Saturday, June 12, 2010

More World Cup, more nostalgia

Back in the olden days, during the last World Cup, I put this together. I thought of it today watching Nigeria/Argentina because it's the first game I've seen between two teams who really like to play up to the refs with dramatic dives, exaggerated pain, mystified outrage and other theatrics.

What I'm doing these days is similar to what I was doing back then, but Nellie was a voice I don't use now, and that's okay with me, but it was a fun time.

As for the World Cup, the histrionics add an element to the matches that helps create a rooting interest when you have no loyalty to either nation. Either that, or you can enjoy it as a science-fiction movie about a sport played by the world's biggest, most-coordinated 8-year-olds.
(click on the pic for a larger version)

4 comments:

ronnie said...

Hey, I'm rooting for Argentina in the cup! They beat Nigeria 1-nil, but I wasn't able to watch the game, having other things I needed to do today involving taking large pieces of crappy old furniture to the city landfill...

Mike said...

What you missed was that they were often outraged at the clearly incompetent calls of the referees, and badly injured by the blatant and malicious fouls of the Nigerians -- who reciprocated on both counts. Fortunately for us, I suspect the Argies will pass through. Alas, the Koreans seem to know how to play the game, which might deprive us of the Nigerians going forward. The South Koreans are not very demonstrative.

The real loss in terms of dramatics may come from the fact that the Azzurri have sent the same team they sent to the last World Cup, and while I'm sure their dramatic skills remain strong, they may not, at their collective age, have the football chops to stick around very long. What a loss! What a loss!

Jean said...

I read a comment recently (I don't recall where), that the referees need to learn at least 17 (I think that was the number) languages to make out whether the players are abusing him or others. :)

This playing-around-the-world thing is perhaps one of the reasons (again it's a comment I heard elsewhere) why some of the European teams with high expectations fail to perform in the first game. They fall into place as a team as the rounds progress, attaining perfection by the Semis & Final - those that reach there.

Mike said...

I'll bet they don't have to learn the entire languages. When I was a summer camp counselor, we had a lot of kids from South and Central America, and, while I was able to use my knowledge of Latin to follow some of their conversations, every counselor knew the key words that would bring out the bar of soap!