Tomorrow the World Cup begins! I guess I should post something.

Well well, here we are, on the eve of the World Cup. I guess I should post something. 

Do I care the World Cup starts tomorrow? No, not in the slightest.

Will I watch any of the games? No, no I won't. At least not live I won't. My plan is just to catch the game highlights on YouTube. That way I can get all the action packed into 10 to 15 minutes. Ain't nobody got time anymore to sit down and watch a full 90 minutes, I got weeds to pull out in the yard.

Several posts ago I mentioned that my plan for the World Cup was to pick just a couple of teams and kind of follow them and them only through the tournament. So that is what I'm going to do, otherwise if I were to watch more games people might start to think I care about soccer again. 

So what teams am I going to follow? Drum roll please ...........

I have picked three:

1. Mexico

2. Brazil

3. Panama

I would like to see all three of these teams do well, Mexico especially since they are one of the host nations. But also because I think their fans deserve it.

Brazil I would like to see do well simply because things are always more fun to watch if Brazil is doing well.

And Panama, I would like to see them get a victory this time, maybe even make it out of the group stage. That would be amazing. It would take a miracle but you never know.

And what about the US? I don't know, whatever they do they do. I'm not a bangwagon kind of guy. That is what always used to bug the hell out me back in the day, everyone that would get all excited for the US National team but then couldn't care less about MLS. Now, I don't care, whatever floats your boat.

I'm sure everyone probably already has their plan on how they are going to follow the tournament. Website wise I think ESPN has the easiest page to follow. I looked the other day at several websites such has FIFA's official site, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, even Wikipedia. But ESPN's seemed the easiest to navigate. Here is a link if you need (I'm sure you don't but take it anyway)

https://www.espn.com/soccer/schedule/_/league/fifa.world

And finally, here are a couple of images I thought were helpful. One is of the teams and their groups and one that breaks down the teams by tiers. That one , the tiers, is actually fun to look at and go through. (Again, y'all probably have this all broken down already, but just in case.)

So, everyone enjoy the tournament, or not. Whatever.

Chile vs Venezuela - Nov. 19th, 2024 - World Cup Qualifiers

So, my international team I cheer for most is Chile. 

(Japan and Jamaica are my next favorites.)

I don't cheer for the US, they are always too cocky. I don't like that. 

So it has been rough so far for Chile in World Cup qualifiying. They have only scored 1 point in their last 4 games and as of yesterday morning they were at the bottom of South America's table. What is even worse is with the new World Cup format 6 teams from South America go with a 7th team possibly going after the new playoff format. 

So you have to play pretty poorly to not qualify out of South America, but so far that is what Chile has been doing.

Last night though they regained a little life in their soccer boots and pulled out a victory. With that hopefully can carry some momentum into their next game only problem is the next round of qualifiers isn't until March! Good heavens, that is a long time from now.

Anyway, I will enjoy this victory for now.

The most clutch save in all of soccer history (in my opinion)

Emiliano Martínez’s heroics save Argentina in clutch for World Cup title

(nypost.com 12-18-22)

Emiliano Martínez was still in tears as he tried to answer questions, the moment overwhelming the Argentine goalkeeper more than anything could have during the game itself. 

It was the first time all night he had looked anything other than calm as Martínez wrote himself into World Cup lore. In the classic World Cup final, Martinez carried Argentina through extra time and a penalty shootout to win the country’s first world championship in 36 years. 

It was the second minute of stoppage time after 120 had already passed when a looping ball found Randal Kolo Muani in space atop the Argentinian box. This looked like the moment for France, which had already fought back from 2-0 and 3-2 deficits to tie the game at three. This would write an end to Argentina, a tragic finish to a World Cup that seemed predestined to finish in favor of La Albiceleste from the start. 

And then there was Martínez, doing the splits and coming up with a desperation kick save, the ball flying off his left foot. Minutes later, with the game in penalties, there was no desperation — only stone cold calm. Martínez denied Kingsley Coman with a diving save to his left, then stared down Aurélien Tchouaméni until the French midfielder sent his attempt wide. 

“Nothing to thank me for,” Martínez said through both an interpreter and his tears. “It was a game we had to suffer. … It’s our destiny to suffer.” 

And it seemed to be his destiny to end that suffering. 

“We were [up] 3-2, they get another penalty. They almost scored two goals then I did that kick, that save, and this is my dream,” Martínez said. “I’m speechless.” 

The emotion, still, poured from him as he was asked about the penalty kicks. 

