Sport

Here’s how most of my FIFA 2010 games start: Me: I’m really not that good. I don’t play very much. Pick any team you want. (Opponent sitting next to me on the couch flips through teams) Me: No. You can’t pick Spain. Spain is banned. Spain is the most recent Euro Champions. They have several of the most dominant players at their position in the world. Their midfield is likely the greatest to ever show up at a World Cup (this is patently untrue, but for preview’s sake I’m going with it), so much so that they’re...

Sorry this is so late. Work and not-work (read as soccer and drinking) got way in the way. Group G starts tomorrow at 10, with Cote d’Ivoire and Portugal. Today is two parts: recap of the weekend (and my crap predictions) followed by, obvs., Group G. Enjoy and, as always, mea copa. The easiest way out of this is to say “that’s why they play the games.” And, it’s true. If these things ever went exactly true to form, they’d stop playing them. March Madness doesn’t see four #1 seeds advance to the Final Four; the Super...

So, for those of you who have been reading the group previews on the World Cup, I thought I\’d set up a prediction challenge on Yahoo! First prize is a post for you to write on the topic of your choosing, or for one of us to write a post on a topic of your choosing. Anyway, here are the relevant details: Group ID: 26433 Password: thedudeabides The system lets you edit your group stage picks until 5 minutes before kickoff of that particular match, so you only need to pick tomorrow\’s matches now(ish). Sorry that you...

Just as yesterday I wrote about teams that find supporters due to reasons outside of nationality, success or other rational sources, so there are teams that foment anger and rage outside their in-game performance. There are folks who will not root for Argentina, Germany, North Korea, the US, and many other countries because of their political or military histories. There are some folks who won’t root for them because of individuals on the team: Cristiano Ronaldo on Portugal is probably the current poster boy for this effect, and personally, it’s Australia and Tim Cahill. There are folks...

Via Laura Rozen at Politico (although she gets the order of the conversation backwards and calls it the UK team), an email exchange between the Philip Breeden at the U.S. Embassy in London and Martin Longden at the U.K. Embassy in D.C. unveils quite the wager (and nerdy trash-talk). Of course you know, England plays the U.S. in their first game in South Africa this weekend, and they’ve decided on a bet: steaks in D.C. if England wins, dinner in a London pub if the U.S. wins; loser pays. On England boasting their long history of football,...

There are certain teams in every sport that engage even the most casual observer. Whether through their energy, their story, their uniforms, their players (see: hotness thereof, often), they pull in the folks who just happen to be in the room. Think about the Cinderellas every year in March Madness. Think about the Rockies run to the World Series a couple years ago. Think about any team that met legitimate tragedy during their play and persevered, even triumphed, to reach an improbable height. Consider a team that has sat at the precipice of success for years, poised...

I came late to soccer. I never played it, aside from whacking a ball around in friends’ yards, until I got to college, where it was more an excuse to get out and enjoy the fall than it was anything like an athletic pursuit. But because I didn’t grow up with it, I tend to analogize things for myself using the prism of baseball, which is the sport I did grow up with, and which still holds a place deep in me. Players and teams in soccer become baseball teams: Real Madrid is the Yankees. Barcelona is...

Yesterday, I wrote about the incomprehensible moments of success amidst the drudgery of failure that make up a game of soccer (or baseball, it’s very difficult for me to separate the two games, which is its own incomprehensible moment). And, indeed, those moments make for transcendent moments, when strangers will leap from their chairs and embrace a stranger, simply because they happen to also be standing. Case in point: In October 2007, Spurs and Aston Villa played a match in which Spurs went down 4-1. It was a Wednesday afternoon match in Boston, so I was at...

Because, sometimes you just want to hear a story of people being awesome: It happened at a junior varsity girls’ softball game in Indianapolis this spring. After an inning and a half, Roncalli was womanhandling inner-city Marshall Community. Marshall pitchers had already walked nine Roncalli batters. The game could’ve been 50-0 with no problem. It’s no wonder. This was the first softball game in Marshall history. A middle school trying to move up to include grades 6 through 12, Marshall showed up to the game with five balls, two bats, no helmets, no sliding pads, no cleats,...