Wednesday, June 16, 2010

World Cup Reflections with Manuel

The first round of matches are complete! I've watched ~85% of them and am loving it. With my new (yet tentative) main display picture, I shall now start a blog series on the World Cup entitled World Cup Reflections with Manuel (this title has the sound of royalty, or maybe just ESPN Classics material... I love it). This gives me permission to vent all my frustration, concern, excitement, and praise about what's going on in this crazy tournament! It'll be sweet to look back on my thoughts for this historic World Cup. So, like it or not, here we GO!

First topic: The VUVUZELAS!!!
Wow, these things are making headlines EVERYWHERE! At first I thought that people should just suck it up and deal with them because it's the culture of African football... I now disagree with my previous thoughts. They are ridiculously annoying. The players can hardly communicate and it disrupts the flow of the game for sure! Not to mention it drowns out any intriguing chants or songs by each nation's supporters! COM'ON! The focus of this tournament being Africa's first World Cup is quickly shifting to the nauseous, plastic, CHINESE horns. It doesn't help when the FIFA president won't ban them because he's trying to build his own fan base. He didn't even think to go down and speak at the beginning of the German World Cup because everybody would have booed him! Only Africans praise him, and he loves it. Those horns are said to have a decibel level of 116! That's not healthy; good luck with your bleeding ears out there! I saw an Italian toddler wearing industrial earmuffs... just ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the loud cheering of crowds. It's the drone-like, swarming killer bee sounds that annoy me.

Second topic: The Jabulani ball.
The ball's problem is that it's too bouncy. This factor pretty much eliminates any opportunity for accurate long lobbed passes! Either it bounces over them or it skips past them. The receiving player basically should never let the ball bounce when he's waiting to strike it. It may also be too light. There have been so many sailing balls. It shouldn't be this frequent... Though Ronaldo knows how to strike it, that's for sure.

Third topic: The Paraguayan keeper may have been paid off. Who knows?!
How could a world class keeper dive way too early with a lot of space and miss a routine punch clearance from a corner kick? Fifteen minutes later he pulls off an extremely difficult/more difficult off-balanced snatch from another corner. He also got slugged from behind and still caught it fearlessly... I rest my case.

Fourth topic: UPSETS, struggles, and flying form!
WOW, the Swiss have proven themselves! I was ecstatic at work when I found out they beat Spain today! I was delirious. I was running around with excitement, I couldn't believe what I had heard. Wow, it's anyone's tournament to win! Things just got really interesting with today's upset. Brazil is also looking a bit shaky, South Africa drew with Mexico (though lost today to Uruguay), and the Dutch and England need to pull it together. Those German young guns are firing on all cylinders too!!! Here's a fact for y'all: Eight of Germany's starting eleven are under the age of 25. UNREAL. Plus, the two players who stood out the most in that game are 20 and 21 (Müller and Özil)! It's weird to think that I'm their age, I could be playing in the World CUP!

Fifth and final topic: I can almost never get home without hearing the final results of the day's matches.
Since all three games finish before my work day is over, I somehow always find a way not to avoid the final scores even though I try so hard not to find out. Usually, I'm not thinking and listen in on the radio at the wrong time. However, a couple days ago, I was about to get into my car and head home to watch with out prior knowledge of results when I heard a boy yelling... "PARAGUAY and ITALY..." I plugged my ears and started to hum before I heard anything else. I fended off the inevitable that day. We'll see if I can keep up my effort of avoidance!

Waka, Waka...

1 comment:

  1. clearly someone has been listening to CBC,
    **I can tell especially in the section about the vuvuzela (chinese!)

    ReplyDelete

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