Soccer Orb: May, 2006

May 29

DaMarcus Doesn't Dive!

Was anyone else at the Venezuela friendly Friday night?

Attendance, at just under 30,000, was better than I had expected. Although the upper decks were empty, the lower levels were mostly filled. I have to admit that my heart sank when we pulled into Cleveland three hours before the game and the very first supporters we saw outside the Browns' stadium were draped in a vast Venezuelan flag. "Geez!" I fumed. "Can't the powers that be in US soccer get it right? Is there a large Venezuelan ex-pat community in Cleveland that somehow slipped under their radar?" But that was a wasted worry moment as I didn't see more than a handful of people who weren't supporting the US.

And that, dear readers, brings me to today's topic.

The joys of attending soccer matches, as opposed to watching them on TV, are many. The television screen cannot do justice to the flow and complexity of play and especially to the incredible swiftness of so many of the players. And who doesn't love the atmosphere before and during the games? There's always a little shock when I see someone in, say, an Inter Milan or a Barcelona shirt. OK, right, I'm not the only person in this country who has an interest in one of the European leagues. Imagine if one of the aliens who landed in Roswell (wink, wink), lonely and bewildered after wandering through the desert, had suddenly met up with a group of creatures who spoke his own planet's dialect. That would be me when I'm at a real, live soccer match.

And sometimes there are moments like this...

A man sitting right behind me at the game seemed to know more about soccer than the group of guys that he was with. By that I mean that he knew most of the players' names and that yellow card + yellow card = red card. He was one of those people who kept up a running stream of commentary throughout the match. Here were some of his gems:

None of the guys on the field tonight will play one minute in Germany! None of them! Bobby Convey plays in the MLS. Tim Howard collects a million dollars a year just to sit on the bench. He (speaking of Josh Wolff), likes to dribble the ball in the box and take a dive. That's the problem with (DaMarcus) Beasley: he dives a lot.

Mind you, anyone can get their facts mixed up (especially yours truly). And some of the statements were factually correct (Tim hardly played at all last year after the arrival of van der Sar; let's hope he's the regular keeper at Everton next season). I do not advocate administering a Jeopardy-style exam to anyone who wishes to attend a MLS or US national team match. But what bugged me about this fellow's statements was the tone of authority with which he expressed them. He was infecting the innocent minds of his colleagues! They will spread the word that DaMarcus Beasley dives!!! I think what the guy meant was that DaMarcus, being slight of frame, has at times had difficulties remaining upright.

Did I turn around and say anything? No, of course not. Remember Marty McFly's dad in the first Back to the Future? I'm not very good at confrontation.

I will, however, take this opportunity to set the guy straight. If you're out there, sir, please tune to Fox Soccer Channel when they are televising a Serie A match from Italy. You will not wait long before you will be treated to as many examples of diving as you care to watch.

May 24

Running a World Cup Office Pool

I hope to convince a few readers that March should not be the only sanctioned time to run a friendly office pool. Why not piggy-back on college hoops’ success and put together a fun and engrossing contest focusing on the world’s game? It may help foster international goodwill when Jim over in engineering is hanging on every Brazilian set piece and Pam in accounting is praying that the Azzurri defense can protect yet another 1-0 lead.

Now Jim and Pam may not know a whole lot about the beautiful game, but if the format of the pool is structured so that they don’t have to be experts to have a chance, they may be happy to participate. Many pools have fallen flat because either too much knowledge or too much luck is involved. The format I’m about to describe is a nice compromise. Skill in picking teams is rewarded, but the playing field isn’t so slanted that neophytes will shy away. It worked for us in ’98 and ’02. See what you think.

Format

Pick one team from each of the 8 groups. You don’t get to pick all the odds-on favorites, though. In fact, the composition of your picks must be:

2 number 1 seeds

2 number 2 seeds

2 number 3 seeds

2 number 4 seeds

The seeds within each group are determined by the odds of winning outright given by some established sports betting service like William Hill or Ladbroke’s.

