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8月23日 Ole, OleI know that it's early, but I'm liking the looks of the EPL table these days. Manchester Utd. are back where they belong--on top, with all six points and a whopping seven goal difference. And Chelsea managed to fritter away Shevchenko's first Premiership goal and lose to Middlesboro. I have a nasty little smirk on my face right now because that loss, along with their recent defeats to the MLS All-Stars and Liverpool in the Charity Shield, will surely introduce no small degree of self-doubt to Roman's legion.
I do hope that FSC will replay the United-Charlton game sometime this week, just for the pleasure of watching Ole Gunnar Solksjaer score. I will admit to some relief that the team was able to hit three goals despite the absence of Rooney & Scholes, as last season's flat, scoreless performances are a bit too fresh in my mind. Yet despite the indignation produced by those red cards and the frustration over the Owen Hargreaves' soap opera, today has been devilishly delightful. 8月18日 Ramble onSo sayeth The Guy: The great is the enemy of the good. Or in my case, dreams of the great are the enemy of the mediocre. In this way he acknowledges the perfidy of perfectionism. That's why we procrastinators go through spells of profound inactivity, although some may view this as just plain laziness. We suffer from delusions of grandeur and we want every little thing that we do to be just so and as a result it's often much easier to do nothing at all. After nearly two weeks of writing nary a word, I'm probably lucky if I have even one reader left, but I think that I'll ramble on anyway... I fully intended to write something for Mike’s Blog Carnival, but that didn’t happen because I couldn’t get beyond a couple of very unoriginal thoughts and was too lazy to conduct any research. He suggested a challenging topic: what to do about the US Open Cup? Here are my platitudes: 1. Get a new name already! When I hear US Open Cup I start dreaming about a Nadal-Federer final—oops, that’s the US Open tennis tournament. Sorry! Lots of other sports fans start thinking about the golf tournament that’s held earlier in the summer. Don't confuse the sports consumer with a generic and uninspired name. 2. Find an influential sponsor who will effectively promote the tournament. Didn’t the World Series get its title not because the winners are the champions of the world, but because it was the New York World newspaper that sponsored the competition back in the early days of baseball? Getting someone to sponsor the tournament shouldn’t be all that hard—why not get Nike to do it and call it the Nike Cup?
3. As always, we need agents who are friendly to our cause—that is, we must recruit sports editors who will give space to soccer. The US Open Cup is a competition that is unique—as far as I know—in American sport. Of course, this sort of year-long, interleague tournament is an integral part of soccer in most other nations. I think that many sports fans would be at least mildly interested in this tournament if they were to learn about its unusual format and imagine their favorite baseball or basketball teams playing in a significant competition that runs parallel to the “regular” season. OK, enough of the US Open Cup. More ramblings… The Girl voiced a desire for a France shirt back in June. One with the name Henry and the number 12 emblazoned on the back. As I am not the sort of mother who finds it easy to deny her only child any one of her wishes, I went cyber-shopping. And all I can say is ooh-la-la! Because not only did I find a France shirt, I found one that came in a women’s size small!!! They were, of course, backordered during the World Cup. The shirt just arrived on Monday and it’s a beauty. A perfect fit, not big and boxy, but tailored to fit a small female. Leave it to the French to insist that even football shirts are worn with style. I noticed that women’s sizes were available for Italy, Germany, France, and, surprisingly—England. But none for the US. They had some “women’s soccer jerseys,” but they were the same big boxy things that flatter no one. Since we are trying to engineer a sporting revolution in this country (recall that “Don’t tread on me” was a Revolutionary War slogan), why not enlist fashion-forward females as foot soldiers? Smart looking, fitted, US shirts that sport the names Dempsey or Adu or Bocanegra will get soccer well-fixed in the nation’s consciousness. Well, maybe just in the consciousness of the college student population, but you have to start somewhere. I was supposed to go to the Fire game Wednesday night, but a train mishap got in the way of that. An Amtrak train hit a car in its path, snarling up commuter rail traffic to the western suburbs. The Guy walked through the door at 8:00, which was kickoff time at Toyota Park. I was delighted to read that attendance was at 14,000 on a Wednesday night (and delighted to hear that the Fire won, although miffed that I had missed it). I was going to wear The Girl’s Henry shirt, too. L Tomorrow is like Christmas Day, only better. It’s the first day of the long and always-dramatic English Premier League season. I did manage to put together a couple of teams for the London Times Fantasy League. Last season one team finished in 1800th-something place and another finished in 2500th-something place. No glory and no rewards, but plenty of fun indulging my delusional notions that I understand soccer. Nine months for about $20—surely fantasy football is an entertainment bargain. Final rambling: The Guy talked with a Romanian fellow on the bus who happened to be reading a copy of FourFourTwo. He learned that this man watched GolTv all the time, his ignorance of the Spanish language notwithstanding. Curious, I picked up the remote and started looking through the guide. Sure enough, we get GolTv. And much of the coverage is not Spanish. Not that that would matter if the game were important. We actually listened to a Fire game in Spanish in the car one night while we had to drive downstate. We recognized some of the names and the whole world knows what GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLL means. OK, ramble over. It's not pretty, but it's all the soccer stuff that's been floating in the gray matter lately.
