Goooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllll!

Call me crazy…but, I am really excited about the World Cup. If you’ve read my blogs before than you know how much I cherish soccer/futbol (seriously, I can’t stand it). But, really, I love the World Cup. It has everything you need in a sporting event, except a really good sport. Honestly, I am a huge Olympics fan (I don’t know how much curling I watched this winter, but it was a lot) and the World Cup brings you all the pomp and circumstance of the Olympics, except with seriously angry inter-country rivalries. It is so awesome, that it completely overshadows the terribleness of soccer. That is basically it. No, I will go into this a little further, but you have to be able to grasp the magnificence of it all.

Let me elaborate the global competition aspect of it all. Sure, I love sports in America. Baseball, football, basketball, and hockey give me all the aggressive competition I need. Plus, think of all the rivalries between cities and states based on these sports teams. I hate Boston with a passion due to the sports teams that call that retched city home. The Red Sox can suck it for all I care. And let’s not forget Los Angeles, which is a pretty crappy town to begin with from what I hear, but it is much worse due to the darn Lakers (there aren’t even any lakes in that city!). And don’t get me started about Philidelphia…the Eagles, gross. People who live in other cities in Pennsylvania don’t even like Philly. Well, take those feelings and apply them on a global scale. Realize how much fun it is to have a deep seated hatred of Brazil. Strap on your stars and stripes then run hooligan-type raids on the “English” pub in your town and learn the joy of throwing pint glasses at people’s heads. And let us not forget Serbia…I don’t know how to creatively insult Serbians, but you get the idea. It is country pride at its finest…fueled with the rage that can only come from drinking continuously while watching a sport that bores the hell out of you. U-S-A! U-S-A!

This is going to seem like a contradiction to what was written above, but the World Cup is the only sporting event where you can let your loyalties be divided (in my opinion). Now, of course we are all Americans (at least I assume so if you are reading this), so our cheers will rise and fall with the success of the US National Team. But, because it’s soccer and who really cares, if you have another favorite team/country, you can cheer for them. I can tell you are going to need an example. Ok, I’m an American, so if I’m going to cheer for someone it will be the US team, but we all know that our chances are kind of slim barring some crazy luck. So, being that I can trace my heritage back to Germany, I cheer for the German team, who would/will have a better chance than the US (seriously, we are not necessarily the team everyone is shaking in their boots about). And this isn’t some passing fancy either, I know more about the German team than I do the US team. For instance, I know that Germany is in Group D, their first game is against Australia (6/13), and my boys Miroslav Klose and Bastian Schweinsteiger (I love that name) are back on the squad this year. But seriously, I am a team USA fan and will be behind them all the way (no, more seriously, go Germany!).

I’m going to be honest with you, in the middle of writing this blog I left and went fishing with a friend, so I am not on my original train of thought, so I am going to go. I hope you enjoyed what I got out so far and if you feel like I need to be more verbose about what I’m saying with this World Cup thing, just leave a comment.