Using William Hill’s quoted odds as of today (May 24), the group seeds look like this:

Group Seed Team Odds

A 1 Germany 8/1

A 2 Poland 100/1

A 3 Ecuador 400/1

A 4 Costa Rica 500/1

B 1 England 13/2

B 2 Sweden 40/1

B 3 Paraguay 200/1

B 4 Trinidad & Tobago 1000/1

C 1 Argentina 8/1

C 2 Holland 12/1

C 3 Ivory Coast 50/1

C 4 Serbia & Montenegro 100/1

D 1 Portugal 20/1

D 2 Mexico 50/1

D 3 Iran 500/1

D 4 Angola 750/1

E 1 Italy 8/1

E 2 Czech Republic 40/1

E 3 USA 80/1

E 4 Ghana 250/1

F 1 Brazil 9/4

F 2 Croatia 66/1

F 3 Australia 80/1

F 4 Japan 200/1

G 1 France 12/1

G 2 Switzerland 150/1

G 3 South Korea 200/1

G 4 Togo 500/1

H 1 Spain 12/1

H 2 Ukraine 66/1

H 3 Tunisia 400/1

H 4 Saudi Arabia 750/1

The scoring is as follows: A team gets 2 points for a win and 1 point for a tie. These points are then multiplied by the team’s seed. For example, say the US and Czech Republic battle to a draw. Anyone who has the Czech Republic would get 1 point for the draw times 2 (their seed number) for a total of 2. Those who chose the US among their 8 teams would receive 3 points. A victory for a # 4 seed would net 8 points for anyone clever/lucky enough to have chosen them. The only exception to this scoring system is in the 3^rd place match. For that, the winner is given 1 point times the seed rather than 2.

The points for all 8 of your teams are combined over the course the tournament and the player with the highest total wins.

The cost to play can vary, but $10 per person is an amount that seems to make winners happy without upsetting the losers too much (especially if the winner brings in doughnuts to celebrate). A winner-take-all format is fine or the pot can be split so that other top finishers get a taste.

You may want to introduce a tie-breaker, as well. Ours is to guess the total number of goals scored throughout the tournament. Fours years ago that total was 161.

It’s amazing how avid your co-workers can be when the banter surrounding a well-run pool sparks their interest. Try it and see.

[Submitted by Dr. Statto]

May 23

Guestbook

Of Chasms

Last week I began reading Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World. Some of you may be familiar with this book, in which the author examines the planet-shrinking, market-expanding, culture-homogenizing force known as globalization through the prism of the game that some of us call soccer and most call football. One reviewer described it as the sort of thing that would result if Thomas Friedman collaborated with Nick Hornby and I can't improve on that. I recommend it for those among you whose interests gravitate toward the game's cultural and historical origins.

The last chapter that I read yesterday was called "How Soccer Explains the Sentimental Hooligan." The subject was English hooliganism in general and the behavior of a very active, although somewhat aged, hooligan organizer and longtime Chelsea supporter in particular.

After reading it I felt like a fool.

In my previous entry--the one about my little jaunt to Highbury with The Girl--I tried to convey my delight at witnessing one of the signs (literally) of just how different the experience of an English soccer fan is from ours. (To my vast international audience: I'm an American). Away supporters in England, and elsewhere probably, are kept separate from those who pull for the home side. When my starry-eyed gaze fell upon those signs in the Arsenal tube stop (directing home & away supporters in opposite directions), it was something akin to a first glimpse of L'arc de Triomphe or Big Ben--Oooh! I'm not in Kansas anymore! Well, not exactly, but you see what I mean.

And yet the separation of home and away supporters, a curiosity to Americans, may very well have saved some lives. Of course I knew about hooliganism, but I hadn't really thought about either its practice or its intent--that would be grievous bodily harm--very much. It's tempting to dismiss the person whom Foer interviewed as a boastful, but ultimately insignificant, loser. No such luck. The modern miracle of the internet, cell phones, and relatively inexpensive transportation costs have simplified the entire process of organizing soccer-related mayhem.

Why did reading about the Sentimental Hooligan embarass me? It's this: I feel as if I had been a giggly, dim-witted tourist oohing and ahing at a WWI battlefield (Verdun, maybe?), "Oh, there was a war here? But the fields are so pretty now!!" I admit that this analogy overstates the situation, but I still should have known better than to mindlessly admire so much about the way that any non-American supports soccer. I think that it's because soccer has been so marginalized by the indifferent and often hostile American media and sports fans. I want to be part of a soccer tradition that just doesn't exist here in the U.S. What I need to accept is that I already am part of a tradition--a tradition that is in its infancy. It is true that there are too many MLS spectators who don't follow the game with the intensity of fans elsewhere in the world. It is true that many of these people will head for the hot dog stand while their side is taking a corner kick. It is, however, also true that we don't have to fear roving gangs of thugs who only use the sport as a vehicle for picking fights.

