25 RTITBGITW

(or.....25 Reasons This Is The Best Game In The World)

So.....

A while back there were a lot of these "25 Random Things About Me" lists that were flying around the information superhighway where people very cleverly and ingeniously listed 25 facts or interesting anecdotes about them that they wanted shared with their friends and friends of friends, and so on.... And it occurred to me that instead of wasting my time coming up with 25 interesting or witty things to say about myself (which i ended up doing anyways), I'd rather spend it on 25 things that make this the greatest game on the planet (like we really need to list them) but what the heck, here they are anyways...

And of course, they are in no particular order (I think);

25) Rivalries. Madrid-Barca, Inter-Milan, Boca-River, Brasil-Argentina, England-Argentina, Liverpool-ManU, America-Chivas, Fla-Flu, Peñarol-Nacional...the list goes on and on. Often called "Derbys" or "Clasicos", these matches in many cases are about much more than football (i.e., "The Old Firm") ...either way, these are the matches that we all live for.

24) Goal Celebrations. Seriously....no other sport can match these celebrations. The NFL penalizes players for celebrating. In baseball you get beaned in the head if you show someone up or if you celebrate in the smallest way. In football, you score, you get happy...you celebrate. Seriously.

23) The Golden Goal. Yeah, ok, so FIFA no longer allows it, but whatever, I thought it was cool. Basically this is a fancy and not so maccabre expression for sudden-death overtime. Tied at the end of the game? Lets keep playing. First one to score wins. You may hate it, but who can forget France beating Italy in 2000 on David Trezeguet's winner in the 103rd minute?

22) Stoppage Time. Injury Time. Added Time. El descuento. Whatever you want to call it. No game is the same length. How long are they gonna play? When is the referee gonna blow the whistle? The clock on the scoreboard has stopped ticking, but they are still playing, only the referee decides when the game is over. So many big games have been decided in stoppage time, it is simply insane. None crazier than the 1999 Champions League Final. (listen to the play by play guy almost predict it right before the first goal).

21) Goalkeepers that frantically join the fray while trying to score a desperation goal in said stoppage time (see #22 above). Hey, it works out sometimes.

20) World Cup Qualifying. Imagine if March Madness was once every four years and each school had to spend 2 years playing their region to qualify just to get in. That's pressure. Oh yeah, and it is happening all around the globe at the same time. Cool.

19) National Anthems. Nothing is better than singing your national anthem before your country is about to go to battle with another country. If that doesn't give you goose bumps, nothing will. Especially when you are with 40 to 50,000 of your fellow countrymen singing along and watching them play in another country.

18) Which leads me to...Fan Chants. Go to a game, sing along with 50,000 people. It will make you feel alive.

17) I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I love penalty kick shoot outs. Don't ask me why. Pure drama.

16) Zizou. If all you remember him for is the head butt, you have no idea.

15) Bloopers. Every sport has them. These just happen to be funnier (in my humble opinion).

14) No Timeouts. Play 45 minutes, hard. Twice. Show me another sport with a field this big where you never really get to stand around.

13) No Stats. Baseball has more stats than you can shake as stick at. So does pretty Basketball, American Football and Hockey. There is one stat that matters here: GOALS. Period. You score, you win. Get it? Ok, maybe points matter too, and goal differential. But they pale in comparison. And they all come from the same place...GOALS.

12) Relegation. End up in last place? Well next year you will play in a lower level in tiny stadiums in front of tiny crowds and with barely anyone watching on TV. Try selling that to NBA teams that are tanking it on purpose to get the next LeBron in the lottery. Yeah, right. Makes you want to avoid the cellar now, doesn't it?

11) Promotion. End up in first place in that lower 2nd division? Get promoted to the big time and play the big boys next year, everyone watches on TV, etc, etc... For some reason this always works incredibly in Germany. TSG Hoffenheim, who have a former Bosnian refugee on their roster (he was the 5th top scorer in the Bundesliga in 08/09) last season was rewarded with a bump up to the aforementioned Bundesliga and was at the top of the table at one point this season and ended up in 7th place and just missed out on play in the UEFA Cup (which has been sleekly renamed the Europa League for next year). Did I mention that the previous year Hoffenheim played in a stadium that had only 1,620 seats!?!? FC Kaiserslautern did the same thing in 1998 (but they had been relegated only a couple years before).