“I was calm. I relied on my teammates,” he said. “I couldn’t [save] the first one, I leaned the wrong way. 

“But then I did everything right.” 

His teammates, too, came through with a perfect 4-for-4 in the shootout. Lionel Messi, Paulo Dybala, Leandro Paredes and Gonzalo Montiel helped put Argentina over the top in the shootout, But it is Martínez who made that glory possible when all looked lost. 

“I want to dedicate [this] to my family, my kid,” Martínez said. “I came from humble beginnings, I left Argentina very young for England, and I just want to dedicate this to them.” 

https://nypost.com/2022/12/18/emiliano-martinez-saves-argentina-in-clutch-for-world-cup-title/

We Are One (Ole Ola) [The Official 2014 FIFA World Cup Song]

I guess this is a pretty good song/video

Worlds are colliding

The bullfight world and the soccer world have been colliding a lot lately. 

It has been odd.

Take for instance this Rangers FC tifo in a recent semi-final UEFA Europa League match in Glasgow. Modeled after a bullfight cartel it is a throwback from 1972 when Rangers won the "European Cup Winners' Cup" beating Dynamo Moscow in Barcelona. 

Now Rangers will play against Frankfurt on Wednesday May 18th for the Europa League title in of all places Seville Spain... known as the "bullfighting cradle of the world."

Ole!

Which leads us to Real Betis and the recent Copa del Rey.

Real Betis won this year's Copa del Rey by defeating Valencia. It is only the 4th major title for the little club (with a lot of fans) from Seville. 

Winning La Liga only once, (in 1935) they have won the Copa del Rey three times. 1977, 2005, and 2022. 

Their captain, Joaquin Sanchez Rodriguez, is a huge fan of the bullfight. And upon winning the Copa promptly celebrated by taking his personalized capote and performed some very nicely done veronicas to the delight of the crowd. (or was it before the game began? I don't know, I didn't see the game live, only the highlights.)

And to make things even more perfect, who happened to be in the stands that night to see it all?..... The great Curro Romero, one of the greatest bullfighters of all time.

And finally, to top it all off, to bring the worlds together and collide them even further, on the 30th of April, in Sevilla, bullfighter Antonio Ferrera invited Joaquin into the bullring to accept a dedication of the bull he was about to fight. 

(Bullfighters will almost always dedicate to someone the bull they are about to fight. Sometimes they will dedicate the bull to the crowd in general which always gets a big ovation.)

It did cause a little bit of controversy since it is customary that once a bullfight begins only toreros and bullring personnel are allowed on the sand. But the crowd didn't seem to care, they loved it.

   

So, an interesting past couple of weeks for sure. It's been fun to watch these worlds collide, it doesn't happen too often. Actually, it may have never happened as much as it has these past couple of weeks. 

Ole! again.

The goal that sent Panamá to the World Cup

When the USA failed and Panama succeeded. 

What Landon Donovan started Neymar finished

Landon Donovan dove and faked injury a lot. I saw it first hand many times when he played RSL. I guess that was the start of the end for me, I really despised Donovan for doing it. I know a lot of players do it but Donovan was especially good at it.

Where Donovan left off Neymar picked up.

Neymar has taken diving to a new level, he makes me want to vomit.

Once my eyes were opened I just couldn't ignore the diving any more in the sport of soccer. I have given it up totally now. I couldn't even tell you who the last MLS Cup winner was nor the last UEFA Champions League winner.

I now watch bullfighting instead of soccer. I have to watch replays of bullfights on Facebook but you would be surprised how much content is out there. It has really been a joy to watch.

Bullfighters will get gored in the legs, bleed, have a tourniquet placed above their wound, and will keep performing until the bullfight has been completed. It really is amazing to watch.

Meanwhile I imagine Neymar will be rolling around on the ground somewhere, fake crying.

If you would like to check out my bullfighting blog, which I update almost daily, go to

http://blogplazadetoros.blogspot.com/

Most Epic Creative Passes

Messi's holiday in Rosario again fuels hope of a return home to play for Newell's Old Boys

(by Tom Marshall espn.go.com 12-28-18)

There's only one place Lionel Messi and his family go to spend Christmas, and it isn't Ibiza, Los Angeles or Monte Carlo.

