to call it Cambiasso's, since 24 passes made it such a shared masterpiece); nor Mexico storming out of the gate to surprise, and nearly beat, Argentina! There's even, as the novelist John Lanchester points out on his excellent World Cup blog, a gratifying absence of silly hair. I've been watching the World Cup since 1982, and I don't remember a better one. Typically, in London there's a palpable sense of disappointment. Every available surface in town may still be covered with the Flag of St. George, but England have played so poorly that even having topped their group and beaten Ecuador in the Round of Sixteen brings little cheer. This is true to the city's temperment: London always feels to me like it's in the midst of some awful breakup, where a couple can't say anything right to each other ? it's a tense town, bitter at others and angry with itself, prone to banging doors and gray-hearted grief. This is part of its enormous appeal, of course, and the always wise Geoff Dyer captures it best in The Thinking Fan's Guide: "Something in the English heart craves defeat, shame, the taste of ashes in the mouth." England's miserable performance on the football pitch has only intensified the feeling, and nobody but The Sun expects them to beat Portugal in the Quarterfinal game on Saturday. Almost nobody on the team has played well: Beckham is sick, Rooney is still finding his feet after two months out, Lampard looks dizzy and Terry distracted. Only Gerrard has played with any sense of menace ? and only briefly. The most memorable moment so far was the bizarre injury Michael Owen sustained in the first minute of the game against Sweden. He has torn his cruciate ligament and will be out of football for at least nine months ? the latest act in a career that is beginning to feel like Greek tragedy. He played with such boyish abandon, and had so great a nose for goal, in the 1998 World Cup and for Liverpool. But in the past three years he left Liverpool for Real Madrid (where he mainly warmed the bench), returned to the Premiership in Newcastle stripes (where he promptly broke a toe), and now this. It was such a fluke, and there was the strangest look on his face as he fell ? no twisted agony, just slow, sorrowful surprise, like he had already ghosted out of his body and was looking down at the footballer he used to be. Even the BBC commentator struggled for the right words to describe it, eventually settling on saying he had "broken down," as though he were a prize race horse, hobbling in the dust, waiting to be shot. There is no joy in the Big Smoke, even with England still in it. How about in New York?
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