10) Football Spots. Every single footy fan on the planet likes them. How can you not? (Click on the pic to the right to see my all-time personal favorite)

9) Free Kicks. They are a thing of beauty, an art form. A skill that mere mortals do not posses.

8) And what's better than free kicks? How about...Trick free kicks? They may not all be textbook definitions of sportsmanlike behavior, but they sure are fun to watch.

7) Tricks. Ticas, Tricks, Freestyle, whatever you call it. Thought you had skills? Think again my friend. THESE cats have skills. The World Championships were recently held in, where else but Sao Paulo. It was sponsored by Red bull. I wonder if each contestant has to guzzle about 10 Red bulls before going on stage. That wouldn't be nearly enough for me....right. Red Bull gives me wiiiiiings!

6) Shirt Swapping. It is the best demonstration of sportsmanship around. And it has been going on forever. Game ends, players swap shirts and keep them. Hang them on their wall, throw them in one of their 40 closets, who cares. The fact that they seek each other out and trade shirts and then collect and keep them reminds me that it is a game. Every sport should do this. Remember that MasterCard World Cup spot that featured it? Brilliant.....(This one is pretty good too), from everyone's favorite city, Amsterdam. So is this one....ok, I'll stop now.

5) La Copa Libertadores. The South American version of the Champions League. Just as fun, just as important, just as historic as its European counterpart.

4) Goal Celebrations. Yes, I know. I already used this one, but I just can't get enough.

3)The Eternal Debate. Maradona or Pelé? The best sports argument ever. Other sports had one supreme athlete. Hoops had Jordan. Hockey, Gretzky. The beautiful game had Diego Armando Maradona and Edson Arantes do Nascimento. The argument is eternal.

2) Anyone can play. You don't have to be tall, fast, athletic or smart. You just have to be able to play.

1) The World Cup. The biggest and best sporting event on the globe. Absolutely unparalleled. If you have ever been to one, then you know what I am talking about. Need i say more?

I Often Wonder.......

......when watching a European soccer game what language all the players are speaking to each other.

In Europe, for example, many people speak two languages due to the small size of the countries and the proximity to other neighboring countries that speak other languages and mixture of cultures, etc, etc......

Take Madrid for example......nowadays at Real Madrid, with 6 Dutch players on the team, one can imagine that a lot of Dutch is heard in the locker room (although they have yet to all play together). But with the escalating number of teams having a very high number of foreigners, i always wonder what language they are arguing, talking, yelling instructions in.

Real Madrid has players from Argentina, Germany, Mali, Italy, Brazil, the afore-mentioned Holland, Portugal, Poland and of course, Spain. But think about the other leagues around the world having Brazilians, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, French, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, Africans, Argentines, Greeks, Turks, etc, etc. Which makes me often wonder what one angry player says to a ref who is most likely a citizen of the country he is "refing" in.

As we all know not every foreigner takes to learning quickly the language of the club that now employs him (as anyone who watched Beckham during his time at Madrid knows, when he insisted on conducting post game press conferences in Spanish, honestly I don't think he was that bad).

Well with last week's red card to Arjen Robben came this article from Spanish daily Marca which provides an answer at least to what an angry Dutchman (who has played in Spain for just over a year) yells at a Spanish ref who has just red carded him (on TV we see the player's arms start waving and flailing and expletives surely start flying).....I can't even imagine how creative these guys get when cursing in all the above languages....or do they?

The article shows you just how eloquent Robben got when the red card came his way......(apologies to those who don't speak Spanish, but I think you can figure out the expletive highlighted in bold text towards the bottom of the article in the referee's quote on what he officially recorded as what was said to him by Robben and thus his reason for showing him his 2nd yellow card).......a very original response indeed. (and if you can't figure it out, this picture may help you see what Robben is about to start saying.....)

And in closing, here's a funny clip of two Hondurans, Wilson Palacios and Maynor Figueroa, who play for Wigan Athletic in England teaching the Brits a little something or another about Spanish....

PK's = OK!

Don't ask me why....but I love Penalty Kick shootouts.

