It’s World Cup time again, and Americans from Bangor to Batavia don’t even bother to stifle their quadrennial yawns, while more fervent patriots are praying to the God who adjudicates sporting events that the US team flames out early, as usual.
It’s been 32 years since the World Cup first tainted American soil.
The 1994 invasion was a colossal flop, despite the corporate subsidies lavished by Coca-Cola, Mastercard and the usual suspects. The title game – oh, excuse me: match – a thrilling 0-0 tie in regulation between Brazil and Italy, did not win millions of new fans. There's a good reason it's not as big here as it is everywhere else. Americans want to see action. The want home runs. Touchdowns. Bench-clearing brawls. Holes-in-one, even.
What they don't like is the fact that a final game in a world tournament can end in a tie with neither team scoring anything more than just paychecks. It's that simple. And besides, the field's are too big and what the fuck is up with referees holding up colored cards? I don't get it. You probably don't either. Juss' sayin'...
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This was $ 26.99 on Tuesday...
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Just for the fun of it I looked up the stats for the 1994 championship game, the one that was a 0-0 tie after 120 minutes (90 regulation plus 30 extra time). The total for shots taken was 28. The total for shots on goal was . . . wait for it . . . 11. For both teams. Which works out to about 1 shot on goal every 11 minutes. Now that's what I call an exciting contest.
ReplyDeleteObviously neither team was trying very hard to score; both were playing defensively and hoping for a lucky break. And the shots weren't evenly distributed; Italy had a total of 7, 3 on goal, for the whole match.
If it were up to me I'd change the rules to make the game more like hockey -- once in an attacking zone a player couldn't be offside, and there would be an equivalent to the icing rule so a defender couldn't simply kick the ball all the way down the field to get out of trouble. But yet . . . billions of people love the game just the way it is. Go figure.