All posts in Soccer

Weekly Roundup: Sex, Drugs, and Bieber Edition

By | October 2, 2010 | Baseball, Cycling, Golf, Soccer, Unsportmanlike Conduct, WTF? | 2 Comments

Sex

Cincinnati Bengal Chad Ochocinco was trying to help Feed the Children by having their phone number for donations printed on boxes of his cereal, “OchocincOs.” A typo sends callers to a phone sex line instead. If Chad were not a Bengal, would this be as funny? I think not.

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Premier League players are accused of hiring 15 hookers for a post-match celebration party. This probably wouldn’t be news if one of the hookers had not been a transvestite. He kept that little tidbit to himself while doing “some oral stuff” with Fulham defender Carlos Salcido. Salcido intends to sue the transvestite. That will be fun.

Drugs

Alberto Contador is blaming his positive drug test during the Tour de France on bad steak. Contador, who won the title, tested positive in a test taken the last rest day of the 2010 Tour. His story sounds plausible. The drug detected is given to cows and meat from Spain that was consumed by Contador and his teammates. The fact that it’s the Tour de France makes this one a bit of a yawn. As Contador said, “It’s almost normal for people to doubt this sport now.” Gee, you think? This surely isn’t the end of this story, especially since Lance Armstrong is a former teammate of both Contador and Floyd Landis, the only Tour winner to be stripped of his title. So far, anyway.

Bieber

Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins has purchased the rights to a Justin Bieber song. I have no idea what this means. It’s probably just an Eenie Meenie sign of the apocalypse.

“Shawty is a (sic) eenie meenie miney mo lover?” Who wouldn’t want to co-sign that genius? Um…

None of the Above

Last week I mentioned the sport of wife-carrying.

wife-carrying-for-beer

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about the Harris Cup International Miniature Golf Tournament, being contested this weekend in Vestal, NY. Winners of regional qualifiers meet in Vestal to decide a champion. Nobody wins their weight in beer, though.

[source] [source] [source] [source] [source]

Top photo: Robert Seale/TSN /ZUMA Press.

Bottom photo: Eightface.com

If Everyone Wins, What Do We Lose?

By | September 20, 2010 | Kids' Sports, Soccer | 6 Comments

My son Oliver decided to try soccer this season, and he loves it. He’s also pretty good. Being fast and motivated serves him well, not to mention having a basic grasp of the game.

There are more rules for parents than for the kids, though. There is no yelling of your kid’s name or any “instructions.” (In our case “Go brown!” is about all I can say.) No keeping score. No winners. No losers.

That would be easier if Oliver were not a bit of a fiend when it comes to numbers and statistics. I once wanted to be the statistician for the Boston Bruins so the apple has not fallen far from the tree. It’s how his brain works, and he’s proud of his accomplishments.

Knowing this was starting to be an issue, I talked to Oliver over the last few days about being a good sport and having fun at soccer. He agreed with me that if he had fun and tried his best, he won. He agreed. After today’s game I asked him if he learned anything. “I learned not to keep score,” he answered, but his face looked like he’d been gut-punched. He said exactly the right thing. I know he’s only 5 but it still felt wrong.

Rewind to a couple of weeks ago. I was at work, chatting with one of the faculty. We were bemoaning the inability of our students to do as they are told, to follow the simplest of instructions, and to do anything that does not involve them being handed everything they need on a silver platter. I asked him how he thought we got here, or why these kids are the way they are. He circled a little bit until I asked him how we keep our own kids from ending up this way. He didn’t have to think very hard before saying the whole “everyone gets a trophy” mentality wasn’t helping.

That conversation reminded me something from the Women and Sports panel at BlogHer. This very thing was discussed and though I didn’t speak up, I sided squarely with those who argued against “everyone gets a trophy.” GoonSquadSarah put it best.

Getting back to my conversation with the faculty member, are we preparing our students for the real world, the very competitive real world, if we only spoon feed them? Do we give them the chance to shine if they never have to figure out how to get from point A to point B on their own, without a detailed map? Would it be any different if they had more opportunities  to experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat?

I don’t have any good answers but I can tell you how I’m feeling a couple of weeks in to the soccer season. I don’t want to go anymore. He’s having fun and loving it, so I’ll keep going, but I’m trying to pay less and less attention to what is happening on the pitch. It’s better for everyone.

ClumberKim also posted this on her own blog. It was edited slightly before it landed over here.

Will Work For Food; German Octopus predicts World Cup Winners

By | July 13, 2010 | Soccer | Comments Off

I had watched the soccer matches religiously up until the semi- finals, but then all hell broke loose when I awoke one morning last week with my throat on fire. Soon after my whole head clogged up and all I wanted to do was sleep.  I went into a brief Nyquil-induced hibernation. On Sunday I finally emerged and felt human enough to get in the car with my husband and drive our older son up to basketball camp.  Our younger son stayed with his friends so he wouldn’t annoy his older brother for three solid hours in an enclosed space could watch the final World Cup match between Spain and Germany.

As we hit the highway, I checked the crackberry for the World Cup scores:

Me: Hey, Spain won the World Cup. Beat Germany, One-Zip.

Husband: So. The Octopus was right.

Me: Is that someone you work with?

Husband: Who?

Me: The Octopus.

Husband: No. The Octopus is an actual octopus.  He’s in an aquarium in Germany.  His name is Paul and he has predicted the winners for the World Cup all during the competition.  The kids and I watched him on ESPN last well.