All I'm saying is that yesterday my heart was POUNDING as Everton lost to Fiorentina in the UEFA Cup via the old PK walking of the plank.

I mean I felt like a kid again....

OH NO! HE MISSED IT!.....Thump, Thump....

SAVE!....YES!.......Thump, Thump, Thump....

MADE IT!....YES....Thump.....

Maybe it's the kid in me, maybe I just like to suffer, who the hell knows. I like something being decided in one strike, one move, one save.

I was there in the crowd when the Ukraine advanced over Switzerland in the Round of 16 in Germany in 2006....and I KNOW everyone remembers THAT one!...
And if you don't let me tell you.....IT WAS PRETTY DAMN EXCITING!

But strangely enough, for some reason I don't feel the same way about NBA games being decided by free throws...

Things that make you go hmmm.......

Don't Cry For Me Catalunya

Now I have to say it, I hate seeing players get hurt. No one wants to get hurt. No one wants to see someone else get hurt. No one wants one of their players to get hurt, and much less, no one wants to hurt someone else…except perhaps that poor excuse for a sportsman Martin Taylor of Birmingham who just about tore off Eduardo Da Silva’s foot. (you might want to think twice about clicking if you are squeamish)

Anyways, so last week Lionel Messi pulled his hamstring yet again in Barcelona's Champions League match with Celtic at the Camp Nou. Now this kid is great. He is really incredible. Kaka may have won FIFA's Footballer of the Year award, but you’d be hard pressed to say Messi didn’t also deserve it. And I like watching this kid play, much as it pains me to say it. What I didn’t like was seeing him hurt and now being forced to sit out for 6 weeks and miss crucial matches for Barcelona. Because you always want to see the best players play, especially in these most crucial times of the season when they have an opportunity to really shine and wow us meager humans all over the world with their sheer brilliance causing jaws to drop from Catalunya to Cambodia. As much as I do NOT want Barcelona to win the La Liga this year, I DO want them to lose the title with a full strength Messi in their squad. You always want to beat the best right?

Yep, and Messi is pretty much the best. Period. Go ahead, tell me who is better?.....I’m waiting…..yeah, you got nothing.

And to top it all off, this kid is twenty years old…..TWENTY!

(Yes, this is where you insert the line about him being the best in the world and not being able to buy a beer in this country.....but he lives in Europe and he is from Argentina....So that line doesn’t really apply now here does it? After all, those Europeans and South Americans really do know how to live...trust me, I just spent a month in Argentina drinking Malbec, Tempranillo and devouring massive steaks for about $4 USD a piece).

Which leads me to my ultimate point. Don’t worry, I am getting there. This kid is twenty years old, he is just a kid, and he got hurt in a game, and got taken out and told by a very good doctor and probably his very disappointed coach that he can’t play for 6 weeks. So he did what any normal 20 year old that tears a muscle and
is told he can’t play top flight football does when he gets this news….he cried.

Right there...

On the field...

In front of the world.

That was cool.

You don’t often see the world’s top athlete start to cry in front of 80,000 fans at home and millions more on TV when he comes off the field injured. I don’t think I ever saw MJ do that......or Pele, or Maradona, or Van Basten, Butragueno, no one. At least not that I remember. Granted, we also didn’t have 19 live HD cameras at each game, but still I don’t remember ever seeing that. At least not for an injury that you can come back from in 6 weeks. Which, by the way, if I tore my hamstring, I am pretty sure I would be hospitalized for at LEAST a week, and I would cry like a girl too, but from the pain and from the fact that I would never be able to do any kind of physical activity ever again. Sad, but true.

I mean that tells me that he really really loves playing this game. That as soon as he realized he got hurt and couldn’t play again for a long time and maybe miss his team's biggest games of the year it made him sad….really sad. So he cried. Sort of makes me sad. But not really, because Barca, even with Henry and Ronaldinho and Eto’o, still have a lot of work to do to make up 8 points in the standings (although yes, there is a lot of football to be played...that is after all why they play the games, right?) I mean this guy really is a kid out there, living the dream, having the time of his life. And if you know about his life, he is living a dream:

• Boy grows up poor in Argentina.
• Boy gets diagnosed with some kind of rare growth hormone deficiency.
• Boy’s family can’t afford the medical bills.
• Boy has SICK (no pun intended) talent for the beautiful game.
• Big shot in Barcelona gets wind of boy’s talents and…..
• BOOM…..
• Big time Spanish club offers to pay his medical bills in order to sign him and own his rights as long as he and his family move to Spain, and start a new life so that he can legally play there.
• Boy then grows up (very quickly) to be the best player in the world before he can buy a friggin beer in the US. (Not that he probably gets carded anywhere).

