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10月28日 Just Wait Til Next Year...1. Penalties suck.
2. MLS should go to a single table format, eliminate the playoffs, and elevate the US Open Cup to the premier tournament in American soccer. What's wrong with a structure where each game is significant to the league championship? Are most Premiership players & fans bored with the weekly games? Of course, relegation/promotion would underline the significance of all games, but I'm not hallucinating right now (almost, but not quite), so I won't include that suggestion in my rant. The US Open Cup final could be played at the end of the season, just as the FA Cup final is in the English Premier League.
3. The Fire were doomed as soon as the 30 minutes of extra play were over. That is because I was one of their fans. No team that I have ever supported has won a penalty shootout.
4. The crowd at The Globe has given me hope for the future of soccer in America. We arrived about an hour before the game and snagged one of the last open tables. By game time spectators were standing three-deep in front of the bank of televisions. How could I have forgotten to wear my 1998 Double (MLS Cup & US Open Cup) scarf? Early-onset Alzheimers strikes again.
5. I recommend the Gorgonzola Salad at The Globe. The Guy enjoyed his Steak Salad. There was a really extensive list of beers from which to choose--too many to list. I played it safe with a Stella Artois and The Guy stuck with his favorite--Boddington's.
6. I am a little disturbed that we lost at least several months from our lives due to the pervasive cigarette smoke. I would have been less unhappy about this had the Fire won the match. Plus there will be dry cleaning bills--coat, slacks, sweater--to add financial injury to the insult of the Fire's loss.
7. Did I mention that penalties suck? More Fractured Football ThoughtsCall us crazy, but The Guy & I have a strong desire for a communal soccer experience. In a couple of hours, we're going to hop in the car and drive from our outpost here in the western suburbs to The Globe Pub on Irving Park Road in the city. The Globe is televising the second leg of the Fire's playoff series against the Revolution. We've never been there because it's not at all close to our fair city. We have a nice pub here called Quigley's but I'm not sure if they will show the game, since it's only being carried on Fox Soccer Channel. We have Fox here at the house of course, but we're curious about the Globe.
I wish that I had known about the Globe last Sunday morning. They showed the Man United-Liverpool match and served breakfast. Next big game, I'm there.
I do understand that it would be quite presumptuous of us soccer beggars to ask ESPN or ESPN2 to broadcast the MLS playoffs on a Saturday in October. Who are we to think that soccer should displace the Hot Dog Eating Championships and the Brat Eating World Championships? If you think that I'm joking, just check the listings--both those gems are part of this afternoon's lineup. Couldn't one of the MLS playoff games have been played and broadcast at that time instead? Just asking.
Continuing with the theme established in my last post:
Good: Wayne Rooney had a hat trick today in United's 4-0 victory over Bolton. United extended their goal differential lead over Chelsea, as the Blues beat Sheffield United by only 2-0.
Bad: Anyone who has Rooney on his/her Fantasy League team will pick up many points at my expense.
Clueless: I'm still harboring a fantasy of winning the London Times competition, even though the better of my two teams is currently in 12,000th-something place. And even if I did win, the puny little prize of 50,000 pounds won't go very far toward a flat in Chelsea. But that flat is the stuff that dreams are made of...
That's all that I have to share at the moment. I've hit that post-lunch, afternoon lull when an original thought is many light-years away.
Perhaps I'll have something interesting to report tomorrow.
10月23日 The Good, the Bad, and the CluelessI didn't get my wish on Sunday. The Fire did not score early and often, so the game wasn't dull and void of drama. And Man United didn't have the Liverpudlians singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by the end of the first half, either. I didn't see that game, but I suspect that it wasn't even as close as the 2-0 score indicates. Both my teams won, however, so that's Good.
And our seats for the Fire game left a bit to be desired. We faxed in our ticket order almost as soon as it was determined that the first game would be in Chicago, so I had foolishly entertained hopes that our seats would be nearly as good as they were for the US Open Cup Final. But they were in the third row of Section 124, smack dab in a corner. They were the kind of seats where you were better off watching the big TV screen when the action was at the other end of the field. Bad.
I shall not use this space to complain, however. That is because the third row of Section 124 afforded a superb view of Justin Mapp's curving, left-footed free kick that ultimately proved to be the game winner. There was sufficient action from the Fire in the first half--once they had begun to move the ball past the Rev's defenders--that I was ultimately very glad that we had those seats. I was also able to get a look at Clint Dempsey in the second half, which led me to ponder the following question:
Does anyone else get the feeling that he's not quite giving 100%?
