The End

So, it's all over. Spain are champions. I shouldn't really care as I haven't allegiance to either country and they both played spectacularly boring football. Still.

I do hate teams that develop a bandwagon following, teams like Brazil. Spain is a bandwagon team too. I suppose the teams can't help it, but I can choose not to jump on the bandwagon as it rolls across South Africa making stops on all seven continents. Shit. If Spain really dazzled me, really wowed me, won me over with brilliant, entertaining football, with spectacular goals, I might feel differently. I just can't love the cagey, chess-match football they play. Not that the Dutch played any better. While they have a great footballing tradition, this was a rather week, light-beer version of what they are capable of as a nation.

It is such a fffffftt ending to a great tournament, 30 days of wonderful surprises, upstarts making chumps of the traditional soccer powers, sending them all on early vacations. Then this, a sad little fart escaping from a deflated balloon. Do I expect too much? Why is the final always a disappointment, or 9 times out of 10? Is it me? Why are the upsets, or the battles from behind, the matches that turn your insides out and make a mess of the odds makers' books the most interesting? Japan v. Nigeria, now that would be an interesting final. The US v. Slovakia. Teams that are completely unpredictable. A one-nil victory for Spain. Wow! Big surprise.

And tomorrow the newspapers will be gooey with praise for Spain, articles written by sports writers who watch precious little soccer and still use American sports analogies to illustrate their points. They too have leapt aboard "la fiora roja" express.

(Sigh) I feel let down somehow.

But just as sure as there will be another World Cup in 4 years, I will be there, watching, cheering, cursing, singing, crying, analyzing and discussing it all. I can't wait. Oh, the beautiful game.

The World Cup Final that never was

You read it here first. This, the 3rd place match between Germany and Uruguay, should have been the final. I guarantee this match was more interesting, more entertaining than anything we will see tomorrow at Soccer City in Johannesburg. The Germans and Uruguayans played end-to-end attacking football as if this were the final. Shame nobody remembers the 3rd and 4th place finishers in a World Cup.

Dutch football

This is "Total Football" circa 1974. Let's hope the Dutch class of 2010 can live up to this legendary team and succeed where they failed.

Spanish football

If the Dutch don't perform we'll need a Simpsons-style riot to keep the Spanish from boring us to death on Sunday in the World Cup final.

A lesson in football, blood and soil

There are teams you like and teams you don't. I like Germany. My grandfather was German; he taught me the game; I have relatives and friends living in Germany. I like Holland, not because I am Dutch, but because they play attractive football. I don't like Argentina. Mostly because of Diego Maradona. I don't like Brazil, not because they don't play great football, because they do; I don't like them because EVERYONE likes Brazil, and because they are expected to win every World Cup.

I am oft ridiculed for having multiple allegiances. The truth is, when it comes to the World Cup I have just one team, and that is the US. One has only to read my post following the US - England match to know this is true. While I have English blood, and love English football I would never root against the US in a football match between the two. As I said, I have German blood. In 2002 the US met the Germans in the quarter final. Did I support Germany because that is the birthplace of my grandfather, or because they play better football? Of course not. I am American. This is not grand patriotic posturing, because anyone that knows me, knows that I am no patriot. It is simply that in international competition, I feel one should support either the country in which they were born, or the country in which they live, whichever is the greater number of years. Let me explain. If I moved to France now, at the age of 41, and spent the rest of my life there, I'm still going to support the US in the World Cup. If I live beyond 83, well then, maybe it would be open to discussion which country I follow. If I was born in Mexico, but have lived all but my first year in the US, I'm going to support the US, not Mexico.

What is interesting about Americans is that we are all from somewhere else. There are Native Americans, of course, but everyone else is a descendent of an immigrant from another land. This is a more recent phenomena in Europe, one with which they are struggling. There has been much talk about the players on the German squad with Polish last names. People still expect Germans to have names like Beckenbauer and Muller. I have friends from England and Mexico that find it difficult to believe I can claim English, German, Hungarian, French, Mexican and Native American heritage. When the World Cup rolled around they enjoyed taunting me, questioning my loyalties, and even today as Germany battled Spain in the semi-final they thought it peculiar or hypocritical that I would root for Germany. People and cultures with very pure bloodlines cannot understand the American mutt. In 50 or 100 years when their own indigenous cultures have been watered down, and the white Anglo-Saxons are the minority in England, or the brown-skinned Aztec is no longer the majority in Mexico, perhaps then they will understand.

Adidas Originals Star Wars Cantina 2010

Adidas Originals Star Wars Cantina 2010

The Come Down

It is strange. I feel a little empty. I'm glad to be back in New York, but I am missing that focus I had in South Africa. It is still all about the World Cup, even here. I wake up to it, have lunch with it, go to bed with it. My days are lubricated with World Cup football and beer. And yet, I feel, I don't know, somehow lost, as if my purpose has gone. There are still several matches to play, but it feels like the end of the party. That's it, that is the feeling. It is like when you've gone to a good party, you're having fun, talking, eating, drinking, dancing and then you notice that the guests are beginning to leave. And you think, wait, it's still early, come on, another round, another song. The come down.