watching the World Cup...

[CRguy]

until someone bumps into them ......
and then they roll around on the grass and compete for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Drama ???

LOL -- yea, I've seen some of that already! Of course, Americans are familiar with that ploy from watching the NBA...

SEE the theme here ?????
THEY wear shorts too ????


WHAT is with the grown men in shorts thing ????



I do Karate.
WE wear scary white pajamas.
WE rule and are always KEWL.

WHAT is with the shorts thing ?????

[weisssoccermom]

Crguy - No thunder down here - I like it but the furbabies are scared to death of it. With hubby still recovering from his recent back surgery, I guess I'm sort of glad we haven't experienced it. I don't want to have to be soothing both of the girls and trying to take them to the bathroom while the 'booms' are going on. It totally freaks them out.

Skypup - ah yes. I love soccer...hence my name....weisssoccermom. For a long time, that's what I felt I was...a soccer mom to one of my children. Seriously, I missed it when the kiddos all grew up and I didn't have 2-3 soccer games every weekend. The tournaments all over the country every summer were tiring, expensive but a blast. I never miss my Sounders at home (season ticket holder) and I've traveled to LA, Denver, Chicago and Salt Lake City to watch them play. Now that one of my sons is living in Philly, it will be a good excuse to travel there and/or NY to watch a game as well. I have to say it was an AWESOME game last June when the USMNT came to Seattle and played a WC qualifier against Panama. That was an experience! I've even got a Sounders personalized license plate....like I said, I can't get enough of soccer and my Sounders.


BTW - the Argentina game got really interesting at the end! I was wondering if Bosnia was going to pull out a tie! Good game!

[justin case]

I really am not all that familiar with this game Jaynee, but I have been told it is only called soccer in the U.S. Is that correct, and perhaps if so, can enlighten me as to the reason this might be so?
Regards,
Michael

[weisssoccermom]

I really don't know but heard it actually started being called soccer back in England that was some sort of acronym for the Associate Football but I'm not sure of it. It morphed with certain classes into soccer and when the game became popular in other countries that actually had what we refer to as football, the name soccer stuck. I've often wondered, for example, whether the Premier League is actually called Premier League Soccer (like we call it) or Premier League Football/Futbol. If you notice on my license plate, the name of the team is Sounders FC. The FC stands for Football Club so while we refer to it as 'soccer' the actual names of the teams oftentimes have some derivation of 'football' or 'futbol' in it.

My son's first premier league team was called FC United....the girls version (the club my daughter was on) was called Royals FC. Whitecaps FC (Vancouver BC), TFC (Toronto FC) and FC Dallas are other teams in the MLS that also incorporate the FC designation into their names.

Actually what we commonly refer to as World Cup Soccer is actually the FIFA World Cup. FIFA is the governing body of the sport which the USA/Canada refer to as soccer and stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association (or what we refer to as the International Federation of Association Football). I don't care much what they call it....football or soccer...I just love the game. I'm enjoying our two week MLS break (we have a long season that started the first weekend in March and runs through the end of October with the MLS Cup Playoffs finishing in November and the Cup game possibly the first weekend in December. The season started earlier this year to allow for the two week WC break. Regardless it is a long season compared with other professional sports teams.

You should definitely watch the USA V Ghana match tomorrow at 6PM ET (ESPN I believe). Prior to that is the other game in our group.....Germany v Portugal which should be an awesome game....particularly if Ronaldo is playing (there was some concern about an injury he had). He's an awesome forward, his skill level is superb and he's one difficult player to contain. Besides that, he's not bad to look at either

[CRguy]

but I have been told it is only called soccer in the U.S. Is that correct ....

Actually also called soccer in Canada 'cos the term "football" was already taken by ... well FOOTBALL !

Now the terms football / footie / soccer are kind of interchangeable depending upon, with whom you chat to up here.

My first and only soccer coach (age 8 until 16) was an immigrant UK fellow and we always called it soccer ... BUTT our organization which he personally founded and nurtured for many years ... was known as a local "United Football Club."

Any time a Euro pro team was in town he would organize a trip for our team and we saw many notables of the day : Real Madrid, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Sussex Rangers, Man U, Santos.......Yes actually got to see Pele once ! We also attended many local pro league games between local Euro talent .. divided upon ethnic and national lines ... e.g. Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Brazilian, Argentinian ... and sports organizations e.g. firefighters, police. There was a very rich and diverse soccer community here in Vancouver long before the 86'ers and Whitecaps made it a truly professional sport in town.

