A warm, hazy day after a mild, hazy night. I found myself awake as the sky began easing its way from nighttime dark to dawning light, drifted in and out a bit from there but never made it back to genuine sleep. Eventually dragged myself to my feet, got the day underway. Stopped for a shot of caffeine and a pretty respectable muffin (made with maple syrup!). Hardly made a dent in the inner haze. Went to the gym, did the workout thing (me: so virtuous). The haze cleared a little, I stumbled back out into the summer weather.
Yesterday: me watching the final World Cup match. A few minutes into the second half, the phone rang, I let the answering machine deal with it. Until I heard the voice leaving the message, ran into the kitchen, picked up, and spent the rest of the match watching and discussing the game with me lad Dermot, him in his home in the British midlands, watching the game on the big flatscreen idiot box in his living room. A mixed blessing at certain moments since the version of the broadcast he watched ran a few seconds ahead of the one I watched.
Two things I sorely miss when I'm on this side of the Atlantic: watching high-level European football and friends who are also into it. The former has become less of an issue since I've discovered a couple of channels that show plenty of ball from England and Spain. (Brief pause to thank a benevolent universe for satellite TV.) The latter so far remains nonexistent on this side of the water, though one or two denizens of the gym have confessed discovering those same stations and seem to be in the process of getting hooked.
If you saw yesterday's game, you know what a strange affair it was. A lot of beautiful, world-class play between two strong teams, spiked with less wonderful stuff -- a motley mix of elements capped off by two overtime periods that featured the ugly, saddening jolt of watching one of the greatest players of the last half-century losing control for an instant, head-butting an Italian player, a breakdown of discipline that got him tossed from the game. There are those who think both players should have been tossed, given that the Italian had apparently been aiming a stream of especially foul invective at Zidane, sotto voce, so no one else would hear it. That, in fact, was Dermot's first comment as we watched the moment unfold, that many in his part of the world were mighty unhappy with the idea that the instigator in situations like this went unpenalized, unhappy enough that it had some thinking about how the officiating could be adjusted to address this kind of situation. As in thinking about exploring ways to involve video replay into the officiating process, an unlikely development, one would think, given that the game doesn't exactly have time-outs.
It was strange to watch that small drama unfold, and stranger to watch the long, hard-fought game come down to a shoot-out, a resolution that turned French goalkeeper Barthez, into the goat after putting in a solid performance. (Then stranger still to stumble across bizarrely uninformed blog rants about the Zidane/Materazzi situation. There are those for whom lack of information is no impediment when it comes to tossing together opinions.)
And then happy Italian players capered all over the pitch as the Cup drew to a close. Dermot's sweetie, who had been next to him on the sofa snoozing, woke up. In their part of the world, it was Sunday night, 10 p.m., the workweek looming. We got off the phone, I killed the TV, found myself in a quiet house, looking out at green, tranquil Vermont countryside. Dramas transpired off beyond the horizon, here summer life drifted peacefully along, birdsong providing the soundtrack.
España, te echo de menos.
rws 8:03 PM [+]
Comments:
There was about 100 soccer fans at Positive Pie for the WC final. Two of us are such fans of soccer and the US team that we went to Germany for the WC. So, I agree with you that there aren't a lot of soccer fans around but we are here.
How long to the Charity Shield match?
How long to the Charity Shield match?
Thanks for posting the link -- what a great experience that must have been. I've had friends go to past Cups, in '94 and '98, and they're descriptions of the event were so much fun.
I'd been hoping to spend a lot of the Cup in the U.K. watching games with friends there, but couldn't get away.
The FA Shield Cup happens on August 13 -- the FA website provides lots of information.
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I'd been hoping to spend a lot of the Cup in the U.K. watching games with friends there, but couldn't get away.
The FA Shield Cup happens on August 13 -- the FA website provides lots of information.