Are Paraguay's striped socks modelled after the Cat in the Hat's hat?I'm still feeling pretty punk from dental surgery,
but yesterday I watched the Germany v. Australia World Cup game (4–0) on an outdoor jumbo TV, surrounded by German fans (as in, from Germany, speaking German--otherwise they seemed exactly like your average white Minnesotans);
and today I met up with some friends at Global Market to watch Italy v. Paraguay (1-1). Most of the people watching were Latin Americans, and the TV was set to the Spanish station.
Language is entirely unimportant in soccer, as far as I'm concerned.
You don't need any words to understand people flying through the air, horizontally.
Geography in motion...
I'd like to see all the games in which the teams are from a country I've done a kids' book about*--especially if they BOTH are, like tomorrow's New Zealand v. Slovakia.
Alas, we're 7 hours behind South Africa, so the game's at 6:30 a.m. I don't have a TV, and I don't think I'll drag myself to a bar to watch, even though some are open, specially.
*
Algeria
Chile
Netherlands
New Zealand
Slovakia
I bet you could recognize "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLL!!!!"
ReplyDeletein any language.
And I like how our major sporting events are named after common kitchenware; not a bowl, a SUPER bowl!
Everybody knows there's more than a cup at stake.
There's a World Cup at stake, goddammit.
Ah! I took one look at the socks and thought Where's Wally? (known, I believe, as Waldo in your neck of the woods).
ReplyDeleteFeel better soon!
M: I want to win the Jim Kirk Spoon!
ReplyDeleteRR: Aren't those socks winners? Are knitters everywhere knitting football socks now?
I didn't know Waldo is really named Wally! I wonder why it got changed--Wally would have been perfectly acceptable (as WALL-E later proved).
What a weird coincidence--I was visiting a high school last week to watch a student teacher in action and ended up staring at a "Where's Wally" book as it slowly percolated through my brain that Waldo's name outside the US must be Wally, how very odd.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your list of countries, Fresca! It gives me some edge in deciding who to root for besides Japan, since I couldn't care less about soccer but it's required conversational fare right now here in Japan (ever since Japan actually won a match, something unlikely to happen again). Now I have a good reason to cheer for Algeria versus England!
JEN: Glad to help!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was cool to see Japan played Cameroon--these wildly different parts of the globe.
YOu can imagine, there's no social pressure here in Minnesota at all to even KNOW about the World Cup.