Don Fabio Crapello has failed in his bid to become the first pizza tosser to be made a Knight of the Realm and is now likely to face the axe of her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth Borden. In a foolhardy bid to revolutionize a nation’s 44-year obsession with repeating a feat of immense luck, Crapello introduced a distinctly Italian approach by encouraging senior players to pork each other’s girlfriends and to surrender when the going got tough. His Latin methodology did not sit well with traditional English characteristics of thinking you’ve done all the work in the qualifiers and believing you are as good as this newspaper built you up to be.
A period of national mourning has been announced in England whilst Scotland, Wales and Ireland will introduce a program of street parties amid scenes of unbridled joy. In a related development hundreds of English ex-pat soccer coaches in the United States have suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth and the blogosphere. In the meantime the whole UK will dust itself down, pick itself up, and look forward to a Brit winning Wimbledon.
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Monday, June 28, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Original Soundtrack
So the World Cup came back to Borden Park on Saturday. It was here in this suburban Detroit park that teams playing their matches at the Silverdome would practice during the 1994 tournament. How well I remember trying to catch Hagi’s attention in the hope that he’d show me his ball skills.
For this year’s World Cup one of the local clubs had arranged for Borden to present a big screen showing of the game in which we summoned up the spirit of 1776 and 1950 to take on the mighty-in-their-own-mind English and their British Bulldog coach with his Italian accent. It was such a melting pot of cultures as traditional African vuvuzela horns, fashioned from cheap plastics in China, were sold at inflated prices in a classic example American exploitation. As I shelled out my greenbacks I truly felt I was part of what the World Cup has come to represent in 2010.
As I laid my Burberry rug out on the grass and settled down to watch the game, the sound of the local kids blowing their vuvuzelas carried me across the miles and I wondered what they would sound like in the cauldron of the stadium in which our boys prepared to do battle. Even as the English scored their first and last goal I was wondering what a vuvuzela would sound like ringing across the plains of the Serengeti. I wondered what a vuvuzela would sound like in the hands of a magnificent Zulu warrior calling his brothers to arms. But as the second half kicked off I was beginning to wonder what a vuvuzela would sound like shoved firmly up the arse of the pain-in-the-butt 'fans' ruining the frickin’ game.
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For this year’s World Cup one of the local clubs had arranged for Borden to present a big screen showing of the game in which we summoned up the spirit of 1776 and 1950 to take on the mighty-in-their-own-mind English and their British Bulldog coach with his Italian accent. It was such a melting pot of cultures as traditional African vuvuzela horns, fashioned from cheap plastics in China, were sold at inflated prices in a classic example American exploitation. As I shelled out my greenbacks I truly felt I was part of what the World Cup has come to represent in 2010.
As I laid my Burberry rug out on the grass and settled down to watch the game, the sound of the local kids blowing their vuvuzelas carried me across the miles and I wondered what they would sound like in the cauldron of the stadium in which our boys prepared to do battle. Even as the English scored their first and last goal I was wondering what a vuvuzela would sound like ringing across the plains of the Serengeti. I wondered what a vuvuzela would sound like in the hands of a magnificent Zulu warrior calling his brothers to arms. But as the second half kicked off I was beginning to wonder what a vuvuzela would sound like shoved firmly up the arse of the pain-in-the-butt 'fans' ruining the frickin’ game.
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
It's All Balls
OK, enough already! Will you all please just get off my kids’ back? The result today had nothing to do with her! Yes, I know she may have given the impression that all six of their goals were the result of her having the hand/eye co-ordination of an English goalkeeper, but please, stop the cries of “Sub-out, retard”. There is no way that a highly trained, elite premier, super academy, ECNL, Divison-1-bound kid like mine would ever make a mistake. So it must have been that new Adidas ball.
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Sunday, May 30, 2010
Out Of State, Out Of (Our) Mind
So, Memorial weekend rolls around once again and we honor our servicemen in the traditional way by making fools of ourselves at youth sports tournaments all across the land of the free and the home of the self-centered. With winter well and truly behind us, we Michiganders like to leave our local rivals behind by driving six hundred miles or so south where we get to play exotic teams like Michigan Rush, Michigan Hawks, Michigan Chill and Michigan Express. I wonder where all the Ohio, Illinois and Indiana teams are this weekend? Detroit, I guess.
