World Cup Review

DISCLAIMER: This is yet another post about soccer, but if it's any consolation, it's probably the last one about the World Cup. Well, at least until Zidane says what Materazzi said to him.

So before I even begin my World Cup postmortem blog, I have to say that I can't get over what Zinedine Zidane did in the final. Every time I see a video of his head-butt, I'm still a bit shocked, even two days later. (Sadly, the video I was going to share with you has been taken off of YouTube, which is too bad because the commentator's reaction was classic. It went something like this: "(some stuff in German) ... Zidane ... Oooooh!!!" If for some reason you haven't yet seen this video, go to YouTube and search for "Zidane" and "head-butt" and I guarantee you'll find it.) I'm eagerly awaiting his promised debriefing with the press later this week to find out what Materazzi said to him. Whatever it was, it was worse than the twist he gave to Zizou's nipple a couple moments earlier, so it must have been pretty bad. The game itself I thought was pretty good, even if it did end in a shootout. I'm not one to begrudge the use of a penalty shootout. Someone has to win, and watching 22 (or in this case 21) completely exhausted players play for any longer just wouldn't be that fun. In the end, I was pleased to see Italy win, although I still would have preferred France. Maybe it was the "Space Cowboys" thing -- as Franklin Foer calls it on his blog -- with the geezers having one last shot at glory. But my opposition to the Italian style of play seemed pretty unfounded once they came out obviously looking to attack the goal, and it made for some pretty entertaining soccer. We're heading up the Reno this weekend, and I just hope that my grandma doesn't bring up the World Cup. I think I'll have to lie about who I wanted to win the final, because if she finds out I was rooting against Italy ... well, she probably won't be making me any of her special ravioli for a while, that's for sure.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the tournament, and I'm a bit sad that it's over. I'm kind of glad it only rolls around every four years, though, because the way it invaded my psyche, I just don't think I could handle this kind of pressure every summer. I'm not going to say anything that hasn't been said hundreds of times before, but I love the fact that this is one event that the entire world watches. I would venture a guess that Sunday's final was viewed by more people than any other event in human history, which is pretty cool (although I'm guessing Zinedine Zidane wishes that weren't so).

I probably watched at least part of half of the games, which probably equaled or exceeded all of the soccer I'd watched cumulatively in the first 30 years of my life. A couple games in particular stand out, two of which featured Argentina. It's too bad they didn't make it past the quarterfinals, because both of their elimination games were entertaining heart-stoppers. I especially thought the game against Mexico was one for the ages, because I didn't expect El Tri to play them so tough, and Maxi Rodriguez' winning goal was absolutely unbelievable. The other game has to be Italy bewildering Germany and winning with two goals in the last two minutes of overtime. Anne totally called it when, in the waning moments, she said "Germany's playing like they want to go to penalty kicks instead of win it." And the Italians made a mockery of that strategy a couple minutes later. I think I was looking down at my plate of ribs when the entire bar erupted and I couldn't quite believe it when I looked up and saw that the Italians had scored. I certainly wouldn't have picked them to win it all at the beginning. Foolish me, I didn't even like their chances of getting out of the group stage. (Full disclosure: I actually thought it would be the US and the Czech Republic moving on. Not that I believed FIFA's rankings, but they must have clouded my judgment. Shows you what I know about soccer.) The way Italy played the last few games, you just had a sense they could win it all. So even though I didn't want them to win on Sunday, I can be happy that I think the best team won the tournament.