Arrivederci Gioca Bellissima

I've always been fascinated by the World Cup, but this year I believe I watched more matches than in any year in the past. Now that Italy has won, I have a few observations about the whole affair.

The hype takes away from the game. The lead up to the entire event really overplayed what happens on the field. The quality of the games gets better at the end, but the hype was biggest at the beginning. I suppose that is because the U.S. was still in it at that point. Either way, as the hype went down I found myself enjoying it more.

Sportsmanship is a big deal in an event like this. I really enjoyed seeing different teams each play their own style. I really didn't enjoy seeing players take cheap shots or rolling around on the grass with feigned injury or fouls. It was unfortunate that this sort of behavior has become so prevalent on certain teams. Portugal, I'm looking at you. Of course, even worse is when players do something blatantly intended to cause harm to each other. I was glad to see England and France lose respectively after the performance of their stars.

Still, when the game isn't about the officials and everything comes together it is indeed a beautiful game. This blog has some of the great goals from earlier in the tournament. And the goal Argentina scored on Serbia-Montenegro as diagrammed here was truly spectacular. As much as I love hockey and football (American style), there is nothing in any other sport that can compare with the dynamism and teamwork that leads to a goal like this.

I still don't get the expected American disinterest in soccer. I can attribute part of it to the lack of scoring, but I expect it is even more so that soccer is a fluid but vague sport. It is not easily reduced to simple rules, statistics, or straightforward strategies. Perhaps it is simply that we are unwilling to wholeheartedly adopt an activity that we are not already the best at. Whatever the reason, it seems that this year it was more popular than ever. Some folks are even comparing it to architecture and posting thoughts about it I can hardly comprehend.