Still there’s something fun about frying ourselves in the first really hot weekend of the year. All that pasty white flesh turning brighter and brighter red as we work our way towards the semi-finals safe in the knowledge that the locals will invoke some obscure tournament rule that knocks us out on the fifth level of the tie-break decision making process.
The difference between the women’s game and men’s soccer comes sharply into focus as the girls stand patiently in long lines to the ladies rest room while the guys are done in no time at all and emerge with the sort of self satisfied smile that comes from the realization that the ability to pee standing up is your one advantage in life. I’ve made many an unfortunate ‘friendship’ over the years by being stuck beside some too-much-information type mother of three as we inch our way forward in the line for a call of nature. I well remember one girl who was dancing on her tippy-toes murmuring ‘mommy daddy mommy daddy’. I figured she was either excited to have made the final or was realizing she wasn’t going to make it to the head of the line in time.
For some reason this weekend is also the time a lot of us moms decide to try and dress like we are twenty years younger than we really are. The number of mature women squeezed into bikini tops that are far too small for them is breath taking. It’s almost as if they think that the men folks will be even more attracted to them if they appear to have four boobs instead of just two.
After the games we get to go back to the over-priced hotel mandated by the tournament organizers and marvel at how ill-prepared it is possible to be for “welcoming” a couple of hundred excitable kids. But it’s all forgotten as we take the field once again, harangue the refs, abuse the kids, and remember what this holiday weekend is really all about.
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Still there’s something fun about frying ourselves in the first really hot weekend of the year. All that pasty white flesh turning brighter and brighter red as we work our way towards the semi-finals safe in the knowledge that the locals will invoke some obscure tournament rule that knocks us out on the fifth level of the tie-break decision making process.
The difference between the women’s game and men’s soccer comes sharply into focus as the girls stand patiently in long lines to the ladies rest room while the guys are done in no time at all and emerge with the sort of self satisfied smile that comes from the realization that the ability to pee standing up is your one advantage in life. I’ve made many an unfortunate ‘friendship’ over the years by being stuck beside some too-much-information type mother of three as we inch our way forward in the line for a call of nature. I well remember one girl who was dancing on her tippy-toes murmuring ‘mommy daddy mommy daddy’. I figured she was either excited to have made the final or was realizing she wasn’t going to make it to the head of the line in time.
For some reason this weekend is also the time a lot of us moms decide to try and dress like we are twenty years younger than we really are. The number of mature women squeezed into bikini tops that are far too small for them is breath taking. It’s almost as if they think that the men folks will be even more attracted to them if they appear to have four boobs instead of just two.
After the games we get to go back to the over-priced hotel mandated by the tournament organizers and marvel at how ill-prepared it is possible to be for “welcoming” a couple of hundred excitable kids. But it’s all forgotten as we take the field once again, harangue the refs, abuse the kids, and remember what this holiday weekend is really all about.
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
New Policy
So we have come to my favorite time of year in Michigan youth soccer. The spring season culminates with the boy’s State Cup Finals. The finalists were decided last weekend when everyone hitchhiked up to Saginaw (little S&G reference for all you sixties stoners out there) and, although the quarters and semis are actually over, it feels like they are still being played out on the local on-line forum where the traditional parental sport of ‘refusing to accept the result’ is in full flow.
The last two teams in each of the seven different age groups will fight for the right to call themselves ‘State Cup Champions” for a whole year! Except, of course, the U13 Girls who also have their State Cup in the spring, and for some uniquely hair-brained Michigan reason they will only be fighting for the chance to be State Cup Champions for about four months.
Like most folks, however, I’m absolutely livid that this year’s finals are going to be played on that perfect surface in the air-conditioned, up lighted, confines of the finest indoor soccer arena in North America. As I reluctantly take my seat in one of the 2,000 tiered seats with a perfect view I’ll be reminding every one the State Cup finals should be played in the searing heat with us parents huddled around the rock hard surface and long grass in Farmington Hills (although you have to park in Novi and walk if you want to have any chance of seeing the games). It just won’t be the same without at least one of the games being interrupted by a lightning storm.