The Argentine might have lived in Barcelona since he was 13 years old, but every Christmas, he and his family return to their native city of Rosario. This year was no exception.

http://www.espn.com/soccer/club/argentina/202/blog/post/3737632/messis-holiday-in-rosario-again-fuels-hope-of-a-return-home-to-play-for-newells-old-boys

The Greatest Game Never Played

When Boca Juniors and River Plate were set to meet in Argentina's most important match ever, Buenos Aires lost its mind.

(by Wright Thompson espn.com 12-7-18)

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/25391799/boca-juniors-vs-river-plate-greatest-game-never-played

Boca Juniors-River Plate Copa Libertadores final to be played Dec. 9 at Bernabeu

http://www.espn.com/soccer/river-plate/story/3712916/boca-juniors-river-plate-copa-libertadores-final-to-be-played-dec-9-at-bernabeu

How the Bundesliga puts the Premier League to shame

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2010/apr/11/bundesliga-premier-league

Congratulations to Santiago Wanderers de Valparaiso for winning the Copa Chile yesterday

Life, pints, glory at the oldest soccer tournament you've never heard of

(by Matt McGinn espnfc.com 11-7-17)

A thick fog lingered over the pitch, obscuring the top of the church tower across the lane. In the dressing room, the clack-clack of studs on the tile floor mixed with muffled chatter coming through the ductwork from the other changing room. A cry of, "Come on, boys!" followed by three claps of the captain's hands, and I was walking out onto the heavy turf with Oving Football Club for our match against Wingrave.

It was the first round of the Oving and District Villages Cup, a title over which amateur football teams in this enclave of rural England have fought since the reign of Queen Victoria. At a meeting held in the Oving Parish Schoolroom on Friday, Sept. 6, 1889 -- one year after the Football League was established at the Royal Hotel in Manchester -- the locals created something less ambitious but equally enduring: a knockout competition open to village teams within a 12-mile radius of Oving.

Oving lies six miles north of Aylesbury, which is 60 miles north of London, in the county of Buckinghamshire, but it feels a world away from the capital. The villages that participate in the Oving Cup punctuate miles of rolling countryside linked by a web of country roads. Down the hill to Whitchurch, a left turn toward Cublington, right at the crossroads by the pond, through Aston Abbotts, down the hill, across the main road and up to Wingrave -- that was my route to the match in November 2012.

We lost to Wingrave 4-1. It wasn't close. Yet I felt a vague connection to the Oving men who made it all the way to the first cup final, where they had faced Long Crendon in the crisp sunshine of Easter Monday, 1890. The match took place at Waddesdon, roughly equidistant between the two participating villages, in front of some 400 spectators. The Bucks Herald, our local newspaper, wrote gushingly of "a splendid game" notable for "the great keenness and esprit de corps shown by the players." In that, at least, our Oving team remained true to form.

(more to come0

http://www.espnfc.us/story/3241026/the-oving-and-district-villages-cup-is-the-oldest-soccer-tournament-youve-never-heard-of

River - esta noche tenemos que ganar

Happy birthday to Sheffield FC, oldest football club in the world

 

 

 

If every religion had a soccer team, this is what the jerseys would look like

(by Herb Scribner national/deseretnews.com 9-30-15)

http://national.deseretnews.com/article/6251/if-every-religion-had-a-soccer-team-this-is-what-the-jerseys-would-look-like.html

Imagine a world where the globe's top soccer players were placed on teams based on their religious affiliations.

That world may not be too far away, as two men in Spain have designed football kits (soccer jerseys) and crests (team logos) for soccer teams based on different religions. The kits and their team crests were published on Behance.

“Football is our religion,” the Behance page reads. “Shouldn’t our religion be football, too?”
There are team kits for Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and even Orthodox believers, among others.

As the creators explained, each proposed team would be filled with professional soccer players who follow a specific faith. For example, stars Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez, who are Catholic, would compete for Catholic FC.

If that sounds like a star-studded team, you'd be correct. In fact, designers Miguel Sousa and Francisco Pancho Cassis told Deseret News National Catholic FC would likely make the religious World Cup Final, and would probably play AC Islam — which would include soccer stars such as Mesut Ozil, Yaya Toure and Marouane Fellaini.

"Just based on the players, maybe the Final would be played between Catholics and Muslims," Cassis and Sousa wrote in an email. "Most of the best players in the world believe in those two religions. So they would have very strong teams."

So far, this project has garnered more than 7,000 views to the designers' Behance page.
In fact, there's been such a positive reaction that fans have sent Sousa and Cassis design ideas and petitions for other religious soccer teams.

They said they plan on using the ideas for more designs.