That's one chasm that I don't want to bridge.

May 19

A Lost Opportunity on the Piccadilly Line

Arsenal, Highbury, Henry...

This is not, repeat, not another tribute to the north London football club, the empty hulk of its now-idle stadium, or its superstar striker. In fact, there's really no reason to mention Thierry Henry in this post. But can any one of us actually say or write "Arsenal" without Henry's image coming to mind? I didn't think so. And I'm no Arsenal fan. I was, however, very disappointed that they couldn't hold on to that 1-0 lead against Barcelona.

I have been inside the bowels of Highbury. I, an American woman, admirer and supporter of Manchester United, had the good luck to learn that free tours of the fabled pitch were available on Fridays during the off-season. All I had to do was show up outside its doors and conceal my allegiances for an hour or so one cool and damp London afternoon a few years back.

I would be dishonest if I said I found Highbury to be beautiful or awe-inspiring. I did appreciate the somber gray look of the houses that lined the streets just across from its tall red walls. In that way it was much like Fenway or Wrigley in that it had obviously been constructed before automobile-related logistics mattered to anyone. I also remember being annoyed that someone had chosen to display, in a sort of pictorial history of the team, a large photo of Ryan Giggs being knocked to the ground. (I suppose I shouldn't blame them for not using a photo of Giggs after he had scored the winning goal against Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final replay from the previous season). But I digress.

My very favorite memory of our afternoon excursion has to do with something that wasn't even inside the stadium. To get to Highbury, we had taken the tube to the stop called "Arsenal" on the Piccadilly line. As you leave the station, there were two signs above the turnstiles that caught my eye. One said "Home Supporters" and had an arrow pointing travelers in the proper direction. Another sign said "Away Supporters" and, you guessed it, it directed these people in the opposite direction.

I just loved that.

I probably shouldn't smile at that memory. Why were those signs posted? Well, the short answer is "hooliganism," though I don't think that Arsenal fans are known for this more than other European sides. And of course there's nothing quaint and quirky about the prospect of violence. I just enjoyed those signs because they reminded me that I was indeed an alien visitor to a very foreign land, one where the spectators cared deeply and passionately about the outcome of the match. My guess is that both the home & away fans at Highbury matches didn't get up every five minutes to check out the concession stands. (One time at Fenway there was a family seated in front of us who bought treats for the kids just about every inning. I think they spent more time figuring out what to eat next than sweating over whether the Red Sox would hold on to their lead. That must have been one expensive afternoon for them. I don't mean to malign Red Sox fans in general because their passion for their team and the game is well-known).

I was too lazy and foolish to have taken a picture of that sign in the Arsenal tube stop. And now I'll never get the chance.

May 18

Kickoff

Enough already.

I've stared at this screen for a good ten minutes, rejecting too many ideas about how I can get this blog off the ground. And then I had an epiphany--probably the first of three or so that I'll have today--that went something like this:

I am not going to spoil this blogging thing by agonizing over every little word and nuance!

That means you, dear readers, are in for a bit of suffering these first few days. But please bear with me, for I do have a plan, clumsy and ill-defined though it may be. This little corner of cyberspace is on its way to becoming a repository of stories that explore, in a roundabout way, why I love this game (oops, I think I stole that phrase from a Major League Baseball ad. Sorry). And since I have very little idea of exactly why I love soccer--really, do I have get analytical about it? Can love of chocolate, coffee, or anything be reduced to a mathematical formula?--you're going to see stories on this space that are literally all over the map.

Of course, I have to get the technology thing figured out first. I am desperately hoping that MSN has made blogging idiot-proof. Otherwise, I may be in trouble. I do remain reasonably confident that I can get my blurbs out there on a regular basis. Comments and opinions are encouraged, even from those who stumble on this space and are compelled to inform me that I am mistaken in caring about soccer.

Like the Comcast cable phone operator a couple of years ago. I called to order the pay-per-view of Manchester United v. Liverpool one weekend morning. I have since stopped doing this, as it seems to be directly correlated with a United loss. Anyway, the bored-sounding guy on the other end of the line said something like, "You want to order that soccer game? That's just a bunch of guys running up and down the field for no good reason."