The big problem is that from the high of State Cup finals it’s only six days to the low of tryouts for next season where we'll have the ritual torture of kids being cut from teams where they won State medals just the previous weekend. And I know it works both ways with kids voluntarily leaving teams that just took them all the way too. The outcome is that Michigan sends it’s teams off to the Region II Tournament with the solid, team building, all-for-one/one-for-all core of a group of kids who have already been cut or who have already jumped ship.
So to overcome this delicate situation we’ve come up with the idea of not telling the kids they have been cut so that they don’t get discouraged! And coaches will not be allowed to ask their best kids if they are definitely coming back next season to prevent them acting like dicks when their superstars take off to play with someone else’s Academy! How’s that for a solution to a difficult problem? We’ve decided to call this ridiculous new, un-enforceable and hopefully quickly repealed policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
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The last two teams in each of the seven different age groups will fight for the right to call themselves ‘State Cup Champions” for a whole year! Except, of course, the U13 Girls who also have their State Cup in the spring, and for some uniquely hair-brained Michigan reason they will only be fighting for the chance to be State Cup Champions for about four months.
Like most folks, however, I’m absolutely livid that this year’s finals are going to be played on that perfect surface in the air-conditioned, up lighted, confines of the finest indoor soccer arena in North America. As I reluctantly take my seat in one of the 2,000 tiered seats with a perfect view I’ll be reminding every one the State Cup finals should be played in the searing heat with us parents huddled around the rock hard surface and long grass in Farmington Hills (although you have to park in Novi and walk if you want to have any chance of seeing the games). It just won’t be the same without at least one of the games being interrupted by a lightning storm.
The big problem is that from the high of State Cup finals it’s only six days to the low of tryouts for next season where we'll have the ritual torture of kids being cut from teams where they won State medals just the previous weekend. And I know it works both ways with kids voluntarily leaving teams that just took them all the way too. The outcome is that Michigan sends it’s teams off to the Region II Tournament with the solid, team building, all-for-one/one-for-all core of a group of kids who have already been cut or who have already jumped ship.
So to overcome this delicate situation we’ve come up with the idea of not telling the kids they have been cut so that they don’t get discouraged! And coaches will not be allowed to ask their best kids if they are definitely coming back next season to prevent them acting like dicks when their superstars take off to play with someone else’s Academy! How’s that for a solution to a difficult problem? We’ve decided to call this ridiculous new, un-enforceable and hopefully quickly repealed policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
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Friday, May 7, 2010
Its All Politics
So after years with the same club my daughter has just been told at tryouts that she’s been cut from the team! I’m devastated and I can’t face the thought of facing all those smug bitches that have been waiting for this moment. The only thing worse than a smug soccer player is a smug soccer player’s mother. Hopefully the totally dignified way that I have behaved over the years will stand me in good stead.
I think the one thing that will be clear to every fair and balanced person is that this is obviously a political decision. The facts are there for all to see. She made the team every year under the Bush administration and now she gets cut under the watch of this Obama character. What more can I say? Now I know that I didn’t vote for this evasive foreign jihadist but I was quite prepared to accept the democratic process and give the office of President of the United States it’s due respect, even though the incumbent is a lazy, socialist, sponging, terrorist.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he personally organized the fall of the big banks, and I was still with him even though he himself started the war in Iraq and used his Satanic powers to summon up Hurricane Katrina. Even recently when he set fire to that oil rig in the gulf and helped this Faisal chappy to drive his JAPANESE vehicle into Times Square I still stood by him. And I know that the evidence on the internet that he shot JFK and faked the moon landings is beginning to build up, but I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. Until this week that is, when he started paying back the soccer moms who didn’t vote for him by arranging to get their kids cut.
So at least I was able to console my daughter with the knowledge that it was nothing to do with her and that the true benefit of the polarization of American society is that she’ll always have someone else to blame.
