My newspaper column for this week: The big kick

[flowomo]

MODS: This is my column; I have reprint permissions from The Sentinel

READERS: for clarity, it rained constantly here in Pennsylvania (and over most of the Mid-Atlantic) for a whole week.

ALSO AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:

http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2006/06/29/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt



World Cup good excuse to stay dry
By Rich Lewis, June 29, 2006


Thank goodness, it finally stopped.

I woke up yesterday morning and the deluge that went on for days was finally over — though we certainly haven’t seen the last of it.

No, I’m not talking about the rain. I’m talking about the World Cup soccer games.

The water spilling from the skies over a few million East Coast Americans was a mere drizzle compared to the ocean of tears spilling from the eyes of billions of soccer fans from Carlisle to Canberra to Krakow — sometimes in joy and sometimes in anguish.

The tournament started on June 9 and paused only yesterday in preparation for the quarterfinals on Saturday. I have actually watched every single game so far. That’s 56 games in 19 days!

And the weird thing is, I don’t even like soccer. As Tony Soprano’s hulking bodyguard, Furio Giunta, said about golf as he pushed Uncle Junior’s cancer doctor into a pond, it’s a “stupida game.” Although he added an adjective that I can’t repeat here.

OK, I know, it’s so narrow-mindedly American of me not to grasp the cosmic elegance of “the beautiful game” — but there you have it. The games last 90 minutes or more and you get maybe a grand total of three minutes of excitement. The rest is ping-pong on grass.

The most useful skill a player can have is the ability to fall down and act like his leg has been ripped off at the knee by a grizzly bear. The idea is to fool the referee into believing your opponent has savagely attacked you so you can be consoled with an easy crack at the goal. I’ve watched dozens of athletes writhe on the ground in utter agony one minute and sprint down the field in perfect condition the next. They sure do heal quickly.

Most goals aren’t scored as the result of an exciting flow of action — but come either from total chaos or from “corner kicks” or “free kicks” or “penalty kicks” — which are moments when the game literally stops and everybody stands still with their hands over their sensitives. It’s like a basketball game in which 90 percent of the points are scored on free throws.

And I’m sorry, kicking a ball with your feet can be cool and graceful, but hitting a ball with your head just looks silly. Soccer players remind me of those big-headed, armless Lego people that you stick in the little round holes.

But just because the game is a little stupida doesn’t mean it’s not interesting.

For example, I love the names of the players. The Brazilians have won five of the 17 World Cups, more than any other country. Part of their mystique is that most of them have only one name — Ronaldo, Robinho, Adriano, Cicinho, Cafu, Kaka, and my absolute favorite, Fred.

Whew, those are powerful names — like Zorro or Batman. Actually, Marc Zoro does play for the Ivory Coast.

At the other end of the scale you have Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, who plays for the Netherlands. That’s his name — Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. The whole thing is written on the back of his jersey. Length makes strength, I guess.

I also love the language of soccer — or at least of the commentators on ESPN, who I assume are Brits.

First, there’s this bizarre use of the plural when referring to teams. We would say, “Brazil is crushing Ghana.” Soccer people say, “Brazil are crushing Ghana.”

An ESPN story mentioned France’s 2002 performance “in which the team were sent packing after three matches without scoring a goal.”

Send these guys a grammar book.

But the overall language has a certain charming formality right out of the 19th century.

A Brazilian goal “allowed the five-times winners to repel the forceful threat of a Ghana side who took the game to their illustrious opponents for long periods.”

A late French goal “was extremely harsh on the Africans.”

A ball slid past the Spanish goalie “after taking a cruel deflection.”

I love it. It’s all so Rudyard Kipling.

But most of all I watch the games because of the passion. Billions of people in every corner of the world go insane over the World Cup — and that kind of emotional frenzy is just too amazing to ignore. It may be just a “stupida game,” but in terms of global reach, the World Cup makes the Super Bowl and the World Series look tiny and quaint.

From Iran to Japan to Mexico to Togo, no event connects the world like the World Cup. Nothing else comes even close.

Players have been killed when they returned home after a poor showing. Some governments pay their players huge bonuses for winning just one game. When the Czech Republic got knocked out of the World Cup by Italy last week, the banner headline in three separate Czech dailies blared “The End.” when France beat Spain on Tuesday, the headline in a Paris newspaper screamed “Giant!” — and “thousands of chanting supporters filled the Champs Elysees.”

I just wanted to be a little part of all that. Even if I don’t really get it.

Besides, I wasn’t going to go out in all that rain.

Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is:
[e-mail].

[Libby2]

1. kick

[flowomo]

2. was that a kick or a header?

:)