Clint seemed oddly absent from this game, playing unlike someone who's participating in the playoffs. Just my highly impressionistic observation, based on a grand total of one data point.
Finally, here's a story that gets filed under the Clueless category. I was watching the last few minutes of the local news on the CBS affiliate here in Chicago just before 60 Minutes on Sunday. To be honest, I wasn't really watching the news. I was reading the Sunday paper and the news was just background chatter. But my ears perked up when the sports guy gave a recap of the Fire's victory over the Revolution. They showed the foul on Chris Armas that produced the free kick taken by Justin Mapp that I described above. Great coverage, right? Sure, except the sports announcer said that the Fire were awarded a penalty for taking down Armas and that Justin Mapp scored on a penalty kick and that it was Mapp's first goal of the year!
Yes, I do understand that the only reason that they ran that blurb was because Da Bears didn't play yesterday. But how hard can it be to scrape up an intern or fact-checker or someone who knows the difference between a free kick and a penalty kick? Someone who can go to the Fire's website and see that the goal was Mapp's second of the year?
They could give me a call...
Oh yes, we almost ran into Sunil Gulati on Sunday. Literally. We were walking through the hall way from the concession area to our seats and a stream of people crossed from one enclosed hallway to another. Sunil was the last one and he kind of bumped into The Guy. What are the odds of three soccer-loving economists nearly colliding in one little hallway?
10月22日 In praise of dull footballIn light of what's been happening in American football lately, I will take this opportunity to express my fervant wish for tomorrow--er, today:
1. May Manchester United score a quick 3 or 4 goals against Liverpool. Should this request reach Podaspheria's ear, perhaps she wouldn't mind inspiring Louis Saha to score those goals? He is currently a teammate on both my fantasy league teams. I want the rest of the match to be so flat and negative that Liverpool supporters give up and tune into snooker, darts, or cricket instead. Is it cricket season now?
Dream on, Susan. Liverpool's fans would still be singing You'll Never Walk Alone even if United were up by five goals. How delightful if the score were so lopsided that only the most delusional scousers entertain any hope that Liverpool could sneak back into the game.
2. Ditto for the Chicago Fire-New England Revolution playoff. I am going to the game and the weather is predicted to be miserable. Yet I am prepared to spend the nearly the entire 90 minutes sitting in a frozen stupor if my wish for an early, insurmountable Fire lead is granted. May New England's fans be so crushed that they'll shut off their TV's and go back to dreaming about the 2004 Red Sox.
These requests are necessary in light of three recent American football games that have been of interest to this household.
1. Da Bears' improbable, ugly victory last Monday night. For those of you not in the loop (groan--that was unintentional), the Bears trailed Arizona by 20 points and had great difficulty avoiding a turnover on each and every possession. Fortunately, it is possible to win football games via punt returns and defensive scoring.
2. Today's--yesterday's--Northwestern debacle. The Wildcats apparently had a 35 point lead over Michigan State at one point in the game. When we tuned in, they were up 38-17 before MSU almost casually scored 24 points to win 41-38. It is a good thing that The Girl has very little interest in American football, because she wasn't devastated by NU's appalling loss in its homecoming game. She did, however, find it to be "embarassing."
3. And now to the last-minute drama in South Bend. Though Notre Dame trailed by just four points, their sputtering offense needed to move the ball 80 yards without benefit of time-outs. Victory was improbable. But Brady Quinn got the ball where it needed to be: to Jeff Samardzija, whose journey into the end zone nearly caused the ND radio announcer to lose his voice. Delightful result, that. (We had been glumly listening to the radio broadcast while returning The Girl to Evanston).
These last-minute heroics are the reason that I'm not placing any special style requests with Podaspheria for the Fire-Revolution and United-Liverpool games. It doesn't matter to me if she inspires any football that is dramatic or exciting or close. Pretty goals are just icing on the cake of victory.
I have had enough last-second drama for one week.
10月17日 Of football, geometry, and ice creamThere's something happening here...
When I first took notice of Major League Soccer in 1998, there was something about its flavor that seemed a bit off to me. Like when you're used to high-butterfat real ice cream and someone slips you a scoop of anything that's "lite" (= fake).