8月6日 What a long strange trip it wasSomehow I forgot about soccer for the past couple of weeks. I usually forget about reality when I leave the state of Illinois, so I shouldn't be surprised that one of its essential elements also disappeared from the radar screen. And you know how if you eat even something tremendous like a chocolate chip cookie every day for a month, on the 31st day you're not as keen to hit the cookie jar as you were on the 1st day? Right, that meant that the marginal utility of another soccer match in late July was not quite where it had been on, say, June 9.
Amidst the process of unpacking, sorting through the mail, and getting the dog back I did find time to head over to Toyota Park last night. (Why does naming the stadium after a car company seem qualitatively different from naming it after the manufacturer of chewing gum? Yet another question to ponder). And I was jolted back to my own soccer-dominated reality in a most delightful way.
First of all, it took us longer to get to the stadium than we had planned. And that is a good thing because it meant that the game was sold out. Second, it did my heart good to commune with these fans, despite the numbers of blue-clad Chelsea supporters among them, including more than a few who sported smart new Ballack & Shevchenko shirts. The crowd was vocal, enthusiastic, and numerous enough that I would have had to wait 15 minutes for a slice of pizza. (Had to get the disgusting hot dog instead because I won't miss 1 minute of a game--grrr).
After being burned by Sir Alex two years ago when United showed up (well, not really) at Soldier Field to play Bayern Munchen, I didn't expect to see the likes of John Terry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and even Arjen Robben live and in the flesh--but I did! I am no Chelsea fan, but John Terry is a real favorite of mine so I will admit to being thrilled when he walked onto the pitch. And I was not the only one. Chicago's fans were fully aware and appreciative of the honor that had been bestowed upon them.
It is true that Chelsea's roster was far, far more familiar to me than the MLS All-Star lineup. I knew a grand total of four MLS players.
Before du Nord and some of you other loyal and knowledgable MLS fans start sputtering about Euro-snobbery, rest assured that I was wholeheartedly rooting for the MLS. Even if it had been United, I would have wanted the All Stars to win. I love the EPL and watch many more of its games than I do MLS matches, but there is no question that I want the guys from our league to beat the big boys.
And they looked superb, to my admittedly untrained eye. Jose Mourinho tried to write it off as simply a "training session," and the MLS wants to view it as more on the order of a certain hockey game that was played in Lake Placid in 1980. My guess is that it's something in between those extremes, delivering a significant boost to North American morale while still a "friendly" defeat that won't hurt Chelsea's collective ego too much.
As my brain has not yet fully returned to soccer cogitation mode, I'll sign off here. I have skimmed over the Soccer Blog Carnival entries and am once again overwhelmed by the super-skilled & smart denizens of the soccersphere. I believe that it was du Nord's carnival entry that bemoaned the determination of the powers-that-be to broadcast our sport in the same manner as it does baseball, football, and basketball. If that means BLASTING music in the stadium right up until the moment that the ball is kicked, I couldn't agree more. I mean, why do I have to SHOUT at The Guy just to be heard above that ridiculous noise??? And it's not because I disliked whatever the stuff was that they were playing, either. My reaction would have been the same if they had somehow produced Mick Jagger & Co. to sing Satisfaction up on the stadium's stage at the same decibel level.
Ok, Ok, I wouldn't have griped about the noise quite so much. But I still would have griped about getting shut out of the pizza.
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