World Cup Recap

This will likely be my first and last soccer post (at least for 4 years) so I will try touch everything in one tidy post. It may jump around some and be sort of rapid fire.


My All World Cup Team

GK: Gianluigi Buffon (Italy)
DEF: Fabio Cannavaro (Italy)
DEF: Gianluca Zumbrota (Italy)
DEF: Roberto Ayala (Argentina)
DEF: John Terry (England)
MF: Zinedine Zidane (France)
MF: Andrea Pirlo (Italy)
MF: Maniche (Portugal)
MF: Michael Ballack (Germany)
FOR: Miroslav Klose (Germany)
FOR: Thierry Henry (France)

SUB: Kaka (Brazil)
SUB: Ze Roberto (Brazil)
SUB: Hernan Crespo (Argentina)


MVP: Fabio Cannavaro (Italy)


Random Thoughts

* Is anyone else tired of Nike pushing unproven losers on the American public? First it was Dan and Dave...then it was Sebastian Telfair...then it was Michelle Wei...and now it is the USA soccer team. What those 4 have in common aside from never winning anything, is that they are all Nike creations. No one knew about them or cared about them until Nike told us to. Nike is no longer signing star athletes to wear their shoes, they are signing random athletes and then trying to shove them down our throats regardless of their lack of merit. It got so bad I was almost rooting against the USA team.

* Speaking of Team USA, did they suck or what? Bruce Arenas botched this team horribly and deserves to lose his job. Pending Nike's approve of course. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize you need more than one forward to score goals. And what is the point of only having one forward anyways if you're still going to give up easy goals? Not that any of this matters because the 2 best American players did not even bother to show up for the World Cup anyways. I am looking at you Donovan and Beasley. All the hype for these 2 and they did nothing. Arena tried to put the blame on the MLS for this debacle, but the truth of the matter is the MLS guys came to play and the Americans playing in Europe did not.

* The World Cup referees make the NBA refs look competent. That is not an easy task. They were bad all the way through and especially terrible for the USA. Made even worse by the fact that the USA beat now champion Italy up and down the field but thanks to horrible officiating by a guy already kicked out of FIFA for being a horrible official (That makes less sense than the WNBA huh?) Italy managed to get out with a draw and the US were all but left for dead. I am not saying the US were cheated or deserved to advance, but they had no chance to do so playing against the group of death and the refs.

* I do not often find myself feeling bad for a guy who viscously headbutts people, but today I did. While my hatred of all things French is both well documented and the reason I was rooting for Italy, I still feel bad that Zidane will end his legendary career as a goat. Zidane is one of the top 5 soccer players ever, and the fact that his career is ending in shame after what looked to be a story book ending unfolding is just brutal. But he is French, so screw him.

* I am glad Italy won, as from what I saw, they deserved to. That won the best group without giving up a goal and then went through some brutal teams to win the Cup. Good for them. Now we can move on to talking about Baseball and Football.