To the outside observer our conversation may seem somewhat disjointed, but allow me to explain. My husband is in the military and if you’ve ever seen Top Gun, then you know about nicknames like “Iceman,” “Goose” and “Maverick.”  My husband spent years working in Special Operations, so I had grown accustomed to answering our phone at all hours of the night to disembodied voices identifying themselves as  “Mack,” “Rubber,” “The Mayor,” or even “Beavis.”  Since my husband once worked with a guy he called  “Shark” whose real name was Eric , it was perfectly plausible The Octopus could in fact be a colleague of his at the Pentagon.  But in this case, The Octopus wasn’t some secret spy code for “Steve,” this octopus was the real deal.

Not sure how I missed Paul the soothsayer of the sea, but he’s not missed a predicted winner in 8 matches of World Cup soccer. What motivates the mollusk? Food. Two boxes are lowered into Paul’s tank, each team is represented with a flag affixed to each box which  contains a mussel. Paul then makes his way over to the two boxes, and the winner is determined after Paul slithers into one of the two boxes, and grabs a bivalve.

Behold. Paul!

The Oberhausen Sea Life  Center in Germany has announced Paul is retiring, however he will not fade from view. The Sea Life Center hopes to give Paul the opportunity to teach younger octopods his special skill.  But I’ll tell you what. If the younger eight armed whippersnappers don’t catch on to Paul’s methodology.  I’ll volunteer to be Paul’s apprentice. I am motivated by food, I absolutely love mussels and  I’ve never been to Germany.

Four years is enough time for me to fund-raise for the trip and get my diver certification. Right?

[source]

The Unseen World

By | July 12, 2010 | Soccer | 1 Comment

The following post is by our lovely and talented friend, Suebob. Suebob usually writes over at Red Stapler which is a hilarious blog and also coincidentally where I found this post. – Sarah

* * *

Please bear with me. This post is kind of about World Cup but not really. You’ll see.

(DON’T LEAVE!)

(YOU CAN’T GO! WHO WILL WATER THE PLANTS?)

Thank you.

Today was the World Cup Final and of course Spain won, so I was happy, because it fell under my Suebobian rule of “If you don’t really care who is playing, root for the team with better-looking players.” Sorry, Netherlands. Something about wearing wooden shoes has made their faces pinched and pasty.

Except maybe their goalkeeper, Maarten Stecklenburg. Ai yi yi:

Forgive me, Father, for I have done perved.

I was never into futbol before this World Cup. (I call it futbol because everyone else in the world calls it “football,” not soccer, but if I say “football,” everyone thinks of NFL, so this is my compromise. Works for me.)

I don’t know what synapse snapped together in my head on June 11, but suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about World Cup. And the weird thing was that I was surrounded by futbol fans, but I had never noticed it before.

It was like I had walked through a secret door into another world – like my house had landed after a tornado and suddenly, everything was Technicolor instead of black and white.

With my World Cup fandom, I joined a new club. A club that consists of about 40% of the people on earth. I gained new friends all over the place.

The Nigerian security guards and I bonded over the knockout round. My cube neighbor, Tai, discovered me during the Round of 16. I trash-talked with a German guy in line at the grocery store. A girl in my class at church gave a dissertation on the storied career of Diego Maradona.

Everywhere I went, whenever I saw someone with a futbol jersey or t-shirt, I would start talking to them. Someone once told me that God gave us weather so that we would always have something to talk to strangers about. Now I have the weather AND futbol.

When I first started the month, I didn’t even know how the tournament structure worked. I had heard futbol was “boring” and “slow” because there are so few goals scored in a game.

By the end, I – a former NBA fan who had to quit watching because I was getting horrible headaches from screaming too loud at televised games – realized that futbol is the most thrilling game on earth precisely because of the emphasis on quality of play, NOT on just scoring more than the other team.

Today, when I watched the finals, I was among the 25% of the people on earth seeing the game at that moment. It felt amazing – like I was suddenly a citizen of the world, bonded by this crazy love of the Beautiful Game, wishing for nothing more in that moment than to see some great play.

If you didn’t watch the game, you can see all the highlights here.

Olé, Olé, Olé. I’ll see you in Rio in 2014.

(p.s. My mom gave me money to buy a cute outfit for my birthday. She said “I hope you got something nice with your birthday money,” and I had to admit “Yes, I did, Mom. I bought LA Galaxy tickets.”)

The German Soccer Coach Needs Home Training

By | July 8, 2010 | Crazy People, Soccer, Unsportmanlike Conduct, WTF? | 3 Comments

Germany just lost to Spain in the semifinals of the World Cup. They’ve been the team to beat all tournament, systematically and methodically destroying defenses one by one. But that makes no difference now. They’re playing for third place. But this post isn’t really about soccer. It’s about the German National Team’s manager, Joachim Löw, and his behavior on international television.  Just watch this:

Wow. There’s just no explaining this one away. That’s definitely not a scratch. Definitely not a delicate, necessary pick. This is a full-on, digging-for-gold, rolling-booger-in-fingers, not-his-first-time-at-the-rodeo BOOGER PICK AND EAT. With all the cards given out by referees this tournament, I don’t see why this wasn’t a red-card offense.  Do you think he honestly, truly didn’t realize what he was doing, all caught up in the moment of being on the world stage and coaching the team to beat? Or does he just not give a fuck because he’s on a world stage and is coaching the team to beat?

Joachim-low

Either way, Löw is in serious need of some hometraining. I bet he doesn’t wash his hands after he pees and he probably needs to cut his toenails. It’s enough to make me root for the Dutch.

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