Football follow-up...

Soccer... Soccer... Do you like soccer yet!

That's a family guy bit...

So this might be my last soccer post for the foreseeable future but I gotta get some random anecdotes of my chest before I forget them all. Maybe a couple more...

First I touched on the Andorra - Albania match a little bit but it I think it needs more treatment.
For starters I think it's incredible that every nation in the world has a chance to qualify for the world cup. From the giants of football like England and Brazil, to every small scrap of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific, if you have some measure of autonomy, and can scrape together 23 guys with matching uniforms, you're pretty much in. But those micro-nations usually end up just playing each other like in the Oceanic conference before just so one of them can get squashed by New Zealand. Same with the Caribbean, they would all eliminate each other before getting crushed by the Mexicos and USAs of the North American Federation.

But in Europe its different. In the build up to either the World Cup or the Euro Cup they seed every nation in Europe, divide them into groups, and have a them play each other round robin like. Therefore you're gonna have a couple giants of European football, a couple pretenders, a couple fish, and one or two real minnows. This list includes several countries that only the super rich have even heard of as the best places to hide their money from the taxmen i.e. Luxemburg, Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta, the Faroe Islands, and San Marino. Sadly the Vatican City is yet to field an all catholic priest team.

I've just always loved the notion of these non-professionals, for the most part, who probably just train a couple of times a month, play on a rec-level team, find themselves playing against their heroes on a regular basis. All this because some noble, at some point in the history hundreds of years ago, achieved autonomy for his little fiefdom from some king by pledging 100 knights to help fight some war. It's as if the mayor of St. Thomas found an ancient piece of parchment from the King of England, 250 years ago, stating it would be forever independent because of their awesome price break they gave the royal family on a shipment of furs they sent them, and boom, St. Thomas is sending their best hockey players to the Olympics, taking time off from their day jobs as welders and construction workers, who used toi have dreams of making it big but never got out of junior B hockey, playing agaisnt the Sidney Crosbys of the world, who just two weeks ago they were watching on Hockey night in Canada, Molson in hand.

Actually I think I just had a great idea for a screenplay.

copyright 2010 me.