Update 2, August 1, 2007: Iraqi players walk away from Saddam-era Anthem…
Update July 29, 2007: Iraq 1:0 Saudi Arabia. Way to go indeed…
The Iraqi national soccer team will play Saudi Arabia for all the glory in the Asia Cup final tomorrow. I will watch the game if I can find it. Regardless, I am cheering for Iraq.
I coach football, soccer as it’s known here, so I know what the Iraqi team has done is no small achievement. Frankly, they don’t stand much of a chance against the Saudis. But I think maybe this is their time. If nothing else, they have nothing to fear by playing their best game tomorrow…
Were this team stepping onto the pitch tomorrow under Saddam’s regime, this would not be the case. A loss tomorrow would have meant that players who Uday Hussein perceived to be playing poorly could look forward to having the soles of their feet caned—inflicting intense pain without leaving visible marks on the rest of their bodies. A player’s ankles would be tied to a rod about shoulder’s length apart. The rod would be hoisted about three feet off the ground. Sometimes, Uday himself would administer the caning, bringing down a furious barrage of strikes against the soles of the soccer player’s feet, the very part of the body that makes a soccer player an athlete. According to Wikipedia, Uday Hussein reportedly kept scorecards with written instructions on how many times each player’s feet should be caned. One former Iraqi soccer player reported that jailed teammates were forced to kick a concrete ball after failing to reach the 1994 World Cup finals. Nice. Another player claimed that athletes were dragged through a gravel pit and subsequently immersed in a sewage tank to induce infection in the resulting wounds…
Yea, anybody who lives in Iraq might get blown up tomorrow, but maybe some of them feel freer than they did a few years ago.
Win or loose, boys, I say “well done you.”
Cheers,
Congrats, Mitch, your cheers were apparently effective! Whenever I see a 1-0 football score, I think of my uncle’s theory on enhancing the appeal of the world’s sport to Americans: no goalies…since, of course, we are obsessed with scoring.
Congrats, Mitch, your cheers were apparently effective! Whenever I see a 1-0 football score, I think of my uncle’s theory on enhancing the appeal of the world’s sport to Americans: no goalies…since, of course, we are obsessed with scoring.
No goalies… high scoring games… Hmmm.
Nah. Even though I’m American, I could not abide that bastardization of the game.
I don’t think soccer will ever gain a more than a secondary place among American sports, but there are several factors that may prove me wrong.
First is, the Latino population prefers soccer. Walk into Fiesta Guadalajara and the TV will be tuned to a soccer game. Walk into Tequilas and you will see several soccer trophies. As the Latino community grows, so will soccer’s following—if not MLS, Mexican and South American teams, to be sure. In fact, one MLS team, Chivas (goat) USA, which plays out of LA and is named after the popular Guadalajara team, draft principally Mexican players, clearly to appeal to a Latino audience.
Second, steroids. Barry Bonds is about to break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. When he does, the achievement will be tarnished by Bonds’ alleged steroid use. Same thing happened to Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. While steroid use and MLB’s tacit approval of it makes baseball something of a laughing stock, it will not cause hard-core baseball fans to jump-ship, and even if it did, they probably wouldn’t jump to soccer. That said, baseball’s doing a piss-poor job of attracting new generations of fans.
Third, NFL Europa just folded, Michael Vick has been hauled into federal court on dog fighting charges, Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was gunned down over the off season, and then there’s your garden variety deviant behavior characterized by the tragedies surrounding Rae Carruth, and Ray Lewis. Again, soccer’s not going to displace attendance at football games anytime soon, but it’s hard to measure the effects of NFL athletes on future generations of players and fans.
Fourth, David Beckham. Yea, I know that Pele was supposed to energize soccer in America back in the 70s, and Franz Beckenbauer after him, but Beckham and his wife have a celebrity that extends beyond sports and will bring international attention to the MLS. That’s a form of attention that neither Pele nor Beckenbauer could generate. One year after Beckenbauer retired in 1983, the NASL went teats up…
Finally, Soccer doesn’t stop for commercial timeouts… If nothing else, the absence of commercials makes it enjoyable to watch on TV, providing of course you like the game in the first place…
In any case, soccer has made significant in-roads here. When I was a boy, I’d stay up late on Saturday nights to watch Soccer made in England on PBS (I followed Tottenham Hotspur back then). That was the only soccer you could find on TV back in the early 70s. Now, there are at least three cable channels devoted to soccer—between the three of them, you can usually find any match you’d care to see…
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only American who tunes in…
Cheers,
No goalies… high scoring games… Hmmm.