Or something like that goes the story, but trust me, if execs at Paramount even knew the tiniest bit about soccer, they would be eating this story up and making into a movie….oh wait….I think they did that with Goal! The Dream Begins, which actually wasn’t terrible…and NO, I am NOT biased!

So cry on Messi, cry on. I would too if I were you and I couldn’t play. I mean I would probably cry if I COULD play, only because I always wanted to and never even came anything close to being in the same stratosphere to being able to play at any sort of elevated level. But don’t worry, because in six short weeks you will be back and running around with that smile on your face, driving defenders nuts and probably still impressing your world-class teammates and millions of fans all over the world. And you will go back to your incredibly glorious life that you have achieved for yourself at such an early age, when most people are in college or university sitting in some totally arbitrary class completely unrelated to what they will do later in life….or worse yet, struggling to get by and only playing soccer in the park on weekends with their friends or neighbors to try and forget their everyday troubles. But you will be back soon, playing on the blindingly beautiful neon-green grass pitches of Europe and you will regain your post atop the Everest of football.

You will be back, and you will be millions...like Evita said way back in the day.

But you won't win La Liga in 2008.

So go ahead and cry again Messi. Cry on…

Quick!...Someone Save Soccertv.com....

OK. I know what you are thinking...

"Oh My God, Is soccer on TV the only thing he is gonna write about?"

Nope. Sorry. That's not it.
But I had to get this one in before the buzzer....(or I should have really said "Final Whistle" here huh?...damn....another missed opportunity)..

OK, soccertv.com, this great website that I and many of my friends use on a quasi-daily basis, seems like it is in deep trouble. Hopefully it isn't. It is basically a site that helps big soccer (or football or futbol or calcio) enthusiasts like me find out on which channel we can watch the beautiful game. Since, you know we don't live in France or Spain or the UK where the listings are pretty much tattoed on people's foreheads, or they are as hard to miss as a naked old man walking down the street (sorry for that mental imagine, but I couldn't come up with something as terrifyingly obvious on the spot).
Anyways, it is a hugely important site to all those supporters of the beautiful game who are stuck here in the states and aren't being helped out by the likes of SportsCenter and CNN. And now the site seems like it is going down like John Travolta's career circa 1983 with Two of a Kind.

Seems like the dude who is running the site is spreading himself too thin these days and can no longer afford to keep running it. I mean its gotta be very time consuming to sit there and check the TV listings from all over and update and post them constantly, not to mention dealing with his clients and time and schedule changes (like when say, ESPN2 decides to blow off a game in order to go to the Boise State-Iowa State football game) etc, etc.... And rightfully so like every other .com maven before him he is selling it to the highest bidder. (I wish I had something I could sell to the highest bidder, I mean the closest I can come is probably this laptop, which won't go for much more than a Two of a Kind poster). Aaaanyways, if you are still reading, then I encourage you to bid on the site, and help us all out who can't afford to save it. We would all be very grateful and we would click on it continuously to bring you advertising dollars or whatever.

You will be doing mankind a great service. And supporters everywhere will thank you and your deep pockets.

To check out the site go to www.soccertv.com

(I promise the next post will be funnier. Man, this one was lame!)

I Want My GolTV

508 Channels. That's how many channels my Time Warner Cable HD box has. I counted. Its not easy to count that. Try it. You have to scroll down and count while staring at a number that falls more and more out of sync with the number you are counting in your head while you stare at a continually different number. Its like some kind of test you take at a crazy psychologist's office. Crazy psychologist...ha....I like that. (Don't use it, it's mine). Anyways, I was all the way to about 78 or so when I realized that there were some channels in the 70's that were missing, and then Kaz Matsui hit a jack with the bases loaded, and I got distracted so I had to start over....but I digress..... So anyways. TWC offers 508 channels, give or take a handful if you have the monster package that I have. 508 Channels. That's a lot of TV. FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHT CHANNELS. Now there are many repeated ones (don't ask me why) and some that are just music, on demand ones also, but whatever. I have a TON of TV entertainment options. Again, 508 Channels, that's a HUGE HUGE number of viewing options.