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I think the one thing that will be clear to every fair and balanced person is that this is obviously a political decision. The facts are there for all to see. She made the team every year under the Bush administration and now she gets cut under the watch of this Obama character. What more can I say? Now I know that I didn’t vote for this evasive foreign jihadist but I was quite prepared to accept the democratic process and give the office of President of the United States it’s due respect, even though the incumbent is a lazy, socialist, sponging, terrorist.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he personally organized the fall of the big banks, and I was still with him even though he himself started the war in Iraq and used his Satanic powers to summon up Hurricane Katrina. Even recently when he set fire to that oil rig in the gulf and helped this Faisal chappy to drive his JAPANESE vehicle into Times Square I still stood by him. And I know that the evidence on the internet that he shot JFK and faked the moon landings is beginning to build up, but I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. Until this week that is, when he started paying back the soccer moms who didn’t vote for him by arranging to get their kids cut.
So at least I was able to console my daughter with the knowledge that it was nothing to do with her and that the true benefit of the polarization of American society is that she’ll always have someone else to blame.
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Sunday, April 25, 2010
With God On Our Side
Not a great game for the Michigan Cougars the other night. We play in the adult women’s league but there wasn’t much grown up play going on. The problem is that two of our players aren’t getting along very well at the moment even though they’ve always been the best of friends before now and actually go to the same church.
It seems it all started to go down hill when one of them posted a note on her Facebook status saying that God had abandoned America and would continue to turn his back on us until we woke up, got back to true American values, and dumped this people-defying, socialist President by sending him back to whatever Muslim country it was that he came from. This was at exactly the same time as the other one was posting a note on her Facebook thanking God for giving us a President who actually delivers what he says he would despite the flak he endures, and for restoring American values of inclusion, compassion, and respect around the world.
Since then they’ve been torturing each other about whether God is Blue or Red. Well, maybe not exactly torturing each other, but I guess that depends on how you define torture.
So, when the game started, one of the girls decided she wasn’t going to share the ball with anyone else and was determined to do it all herself. When she finally scored, her teammate insisted she share her goal with the rest of the team. The game itself was getting a little bit physical so one girl decided she’d better sub-out to avoid getting injured because she doesn’t have any health insurance. Her teammate told her to come back on when the new universal healthcare kicks in. That remark was a bit of red flag to a blue bull.
I guess it didn’t help that we were playing a team of Iraqi ex-pats who are just learning the game. The blue girl wanted to get in, kick their butts and get out of there as fast as we could, while the red girl felt we had a responsibility to stick around and help them develop.
While we’ve been squabbling amongst ourselves the rest of the league has been leaving us behind.
If only one of girls could look at the play of the other and say “Good idea” instead of criticizing everything the other side does as a matter of policy then we might start to consider ourselves as a team again. Of course, that’s not how things happen in politics…..I mean religion…….I mean soccer.
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It seems it all started to go down hill when one of them posted a note on her Facebook status saying that God had abandoned America and would continue to turn his back on us until we woke up, got back to true American values, and dumped this people-defying, socialist President by sending him back to whatever Muslim country it was that he came from. This was at exactly the same time as the other one was posting a note on her Facebook thanking God for giving us a President who actually delivers what he says he would despite the flak he endures, and for restoring American values of inclusion, compassion, and respect around the world.
Since then they’ve been torturing each other about whether God is Blue or Red. Well, maybe not exactly torturing each other, but I guess that depends on how you define torture.
So, when the game started, one of the girls decided she wasn’t going to share the ball with anyone else and was determined to do it all herself. When she finally scored, her teammate insisted she share her goal with the rest of the team. The game itself was getting a little bit physical so one girl decided she’d better sub-out to avoid getting injured because she doesn’t have any health insurance. Her teammate told her to come back on when the new universal healthcare kicks in. That remark was a bit of red flag to a blue bull.
I guess it didn’t help that we were playing a team of Iraqi ex-pats who are just learning the game. The blue girl wanted to get in, kick their butts and get out of there as fast as we could, while the red girl felt we had a responsibility to stick around and help them develop.
While we’ve been squabbling amongst ourselves the rest of the league has been leaving us behind.
If only one of girls could look at the play of the other and say “Good idea” instead of criticizing everything the other side does as a matter of policy then we might start to consider ourselves as a team again. Of course, that’s not how things happen in politics…..I mean religion…….I mean soccer.
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