Nah. Even though I’m American, I could not abide that bastardization of the game.
I don’t think soccer will ever gain a more than a secondary place among American sports, but there are several factors that may prove me wrong.
First is, the Latino population prefers soccer. Walk into Fiesta Guadalajara and the TV will be tuned to a soccer game. Walk into Tequilas and you will see several soccer trophies. As the Latino community grows, so will soccer’s following—if not MLS, Mexican and South American teams, to be sure. In fact, one MLS team, Chivas (goat) USA, which plays out of LA and is named after the popular Guadalajara team, draft principally Mexican players, clearly to appeal to a Latino audience.
Second, steroids. Barry Bonds is about to break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. When he does, the achievement will be tarnished by Bonds’ alleged steroid use. Same thing happened to Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. While steroid use and MLB’s tacit approval of it makes baseball something of a laughing stock, it will not cause hard-core baseball fans to jump-ship, and even if it did, they probably wouldn’t jump to soccer. That said, baseball’s doing a piss-poor job of attracting new generations of fans.
Third, NFL Europa just folded, Michael Vick has been hauled into federal court on dog fighting charges, Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was gunned down over the off season, and then there’s your garden variety deviant behavior characterized by the tragedies surrounding Rae Carruth, and Ray Lewis. Again, soccer’s not going to displace attendance at football games anytime soon, but it’s hard to measure the effects of NFL athletes on future generations of players and fans.
Fourth, David Beckham. Yea, I know that Pele was supposed to energize soccer in America back in the 70s, and Franz Beckenbauer after him, but Beckham and his wife have a celebrity that extends beyond sports and will bring international attention to the MLS. That’s a form of attention that neither Pele nor Beckenbauer could generate. One year after Beckenbauer retired in 1983, the NASL went teats up…
Finally, Soccer doesn’t stop for commercial timeouts… If nothing else, the absence of commercials makes it enjoyable to watch on TV, providing of course you like the game in the first place…
In any case, soccer has made significant in-roads here. When I was a boy, I’d stay up late on Saturday nights to watch Soccer made in England on PBS (I followed Tottenham Hotspur back then). That was the only soccer you could find on TV back in the early 70s. Now, there are at least three cable channels devoted to soccer—between the three of them, you can usually find any match you’d care to see…
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only American who tunes in…
Cheers,
Point of order:
The best players in the world play in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and so on.
The best players in the world do NOT play in Major League Soccer: Beckham or no, it’s like watching Double A baseball.
If we had the best players in the world here, soccer would huge, as it was with the Cosmos.
Best, Michael!
Point of order:
The best players in the world play in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and so on.
The best players in the world do NOT play in Major League Soccer: Beckham or no, it’s like watching Double A baseball.
If we had the best players in the world here, soccer would huge, as it was with the Cosmos.
Best, Michael!
Poing of Order! It’s soccer, i.e. the second greatest (golf is number one) napping sport in the world.
You can have super-heroes playing soccer and it would still be chilling dull.
Here are the greatest sports ever invented, in particular order:
baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
End of discussion.
Poing of Order! It’s soccer, i.e. the second greatest (golf is number one) napping sport in the world.
You can have super-heroes playing soccer and it would still be chilling dull.
Here are the greatest sports ever invented, in particular order:
baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
End of discussion.
Find a photo essay of Iraqi celebration at Yahoo!
Find a photo essay of Iraqi celebration at Yahoo!
I can post the links if you want, but apparently Beckham, despite his ankle injury, was able to go clubbing in Toronto until 2:00 am, but not able to play last night.
So, not only is soccer horribly boring, but the players are wimps.
I can post the links if you want, but apparently Beckham, despite his ankle injury, was able to go clubbing in Toronto until 2:00 am, but not able to play last night.
So, not only is soccer horribly boring, but the players are wimps.
I don’t know about your order of boring sports, bowling has to be somewhere near the top…and what about “Bowls” or Lawn Bowling as it is sometimes known…now this is a sport where you can actually watch the grass grow.
I don’t know about your order of boring sports, bowling has to be somewhere near the top…and what about “Bowls” or Lawn Bowling as it is sometimes known…now this is a sport where you can actually watch the grass grow.