I did love going to Chicago Fire games, despite the tugging feeling of loneliness that hit as soon as the cavernous hulk of Soldier Field loomed into view. (My fellow Americans who are reading this know exactly what I'm talking about). But the people who did show up were fully engaged in the game and it gave me a little thrill to feel that I was part of an otherwise underground society of soccer supporters. The early Fire had Peter Nowak and Hristo Stoichkov, so there was no shortage of on-field star power. And yet...forgive me...
I couldn't help but feel that the style of play that was served up at MLS games compared as poorly to the European stuff as, well, plain vanilla compares poorly to Ben & Jerry's Phish Food. Ah, this is so difficult to explain. I lack the vocabulary of a wine or food critic, so, dear readers, prepare yourselves for my tortured thoughts. I can't describe exactly why those Chicago Fire games seemed to be qualitatively different from anything that I had seen in the English Premier League or ESPN2's Champions League telecasts. I am not referring only to the players' skills, though that's part of it. The playing field seemed too narrow and there weren't as many long passes and the players seemed to be kind of clumped together around the ball and they weren't as good in the air. And try as I might, I could not tune out the visual dissonance that accompanies a soccer match that is played on an American football field.
You know the feeling when you go into an ice cream shop and there's a favorite flavor that you always get, but one day you feel as if you really ought to broaden your horizons, so you nobly choose something else? Every bite of that cone is a disappointment, because you didn't get what you truly craved. (Life is too short for such folly: now I always choose chocolate peanut butter, mint chocolate chip be damned).
Alas, for the longest time, MLS didn't even achieve mint chocolate chip status. It was just plain old chocolate chip.
But that was then and this is now. Even after our recent glorious binge--culminating in gelati magnifico on July 9--of the highest quality soccer, watching the Chicago Fire has been a delight. Sorry, I misspoke. Watching the MLS--All-Stars, the Fire, and the Fire's opponents--has been a delight. When we were in Circuit City Sunday looking at TVs and they had the Fire v. DC United on a couple of them, I found myself thinking, "Susan, I do believe that MLS has achieved chocolate peanut butter status. The passing, the speed, the teamwork, the ball skills, the urgency...who cares if it's not the Premiership or Serie A?"
Why do I sense that the Fire have arrived? I saw Andy Herron's game-winning goal against DC United, as elegantly constructed as a geometric proof, his high, rifling shot a fitting tribute to the dazzling architecture of the passing that had made it possible.
Q.E.D.!
The Fire may be chocolate peanut butter, but full disclosure means that I must describe Manchester United thusly: two piccolo scoops of gelati: one is crema and one is amarena. And this cone is consumed while meandering through the quiet back lanes of Venice, far from the madding crowd of tourists, the dulcet notes of a baroque guitar melody floating from the open window of a nearby palazzo.
I do understand the incongruity of describing my favorite English team in terms of an Italian dolce. I don't remember eating ice cream in England, though. Maybe just one of those little soft-serve cones with a Cadbury Flake stuck in it? Tasty enough, but unworthy of the Red Devils.
10月11日 I'd rather be anonymous, thanks very muchIn the comments section that followed my last post (geez, just about a month ago), I mentioned to The Guy (that would be Steve), that I wanted to see another Fire game at Toyota Park in 2006. A playoff game, of course.
Shortly after I posted that comment, the phone rang. It was Stacy with the Chicago Fire, offering to email me the latest playoff ticket information. (Stacy, do you read Soccer Orb)? I suppose that this is a case of gratefully accepting the good with the bad. The "bad" would be the lamentable fact that Fire supporters are relatively thin on the ground here in Chicago. That's why the Fire sales office has had our names in its Rolodex since the last millennium, which is of course a good thing for us. Somehow I don't think that the Bears ticket office is on a first-name basis with all of its fans. I've already snickered at the Cubs in the last comments section--now there's an organization that cheerfully accepts the money that its chumps, er, fans throw at it, all the while producing a record unmatched (since The Miracle of 2004), in post-season futility. The Cubs enjoy sellout crowds even if they don't show up to play (like this season), so something tells me that their salespeople don't need to make many personal phone calls to ticketholders.
The Guy and I were in on the ground floor with Da Fire. Does that mean that in say, 2056, they'll lead all of us doddering old-timers out on the pitch for a perfunctory half-time ovation?
That would be sweet, especially if MLS had become a true Premier League in the American sporting pantheon and the complementary tickets that the Fire had bestowed on us would have fetched a healthy premium from the hungry scalpers patrolling the gates outside Toyota Park.
I guess I'll enjoy those personal phone calls while I can.
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