World Cup Take 2

Apologies for the temporal disjunction but I'm just catching up on my holiday writing ...

03 Juillet 2010
I've spent too many hours in the past fornight watching le foot. I know I risk offending 3 billion people but it is the most singular, frustrating, boring, unjust game ever. In fact, I'd say it's 90% boring and 9% unjust but I'll give it 1% for beauty and that's only in the slow motion replays when you get to see the balance of the player, the streteched muscle in their legs and the bend of the ball around the opponents.

There is so much body contact and hand balling they may as well pick it up and run with it. So much diving, holding shins and ankles with faux grimaces until they get their penalty, so much holding arms and pulling jerseys. So much 'what me? I didn't touch him!' until the replay shows he had him in a half-nelson, stamped on his calf and handed the ball into the back of the net.

I can, however, now understand why soccer induces such rage in people. First of all we have to sit or stand for 90 minutes where nothing happens, and then when something does happen, the team with skill and passion that should win (ie Ghana) is beaten by the team that engages in highly paid strategic cheating (ie Uruguay).

Soccer should just cut out all the running around and go straight to the penalty shootouts.