"Honestly, we thought this crazy idea would create some controversy, but for now it has just created good vibes," they wrote in an email. "It’s a dream project."

Catholic Football Club

Athletic Club Islam

 

Football Club Orthodox

Protestants United Football Club

Jewish Association Football Club

Athletic Club Buddism

Hinduism Athletic Club

 

Brazil dreams destroyed by ruthless Germany

(by James Masters cnn.com 7-9-14)

First there was disbelief. Then there were tears.

Beaten, battered and bruised -- Brazil's World Cup dream is over.

(for the rest of an excellent article click the link below)

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/08/sport/football/world-cup-brazil-germany-football/index.html

AS Roma's new stadium

 

Is it just me or are these new stadiums getting a little too fancy?

 

I don't know, it does seem like each new stadium tries to out-do the last. Sometimes I wonder if the game itself gets lost in the shuffle.

 

For years now Roma and Lazzio have shared the Estadio Olimpico in Rome, their matches against each other have been epic. I hope we don't lose that epic-ness now, but I am afraid we will.

Why the Spanish League is in Crisis and why it won’t go Away

(by Martin del Palacio bigsoccer.com 5-6-13)

A year ago, Real Madrid and Barcelona arrived to their Champions League semifinals as heavy favorites. When they were eliminated, the feeling remained that the outcome of their ties might have been unfair. The Catalans ran riot over a fragile Chelsea side but missed the unmissable in front of an inspired Petr Cech and the Merengues were a Sergio Ramos’ penalty away from qualifying to the continental final.

Three hundred and sixty five days later, history repeated itself, but only in the statistics. In practice, the two big Spanish sides were defeated in all fairness by their German rivals, and the results showed what had been impossible to detect in the previous edition: Spanish football in general is in crisis, and there are very clear reasons behind it.

In its May issue, the prestigious English magazine World Soccer made a ranking of the best leagues in the world. Unlike the pathetic and incomprehensible rankings produced from time to time by the IFFHS (i.e. a German bureaucrat in his basement), the parameters were very precise: stadium attendance, financial status of the league, number of goals, variety of champions, quality of the coaches, better stadiums, star players and continental success.

You’d think, with Barcelona and Real Madrid at the top, Spain would finish first, didn’t you? Well, it was far from being the case. The leader was, by an important margin, Germany. The Bundesliga is not only the more spectacular league, but the more stable and better off financially. The so named by Marca, “Liga de las Estrellas”, finished in third place, behind the Premier League.

Essentially, the problem is that, outside of the big two, the Iberian league is in shambles. Almost no team pays its players on time and those who do usually have very modest budgets, such as Levante or Getafe. Of the teams that are fighting for the Champions League, only one, Real Sociedad, is not drowning in debt, and that’s because they went bankrupt a few years ago and had to institute a policy of absolute austerity.

Very distant in the past are the times when Deportivo, Valencia or Sevilla could sign the likes of Bebeto, Maradona , or Romàrio. In fact, it was those absurd expenses that have condemned medium and small teams in Spain. Like many entrepreneurs in the country, the club owners used their sides to make shady deals, and borrowed money until their finances collapsed. In that sense, football is a reflection of an entire society in total crisis without any apparent exit.

Meanwhile, Real and Barça are bathing in wealth and have used that to establish an impressive dominance locally. But that had only helped them in the trophy room. In practice, the two great Spanish sides play scrimmages every weekend and important games only four or five times a year, when they face each other or with bigger rivals in the Champions League. No wonder, then, that the Catalans have been humbled this season every time they faced a match against a top team and, in the last two years, the only top team Los Blancos managed to defeat en route to their Champions League semifinal ties was Manchester United, and the Red Devils couldn’t be blamed to think the outcome had been quite unfair.

The problem is that the situation will not improve, mainly because the smaller clubs have no income. The average attendance in the league, taking away from the big two, barely exceeds the 23,000 fans, and most of their shirts have no sponsor. And the worst part comes with television revenue. Real and Barça get 70% of the profits, leaving the crumbs to the rest, and are not willing to change the terms. Strangely, they have not realized that their local greed is what is leading to their continental downfall.

Thus the phrase “Spain is in crisis” now applies to all areas of the country, including football. It will not change soon and it doesn’t seem unlikely that, in the near future we will see the likes of Valencia, Atlético or Sevilla crash in the first round of the Champions League while Real Madrid and Barcelona fail at the last hurdle and wonder why others can make it to the final when they spend less money and have worse players than the mighty two.