On Sunday, the world said goodbye to the World Cup for another four years with a thrilling overtime finale. Well, the game itself wasn’t exactly thrilling. After 90 minutes of regulation, the game was tied 1-1. After two overtimes, the score remained a dismal 1-1. The game was decided on penalty kicks, but what most fans will remember had nothing to do with the game itself.
The most exciting play of the game was during the second overtime, when France’s star player Zinedine Zidane, set to retire from World Cup play after the game, delivered a cold-blooded headbutt to the chest of Italian defender Marco Materazzi that would make Mike Tyson proud.
Many believe France would have won the game if not for Zidane’s ejection.
Can you imagine a scenario like this in American sports? Imagine Carolina Hurricane Rod Brind’Amour getting angry during game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals and smashing an Oilers defender in the face with his stick, being ejected and costing the Canes the series. Or Michael Jordan being ejected from his last NBA Finals game for headbutting Karl Malone and costing the Chicago Bulls a sixth NBA title.
Oh well, there is a strong possibility Zidane may be killed by a French soccer-mob.
Don’t laugh, this really happens.
In 1994, Colombian defender Andres Escobar scored a goal on his own net, costing the Colombians the game. After the tournament, he was shot dead in his home town of Medellin.
That’s what is so great about World Cup soccer — if you lose, there’s a good chance you could be killed.
To most Americans, watching the World Cup is about as much fun as watching the proverbial paint dry. Americans care about the World Cup about as much as they care about the Tour de France, menÃs tennis, or the WNBA. And who can blame them? Matches are long, there is hardly any scoring and many games end without a winner. But soccer is much more than pretty men running around a field kicking a ball for 90 minutes.
I think of soccer the same way I think of professional wrestling; it’s not really a sport, it’s entertainment. And when it comes to sports entertainment, there is nothing more exciting than World Cup soccer!
Let’s start with the dramatic performances of the players. If you are irritated when basketball players flop, watch a soccer match. Basketball stole the art of exaggerating contact from soccer. Soccer players make even the slightest bumps and elbows look like career-ending injuries. I swear Shane Battier must have watched hours of World Cup soccer to perfect his on-court acting abilities.
Not only are soccer studs famous for flopping, but sometimes they downright fake injuries. No soccer match is complete without a player faking an injury and being carried off the field on a stretcher, only to miraculously heal himself before he even gets back to the locker room and run back onto the field to the sound of thousands of drunken screaming fans to play the rest of the game. Oh the drama!
In no other professional sport in the world is faking an injury such a widely accepted activity. Vince Carter should have played soccer.
Even with all the acting, all the fake injuries and the headbutt heard ’round the world, what makes the World Cup truly unique is the fans.
American soccer fans excluded, soccer fans are the craziest people on the planet. Not only do they murder their players if they make a game-altering mistake, but they do it in the cruelest of fashions.
According to Escobar’s girlfriend, the killer shouted “Goal!” (mimicking play-by-play men for their notorious calls after a goal is scored) for each of the 12 bullets fired.
Although we don’t murder our players when they inevitably lose, American players fear for their lives as much as any team. Americans are taunted during games with “Osama Bin Laden!” chants while angry fans throw rocks, bottles, batteries and even bags of urine onto the field. Yes, urine.
In this year’s World Cup, British soccer fans followed their team to Germany on a mission — to drink Germany dry. According to a British newspaper, in Nuremburg, Germany, 70,000 British fans flooded the city and drank 1.2 million pints of beer — an average of 17 pints each!
I can’t help but wonder — what if N.C. State soccer was this crazy?
