FUTBOL: "THE BEAUTIFUL GAME" or OPERA BUFFO?

While many of us, well, some of us, will be glued to the screen for tonight’s US vs Portugal World Cup match, it seems Ron Vazzano might not be.  Or will he?

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THEIR CUP RUNNETH OVER

 by RON VAZZANO

 

th-3This is the quadrennial year for the World Cup in which about 3,200 countries (32 actually…it only seems that way to this bystander who doesn’t really “get” this sport), will compete for supremacy in the world of Soccer. This is serious stuff. And there literally could be blood, as there once was for a poor guy who came up short in the contest.

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Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1994

 

     BOGOTA, Colombia — Angry at Colombia’s elimination from the World Cup soccer tournament, gunmen Saturday shot and killed Andres Escobar, the player who      accidentally scored a goal against his own side in a match with the United States and helped seal the team’s fate, police said.

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Mr. Escobar’ fatal boo boo was the equivalent of half of the only two goals the U.S. would score by their own feet (or heads) over the course of the four games they played that year! Which brings me to a question I have vocalized on several occasions to devotees of the sport —much to my own peril: how can you follow a sport in which scoring occurs about as frequently as a solar eclipse?

 

guillermo-ochoa-mexicoThere is such a profound imbalance between offense and defense, that not only is it hard to score, but so too, is even the potential to score. It is not uncommon to see a goalie only have to make about three saves an entire game. In another low scoring sport, hockey, New York Ranger Goalie Henrik Lundqvist made an astounding 48 saves in a 3-2 loss in the Stanley Cup final this month.

 

Of course in hockey, they are on skates and can move up and down a rather compact rink at speeds of almost 30 MPH. In soccer, men in cleats have to traverse a field larger than the state of Delaware, with the opposing goals being in different area codes.

 

“All Americans care about is scoring,” I’ve been ‘castigatingly’ told. “You have to appreciate the footwork and ball control.”

 

leo-messi-balances-ball-on-headIf I wanted to watch great ball control without the use of hands, I would watch a seal balancing a ball on its nose. Though come to think of it, with the Ed Sullivan Show long gone, where could I actually get to see that these days?

 

Here I am making sport of another guy’s sport, one played around the globe, while I have waxed unabashedly poetic and philosophic and even theological, on the wonder and beauty of baseball. Which for many, is a game that can bore them to tears for its being far too slow moving and ungoverned by a clock. So while acknowledging my chauvinism on the matter, I turn my attention to time and clock, and the Alice in Wonderland way in which they are handled in soccer.


ResizedGuiseppePagliacciTime in a soccer game is not real, but alleged. While claiming to play for ninety minutes,  those minutes include: time that the ball is knocked out of bounds and therefore out of play …the time that expires  as teams leisurely set up for corner kicks and penalty kicks and the like… the stoppage of play by a referee’s whistle for some infraction, which is then often contested by the perpetrator, as if doing a scene from Pagliacci…the team celebrations of hugging, kissing, rending of garments, and in general, going into seizures  over the sheer improbability over what has just occurred. And all the while the clock keeps ticking…

 

imageOf course, if a player is seriously injured to the point where he must be carried off the field, or given last rites, they will add a few minutes to the contest in compensation. Though that too will be vague, and there will be no counting down of seconds by the fans as the game nears its end, as you will get in other clock-sports. No one really knows when the end is near. Suddenly, a whistle blows. Game. You would think in a sport where it is already so daunting a task to score a goal, not a precious second would go uncounted.

 

But all that aside, the World Cup is a spectacle. And spectacles are fun. And who doesn’t like a spectacle? (Aside from maybe a participant from Columbia.). And I’ll tune in if it gets interesting as the Cup moves along towards its finale on July 13th. I’ve been known to watch Synchronized Swimming, if the U.S. was closing in on another Gold. My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of dominancy. Of thee I sing.

 

UnknownYet, when “we” won that first game against Ghana 2-1 earlier this month, while scoring the fastest American goal ever in World Cup history at the 32-second mark, and a soccer bar’s window in Seattle was shattered(Reckless in Seattle?), I wondered if a record was broken along with that window, for the Jerkiest Sports Bar Moment for a game that decided nothing.

 

Imagine if the U. S. of A. were somehow, one day, ever to win one of these things what might break out?

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The odds of that happening this year, as of this soliloquy, are about 250-1 according to London bookies. Who of course drive on the wrong side of the road.

 

And for all my issues with the sport and its culture, I will continue to root, root, root for the home team: USA!USA!USA! And… ♫ If they don’t win it’s a shame ♫… In which case—though a soccer atheist— I pray that Italy does.

 

                           

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