GolTV is not one of them.

Now I have pretty much the top of the line package from Time Warner Cable. I mean, I pay for all the movie channels, the whole nine. I just looked at my bill and it includes: the Entertainment Pack, the HDxtra Combo pack, HD DVR, DTV Español Plus (because for some reason TWC feels like it should penalize or overcharge you if you speak another language in order to watch TV in the language you speak through no fault of your own), the Premium with Pod Service (no idea what that means, should I try and plug in my ipod?), and 2 Additional DTV services. Ok, so that part is my fault, yes there are 3 TV's in my apartment and all of them have cable. Hey, so I like TV. Sue me. It is the reason I have a big flatscreen and i like sports, and TV and sports go hand in hand. Plus HD Movies are great. Anyways, my cable bill is HUGE. I feel terrible paying so much for a luxury like cable, I mean the average person in Honduras made about $1190 a year in 2005. (I looked that up too. Also not easy. My sister, the economist and planet-saver, helped me with that one. I have no idea what GDP's are or crazy economic terms like that, it's why I have a financial advisor that I never talk to). Soooooo......$1190 a year, divided by 12 months comes to roughly...$99.17 a month that the average person in my homeland makes. My cable bill this month was $187.65. Jesus. That's almost DOUBLE what the average Catracho makes. I mean wow. I should cancel my bill IMMEDIATELY, sell my TV's and go home and volunteer. Sounds like the right thing to do. I might have to think about it more. Well, I will at least wait till after the playoffs, after all, it is always nice to see the Yankees eliminated in HD.

So back to my original problem. No GolTV. Nada. Zilch. Sometimes I come home and channel surf near the Spanish channels in hopes that they miraculously have come to an agreement with the nice folks at GolTV down in Miami and now I can watch soccer 24 hours a day. But no.. Not at all. I just sit there, disappointed and switch over to Fox Soccer Channel and watch the Hyundai A-League Soccer Highlights show. See what the evil TV Gods at TWC have subjected me to? Australian League? Come on man, that is even worse than the Honduran League (which I watch, and love....Thank GOD for Fox Gol Honduras, the league is still pretty brutal though). And I mean, I love the Aussies. I love the Socceroos, I watched them advance live and in person last summer to the 2nd round in Stuttgart in a thrilling nail-biter with their socially historic rivals Croatia. A good mate of mine is an Aussie and he got me a ticket to that game and I will never forget it. I love you Adrian, but I don't wanna watch the A-League Highlights on TV. I want to watch LA LIGA. The Spanish League. I want to see Arjen Robben flying down the left side and floating a superb cross to his countryman Ruud Van Nistelrooy who then flicks it to Raul and BOOM....Madrid 1, Atletico 0 Baby. Yeah. That's why HD TV was invented. I DREAM of watching the Bernabeu in HD. But I would be happy just seeing it on my TV at home PERIOD. Instead, I have to go hang out at the Spanish Benevolent Association a few streets down from my apartment, where the average customer is age 95 and the average beer is served in a tiny plastic cup smaller than the ones we use for the water cooler at work. Or I have to go watch it at WORK (because we have DirecTV there) or at Jose's house.

I live in the media capital of the world, the "center of the universe" as most New Yorkers like to think of it, and I support the biggest team in the world of the biggest sport in the world and I CAN'T WATCH THEM IN MY OWN HOME!. Do you have any idea how frustrating this is? I can watch any baseball, basketball, football (American football that is, actually I can't because of the whole DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket exclusive deal, but who cares about the NFL, the Dolphins are cursed anyways for not picking Brady Quinn). I can watch college football, college hockey, boating, lacrosse, figure skating, golf, auto racing, equestrian, rodeo, bull riding, fishing (sport?) tennis, volleyball, i mean i could sit here all day listing them, but i am not going to. It's ridiculous. I can watch the Premier League at home, Serie A, French league sometimes, Bundesliga. all kinds of leagues, but NO LA LIGA. I mean, this is the best league in the world, (sorry England and Italy) with the biggest stars in the world, and yet I can't watch it in the so called "greatest city in the world", the "media capital of the world" on my huge expensive TV that I bought impulsively after debating it for months. Pisses me off.

