So this is the villain
Remember the "Green Gaffe" or the "Gift from Clod"? The references to the goat of the England USA football game on Sunday? The only goal against the English team was an 'own-goal' and the 'keeper has been pilloried for the mistake ever since. The Germans have entered the debate by criticising the way both the manager and English team have been playing.The English manager Fabio Capella, an Italian, has blamed the new ball. This ball is much lighter and is erratic in wind and altitude. This opinion was supported this week by Gordon Banks the legendary 'keeper in the 1966 World Cup win.
Now in this story England refutes the German criticism and complains that the Germans have had the new ball for months.
Get on with the game, win the next one and all carping about the ball will disappear - must really be a slow news day in south Africa!
2 comments:
Heard some folks saying the didn't watch soccer because it was boring. Those same folk of course spent all weekend watching golf and the Jays. Now those are exciting sports!
With respect, Doug, the thing about baseball is strategy -strategy and math. If you can find it, I suggest Alan Abel's 'Baseball -The Timeless Game' a column he wrote about 20 years ago in The Globe if memory serves. I once went to a Rangers-Celtic match at Ibrox around 1980 and observed some very odd things. Well, odd to a Canadian non-soccer fan anyway. First was the fact that if I wanted to get lucky in Glasgow, a Saturday match-day afternoon would be the time to do it because there wasn't, I swear, a single female among the 100,000 fans in attendance. I might as well have been in a mosque. Second was the smells; Bovril and urine. Bovril is the only drink you could get at Ibrox, alcohol being verboten and just about everybody showing up drunk anyway and urine because no one, not for a second, would leave their spot to go to a washroom. They just pissed in place.
Why do I find soccer boring? Well for one thing any sport where tens of thousands of fans rise to their feet at a close call when the close call isn't within 35-feet of the net pretty much precludes excitement in my book. But I will say this; back in the 6-team NHL day what made the Toronto-Montreal rivalry so vital wasn't really hockey. It was socio-historical. That is it was Catholic vs. Protestant, French vs. English and peasant vs. overseer -much in the same way so many soccer matches are an undeniable draw to their respective ethnic supporters.
No more with hockey, obviously. It's simply about money and hired guns. And, to a degree, I think the same might be said about soccer.
All that said -I think we can agree on golf. Nes pas?
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