The World Cup starts in 5 days...

[benecios]

I am working 65 hours a week because we are so busy,its my birthday next weekend and my best friend's wedding the week after.And guess what is the only thing occupying my thoughts...you guessed it,THE EG SALE!

I thing my behaviour is borderline obsessive and if the EG sale was a person they would have taken out a restraining order against me.

 

[Roger]

 

[Spudbunny]

The England team is wearing Armani while the Italians are in Dolce & Gabbana. No word on the USA.

 

[Bradford]

Originally Posted by Spudbunny

The England team is wearing Armani while the Italians are in Dolce & Gabbana. No word on the USA.

Nike - head to toe

 

[benecios]

Originally Posted by Roger

The Stanley Cup...I never was a big baseball fan!

 

[GBR]

unfortunately

 

[borace]

I'm I the only person to think that soccer is a total bore, what's so interesting watching 22 vastly overpaid knuckleheads kicking a bag of wind around a field? Why is it that english football supporters are such moronic thugs compared to rugby or cricket fans. Is this mainly a UK phenomenen, I don't see American football fans behaving in such a low manner.

 

[waldo pepper]

Originally Posted by borace

I'm I the only person to think that soccer is a total bore, what's so interesting watching 22 vastly overpaid knuckleheads kicking a bag of wind around a field? Why is it that english football supporters are such moronic thugs compared to rugby or cricket fans. Is this mainly a UK phenomenen, I don't see American football fans behaving in such a low manner.

To address your first point,I think if you stripped any sport down to its base level it would seem pointless.American Football=Rugby but we don't wear padding and helmets.Baseball=Rounders,a womans game.Basketball=Netball,a womans game.
Billions of people can't be wrong about football,maybe its just because the mighty US of A are **** at it.
I mean this will be a WORLD cup with teams from Africa,Asia,Europe,South America,Australia,North America...unlike the WORLD series baseball which has teams from which countries?

Football hooliganism is a Europe wide problem with the English domestic game having one of the best records.In Eastern Europe,Italy and Holland they have much much domestic violence.
I admit it can be embarrassing when 100,000 England fans travel to Germany to support their team and maybe a few hundred idiots could spoil it.
Maybe they should join the US army and take their aggression out on innocent Iraqi children!

 

[GreyFlannelMan]

Originally Posted by waldo pepper

I admit it can be embarrassing when 100,000 England fans travel to Germany to support their team and maybe a few hundred idiots could spoil it.
Maybe they should join the US army and take their aggression out on innocent Iraqi children!

That's rather uncalled for.....

 

[WN2]

Originally Posted by borace

I'm I the only person to think that soccer is a total bore, what's so interesting watching 22 vastly overpaid knuckleheads kicking a bag of wind around a field? Why is it that english football supporters are such moronic thugs compared to rugby or cricket fans. Is this mainly a UK phenomenen, I don't see American football fans behaving in such a low manner.

Here's a story you might find interesting:

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comme...660884,00.html

And yes, you are the only person who thinks that.

Three more days..

 

[Fritz]

Three more days..

...and I am off to Munich to see the opening game Germany vs Costa Rica. My brother got us tickets.

 

[Fritz]

edit: double post

 

[Spudbunny]

The article asserts, "For no matter how many college games end in drunken mob violence (as many do), no matter how many American city centres see running battles between sports fans and riot police..." Don't you need, like, evidence for such claims? The author then chooses one case, Eagles fans, and draws general conclusions. Really the article is little more than an expression of the typical anti-Americanism of British journalists for which there is apparently an audience.

I also don't recall in the US a game being stopped by a riot in the stands (which had been set on fire), followed by negotiations with the rioters by the star player of one team, after which he returned and told the referee, "They [the fans] say they will kill us if we continue." But that happened in the Roma-Lazio game last year. It was Totti who spoke with the chant leaders. The game then ended.

I would add that I recently went to a baseball game in DC with my Italian friend. As we walked up to our seats, he noted that the atmosphere was so much different than at the San Siro. "There is much less tension," he said, noting that American baseball fans treated the game like a picnic or a festival.

Also, when an African-American touches the ball (or makes a catch or whatever), fans in the US do not break out into monkey grunts. Yet that happened to the English players Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole in Slovokia in 2004 and it happened in Spain last year (to Roberto Carlos, a Brazilian). I am not saying the US is free of racism. However, fans at any game I know of do not behave as they might have at an SEC college basketball game in 1955. Football fans in Spain and elsewhere do behave that way in 2005. If they did not, why does FIFA have a campaign against racism and why have they had to fine fans and teams for their appalling racist chants?

The ironic thing is: I like football more than American sports. But we should not pretend Europe is all good and the US is crap.

"If we continue, they will kill us." And everyone believed him. And the stadium was burning.

Geez.

 

[TCN]

Damn Europeans treat these games as if they were their kids' pee-wee hockey games or something.

 

[LA Guy]

Originally Posted by Spudbunny

Also, when an African-American touches the ball (or makes a catch or whatever), fans in the US do not break out into monkey grunts. Yet that happened to the English players Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole in Slovokia in 2004 and it happened in Spain last year (to Roberto Carlos, a Brazilian). I am not saying the US is free of racism. However, fans at any game I know of do not behave as they might have at an SEC college basketball game in 1955. Football fans in Spain and elsewhere do behave that way in 2005. If they did not, why does FIFA have a campaign against racism and why have they had to fine fans and teams for their appalling racist chants?

The ironic thing is: I like football more than American sports. But we should not pretend Europe is all good and the US is crap.


I really like football, or soccer, whichever you choose to call it. I grew up mainly with Italian friends, and played and watched soccer with them. These days, I am more of a basketball man, but I grew up on soccer.

That said, the atmosphere of soccer stadiums throughout Europe are palpably more violent than any sports arena in North America - hockey, basketball, American football, baseball, whatever. This is from years of attending sports events all over the world. Even in the cheapest nosebleed seats at a AA hockey game (and these can get rough) I've never felt the tension that I have felt in many soccer stadiums, especially in England, Spain and Italy. And for all that is said about racism in the United States (and yes, the States has a lot of race problems,) casual racism is much more widespread in Europe, at least in my experience as a visible minority (Asian) traveling throughout both the States and Europe. Xenophobia is also more widespread and accepted. This coming from a Asian-Canadian guy who married a girl with family throughout the Bible Belt.

Americans, for all their faults, seem generally more willing and ready to acknowledge and confront their own prejudices. Many Europeans would do well to learn to be as honest about such things.