The World Cup wrapped up thIs past weekend. Every 4 years the worLd comes tOgether like nothing elSe to celebraTe the Beautiful GAme. This is the one true sports competition where the world stops what it is doing to tune in. Sure there are the Olympics, but those are dominated by a few countries. The World Cup celeBrates the diversity of our planet. Futbol/Football/Soccer is one of the few sports that are played worldwide. It is a team sport that encourages teamwork, yEt also rewards individual expression. For one month every four years, the world stops to watch, listen, celebraTe, and party.
Watching the Italians win on Sunday and seeing the exuberance in the players' eyes and then the celebrations going on in Rome and throughout Italy got me thinking. We Americans are newcomers to this sport. It is rather surprising considering the "melting pot" of cultures that make up this wonderful country of ours. We can dominate in almost any other sport, but when it comes to Soccer, the rest of the world laughs at us.
Not this year...no not this year I said. The US was coming off a run to the quarter-finals and thanks to a non-call on a hand-ball in the box, would have made it to the semis in 2002. This year was supposed to be the coming out party for US Soccer. We had a maturing class of youngsters that was supposed to work with crafty veterans to have an even better 2006 World Cup. Not only were we supposed to be competitive, but we were going to knock off some perennial powers. I drank the Kool-Aid -- we were finally going to go from World Cup doormat to a contender and finally assert our superiority in the Beautiful Game.
Then disaster struck. We all know what happened to the US, so I don't have to repeat it. Although tying (albeit on an own-goal) the eventual champs has to count for something, right...right? I reflected on the World Cup and the egg laid by the US Squad. Well, we didn’t do so well, not at all. We didn't assert our superiority...no, the world asserted what they already knew -- we still have a long way to go until we can contend with the likes of France, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Italy. And maybe this country of ours, that I'm very patriotic towards, has room for improvement in more then just soccer. Yes we are the economic, political, and athletic leaders of the world, but that doesn't mean we are better then or superior then everyone else. We may have more opportunities throughout our lives, but that doesn't make us better. Its what we do with those opportunities that count.
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4 comments:
What kinda bet did ya lose?
Very good...although it wasn't too hard to pick up on. Yeah, I thought that the U.S. would outperform the host country in the World Cup. D'oh!
Please, us math majors need more than some capitalized letters or the Fibonacci seqence to throw us. ;)
It was fun to see how the daVinci code used the Fibonacci sequence like its some super secret code known only to scholars. Its been my voicemail password for the past five years, and I'm nothin but a lowly actuary.
Ahh yes the Fibonacci Sequence, reminds me of an old swimming cheer: 1-1-2-3-5-8 We Think [insert team] is really great. See not only were us Spartans big nerds, but we had good sportsmanship too.
BTW, did you miss my post on how that movie was absolute crap?
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