Take yesterday. It was Matchday 2 in the Champions League group stage. Real is at Lazio and ESPN Deportes is showing it LIVE! Wait, what? Real Madrid, live in my living room and in SPANISH no less? Get out! I planned my whole day around this. Then the day before I get a phone call from some freaking TWC computer recorded message saying "Hello, this is Time Warner Cable, tomorrow we will be upgrading our system in your neighborhood so you may experience loss of service between the hours of 10am and 3pm, blah, blah, blah...." CLICK! I hang up and scream. WHAT! The one freaking day when I can watch Madrid at home TWC decides to black me out! Ok, so now I panic, I have to decide whether to watch it at work, where it is impossible to concentrate, especially since yesterday was the first day of the Playoffs, so forget finding an open TV. Or I can watch it at my friend Jose's place but that would require going cross town and well, all of us NY'ers now how much fun it is to travel cross town. I also didn't like this option because last time I watched the Champions League at his house I was like 2 minutes late and his buzzer was broken and so he had to come down and let me up. When we got to his living room Real was already down 1-0 and had allowed the fastest goal in UEFA CL history to Roy Makaay of all people. Same funny looking Dutchman who terrorized La Liga when he was at Deportivo. 11 seconds it took that weirdo bastard to ruin my day, my month, my year. Madrid never recovered and were eliminated AGAIN from the Champions League. Futility again. The match was lost, the season too, Beckham left, so did Roberto Carlos (THANK GOD) and Capello and life started to seemingly crumble at the very foundations of all things holy and purple and white. Whatever. Then I got a phone call that the cable was back up in my hood. I ran home, got there about 2 minutes before kickoff and watched a dull 2-2 draw with a Lazio that looked more like Brazil than the team we were supposed to beat even on the road. So finally I get to see Madrid at home and they tie. Now I know what they mean by "a tie is like kissing your sister". As gross as that mental picture is, I understood it. Totally.

And now the weekend comes, and I still have no GolTV. So with my buddy Jose out of town, who HAS GolTV thanks to his apartment complex's exclusive deal with Comcast (superbly inferior to TWC) I can't go watch it there, so its back to the old Spanish social club full of old men and myself. Or i could go cross town to Nevada Smith's, but we all know how I feel about going cross town, and this place is much more convenient anyways. Plus, Nevada Smith's is a Barcelona bar, so screw them (and usually you have to stand). And I don't have DirecTV at home, which I refuse to get, cause we have it at work, and i hate the interface and menu and all that stuff. I mean I like TWC, with the exception of the fact that they deprive their Latino, European and all sorts of customers who love the beautiful game, because they need to make a little more money or whatever. I like TWC despite their lack of GolTV and I am going to keep it, even though DirecTV has way more HD channels (which i am totally obsessed with since I got my monster HDTV in April). I have written TWC emails, both polite and nasty, to ask them, to PLEAD for them to get GolTV. And nothing. They actually sent me a letter or email (I forget) once asking me to send a written request. An actual letter. I mean who writes letters anymore people? It's 2007. My main form of communication is text message and IM. I have friends I actually talk to in person or on the phone maybe 1 out of 1000 times that I talk to them. This is getting ridiculous. Anyways, not that one letter from one dude is gonna make some TWC Programming exec wake up and say "You know what, this dude is right, we should add GolTV, get Enzo Francescoli (GolTV CEO and former Uruguayan slick-on-the-ball midfield superstar, dude was sick) on the horn!". Yeah right. Anyways, I sent the letter. I printed it out on my impressive work-letterhead with the company logo and my impressive looking title and mailed it off....

And then......nothing.....
I called....
I wrote....
I emailed....
...and still nothing.

No GolTV for me.

So now I guess I will sit here and watch the freaking Phillies (I don't wanna talk about the Mets' collapse) try to come back from a 5 run lead in the 9th inning against Manny Corpas (kid is nasty, not gonna happen). But they have as good a chance as me flicking to channel 804 and finding GolTV there instead of CaribeVision.