Thursday, June 10, 2010

News and Bits - One Day Before Kickoff

Just one day before the fun kicks off with South Africa hosting perennial second round losers Mexico.  So I'm sure everyone is fiending for their World Cup fix. There's plenty out there to read previewing the Cup, but here are some not so serious stuff to beware of.

It's being reported that FIFA apparently requires its referees to learn English swear words for the World Cup.  Not just for the all-English speaking USA-England match mind you.  Haven't you always wondered how the various teams and referees communicate when you have a Spanish speaking ref mediating an argument between a German and a Ghanaian?  Now you know that apparently English is the universal language for telling the ref to go f*ck off. 

While most of your World Cup viewing is going to be early in the morning, so unless you're one of those sick people who somehow can function off only five hours of sleep, you'll also want to be getting to bed early.  However, you might not want to fall asleep too early because the Daily Show, where sadly to say I do in fact get a large portion of my information about the news, is sending senior foreign sports correspondent, John Oliver, to South Africa.  Tonight will air the first segment, which features Oliver, aka Dr. Ian Duncan, psychology professor at Greendale Community College, hanging around the US Men's National Team training camp.  Other segments will follow with the Liverpool supporter (Oliver was born in Birmingham but raised in Liverpool, so I imagine he has extra reason to root against Tim Howard and Landon Donovan).

In further evidence that politicians shouldn't get involved with sporting events, and of course vice versa (I'm looking at you Curt Schilling), the US Consul General in South Africa, Alberta Mayberry, is running her mouth off and claiming that, "Our men are preparing to crush your little boys," and that, "We're a nation of winners - we don't do losing." If this wasn't being reported in the Telegraph I wouldn't guessed it was part of some Onion-style fake article.

While not the Onion, the Sports Pickle is also good for a laugh, and here's a piece on why you should root against the other 31 teams in the World Cup. Want a specific reason to root against Uruguay, look no further. They're greedy bastards, having won two Cups despite having only 3.5 million people, and here in America we don’t take kindly to nations who want to hog a disproportionate share of the world’s resources. And, Uruguay produces no oil. None. What good are they?

With two days before the US-England match, I'm already giddy with anticipation.  And with the early kickoff times during the week, let me just say thank you to ESPN3.  What the hell would I do without you?

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