Yes, I am going waaaayyyy back ... BTDT !

Cheers
CRguy

[lohidoc]

I have never understood any of the North American sports. They all seem absurd or boring or just plain incomprehensible.

The standard of sports commentary in North America seems to me dismal. No intelligent analysis, just hyped nonsense, and then those ridiculous headphones. What's with that???

But football - that's a reason to live. Like art, music, love, work, except perhaps more so.

Being Dutch I know the highs and lows of every tournament we have had since 1966. World cup and European cups, I remember them all.And this one shapes up beautifully. Holland-Spain 5-1! I forgot, for a short while, I have cancer.

Van Persie's diving header after Daley Blind's pass was a thing of beauty. An old enemy destroyed, an ancient wrong made right.

And Maia, if we meet in the final, we'll have to figure out a way to watch it together.

[CRguy]

Gotta hand it to you Marc ... 5-1 at that level is a devastating differential.
Most games combined total goals scored are less than four !

Oh and the headphones : they are actually listening to Miley Cyrus 'cos with what's coming outta their OWN mouths ....
even they can't listen to themselves !
JMO !

Cheers buddy
CRguy

[lohidoc]

I feel sorry for the socceroos up next. But no mercy - they just beat us in the hockey world cup final.

[CRguy]

I agree.
At the elite level in ANY sport, when the best of the best face off and elevate their games to a truly elite level.......
the results need to be spectacular.
AND no mercy ... No A's for effort ... only for results.

“Do or do not. There is no try.” - Master Yoda

[kiwiinoz]

I really am not all that familiar with this game Jaynee, but I have been told it is only called soccer in the U.S. Is that correct, and perhaps if so, can enlighten me as to the reason this might be so?
Regards,
Michael

Michael,

Growing up in NZ it was soccer all the way as whilst I played soccer, there was no other sport apart from Rugby in the hearts of the Kiwis. Once I moved to Australia it got confusing as they have AFL (where the F = football) and rugby, and rugby league, but there are a lot of European immigrants to football was always prefixed with "is that soccer, or a real sport"

Kiwi

[kiwiinoz]

I feel sorry for the socceroos up next. But no mercy - they just beat us in the hockey world cup final.

Marc,

I can't associate myself with Australia on a sporting level as I grew up in NZ where they were, and will always be, the enemy thus even though I am citizen, have the passport and have developed the accent, I can't support them in sports. However I find it amazing that they think that they even have a chance of winning a game in this tournament.

Kiwi

[lohidoc]

I feel sorry for the socceroos up next. But no mercy - they just beat us in the hockey world cup final.

Marc,

I can't associate myself with Australia on a sporting level as I grew up in NZ where they were, and will always be, the enemy thus even though I am citizen, have the passport and have developed the accent, I can't support them in sports. However I find it amazing that they think that they even have a chance of winning a game in this tournament.

Kiwi

I like the socceroos, ever since their gutsy performance (under Dutch coach Hddink) against Italy in the 2006 world cup, only to be undone by a dreadful penalty decision in the final minutes of overtime. The wily Italians went on to win the tournament (remember Zidane's headbutt)?

[singingholly]

FORZA AZZURRI!!!

[carrie]

Oh Lohidoc.......I feel sorry for our Socceroos too Was watching the game against Chile the other day with our Daughter(mad, passionate Chelsea fan and long time player herself) and we couldn't believe it took us 10 or so minutes to really start playing. Realistically, we know we aren't going to get as far as we did in the last world cup but losing that final the way we did hurt a lot Our daughter was lucky enough to go to a Chelsea home game during a recent European trip.
Kiwi, one of our other Daughters and her Husband live and work in the North Island of New Zealand (9 year residents) and they watch the rugby quite often but when it comes to Aus v NZ they are still dinky di Aussies. I was born in England and DH is Aboriginal and we support all of our Aussie teams.... except one....not keen on our cricket team at all . England for us all the way in that game!
Good luck to everyone and hope your teams do well!!
Take care everyone, Karen.

[kiwiinoz]

Marc,
Do I remember the header or what! Sure, it was the only time I felt like an Aussie fan.
I also remember a certain soccer player for Italy called Totti who was one of the best actors that I had ever seen. He was amazing, he could fall over, roll, wriggle and generally cry to get penalties all with the opposition no closer than 5 yards.

Karen,
Australian's are just bad sports in general but the cricketers are the worst. The Black Caps (Kiwi team) are pathetic so I just pretend that I don't care and change the subject to the netball.

Kiwi