3 posts tagged “soccer”

I'm a bit fatigued by the outraged over Zinedine Zidane's head butt in the World Cup finals. Was it violent, excessive, and uncalled for?  Of course. Was it unusual or particularly horrifying in the greater context of soccer? Hardly. This is a sport where people stomp on, knee, and head butt each other whenever they think they can get away with it. In the Portugal-Netherlands game, Portuguese midfielder Deco took down a Dutch player with a violent tackle as immediate retribution for a breach of soccer etiquette. He took the yellow card and everybody knew why he did it. Soccer is one of many games where the creative use of trash talk to set off your opponent is a time honored tradition. It's a violent game is what I'm saying.

I must assume that the outrage in this case is a product of ignorance or denial. Zidane is certainly ashamed of losing his temper and perhaps costing his team the chance to win, but I doubt he regrets the violence of his act. Few athletes would. His "vicious" head butt was certainly less vicious than any number of acts that played out on the pitch in that game. There's a context to this thing that seems to be lost, at least to me.

In the confrontation, Zidane lost and Materazzi won. He got inside the head of the other team's best player and provoked him to get himself tossed out. Sportsmanlike? No. An effective tactic? Yes. Moving on ...

Angola just worked a 0-0 draw with Mexico in the World Cup, an exciting development in this household as that's my wife's country of birth.  National Geographic had an essay on soccer in Angola in the June issue.

Throughout the history of the World Cup, Europeans have always won in Europe and teams from the Americas have always won in the Americas. (The Cup has only been held in Asia once, and Brazil won.) This year, it's looking like the trend will hold. Based on the first round games, Spain (who crushed the Ukraine this morning), Italy, and Germany are looking quite strong. The Czechs wiped up the field with the US team. Portugal has a good team as well, but they didn't have a great game against Angola. Brazil underperformed against Croatia yesterday. Argentina looks fine, and Ecuador looks decent as well. Mexico was lackluster against Iran.

It sure looks to me like the odds are in favor of a European team taking the Cup this year.