Soccer To Me

I haven't watched a single second of World Cup play this year. I'm not bragging, nor complaining; I just didn't care. Unlike the vast majority of the planet, I can no longer get passionate about sports played with round balls - be they soccer/football, basketball, baseball, golf... Tennis I can sort of get into once in a while, but never a whole week, and just the women's game, because most of them play a well-rounded game, not just based on one or two skills they dominate with mixed with obvious weaknesses the way the men's game has become.

When it comes to world-class sports, I also have huge problems with the games-behind-the-games, the corruption and politicking that goes on, and the constant exceptions to / breaking of laws, be it temporarily, in the name of someone making billions of dollars. FIFA and the Olympics fit in this, as does Formula 1.

And perhaps it can be blamed on not having my own nation to root for, but I also have a thing against rooting for countries and nations representing man-made borders, usually delimited after useless wars. In hockey, I usually root for Slovakia - a country which attained independence through peace in 1993. I wouldn't be against rooting for their former invaders, the Czechs, if only because they too know what it's like to be owned by others, in their case the Russians. I'd also root for Ireland and Chechnya, I guess, to root for the underdog, but the only country I really feel a bond to is Slovakia, and they usually get eliminated pretty quickly in most competitions.

In any event, I learned that the World Cup final would pit Argentina against Germany, two countries that at this point in history probably house the same number of former Nazis within its borders - which I would estimate as half that of the U.S.

I heard that a couple of weeks ago, one guy bit another guy, and will be suspended for years, but even that didn't put a dent in my spirit; this, however, I may have tuned to watch:

I have no idea what's going on, and I'm guessing Schweinsteiger is German, which would make the other guy Argentinian. But if that's how they break ties nowadays after 100 minutes of tied-game play, I wonder how many turns will be needed until a winner is declared.

And then I assume the camera turns to fans like this one, celebrating: