[No title - Bile welling up]

Slate, with whom I have passed a great number of hours reading different opinion pieces, usually has thought provoking and intelligently written pieces - even if you don't always agree with their politics. They, like most main-stream media sources, are dedicating a certain amount of copy to the once in four years circus spectacle otherwise known as the World Cup.

Dave Eggers wrote an article last week discussing "The True Story about American Soccer," which for the most part I agree with. His insight into diving in soccer is pretty much point on with mine:

Flopping is essentially a combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating, and these four behaviors make for an unappealing mix[...]Once the referees have decided either to issue a penalty or not to our Fakey McChumpland, he will jump up, suddenly and spectacularly uninjured—excelsior!—and will kick the ball over to his teammate and move on.

Good story, glad to hear that most people agree with me, move on...until this morning I just click on Slate to see what's going on and I see this fine title: Why Diving Makes Soccer Great. I don't read a lot of opinion pieces about football - it's pretty cut and dried for me. There are certain aspects I like and certain aspects I don't like. I can see with my own two eyes and know the rules well enough that this two-bit blogger doesn't need some other two-bit blogger or learned hack to tell me what to think. But, taking into consideration my views on diving in soccer, I think you all can understand my automatic reaction to this, which I won't reprint here, but it was along the lines of "what the hell?!?"

The author, one Austin Kelley, basically argues that diving keeps the defenders honest and states unequivocally, "rarely do athletes tumble without being touched at all. Usually, they embellish contact to make sure the referee notices a foul, not to deceive him completely." Excuse me for one second (at this point small children and the easily sensitive should turn away), but this is complete bullshit. Has this guy watched one freaking football match? Ever! Taking his first argument, that players rarely dive without any sort of provocation...This happens nearly every game. But, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is saying that rarely do players fall without a defensemen for 5 meters. Fine, I can agree to this. The sun rarely shines at night either, I think we can all agree.
It's the second part of his statement that is just worthless. A player feels the slightest brush of contact and flops to the ground. Whether he rolls around like a pig on fire or not is of less concern. THERE IS NO GOOD THAT COMES FROM THIS. Football, in and of itself, is a physical game. 22 men are running at full speed to try to control a ball and put it into the opposing team's net. Contact will happen. Most of the time when a foul is embellished, it's because the player with the ball has been beaten...He kicks it, sees that he won't be able to recover and flops. Either this or he is within 20 meters of the goal mouth.

I do agree with Kelley that FIFA has failed spectacularly in controlling the diving for this Copa Mondial and am not going to get into the cultural differences about diving. The Italians are notorious, the French are better than average, but each and every team does it in each and every match.

Most respectfully, Mr. Kelley, I request that you shut your mouth.

His article is not all bad though. He keyed me into the fact that there has been the discussion of a "Pink card" for divers. I like this idea. Not necessarily PC in today's modern world, but it could help control this a little bit.

Just to come back to this article for a minute. He cites Thierry Henry as one of those players who "will stay on their feet at all cost for the sake of a beautiful pass or a brilliant run at the goal." But what if the pass isn't beautiful or the run isn't brilliant. Henry took a dive from the high board last night. Receiving a glancing blow to his chest from Spanish defender Puyol, Thierry brought both hands to his face and dropped to the ground in agony. This is justifiable, Mr. Kelley? He got touched in the chest. Puyols did not do it on purpose. Play the freaking game clean and straight. Henry's a really good player, and he doesn't dive too much, but that only adds to the fact. In my DP rating, he would be around a 2 and that is how Puyol conceded the free kick and got a yellow card for his efforts. There is no place for these actions in football. I don't care what some writer from Brooklyn says.

How to fix football [soccer]

So the FIFA World Cup has moved into the knock-out stages and we find the same problems as have plagued world soccer for the last 1000s of years...Apparently drawings of a game that resembles modern football has been found in a Chinese military manual. I am sure that in that manual there is also a drawing of a Han-dynasty soldier taking a dive after incidental contact with a competitor.

Let's face it, the players have only to gain from diving. Yellow cards for diving are very rare, and even if they are given out 1 out of every 20 dives, it's still statistically beneficial to dive. The US got knocked out of WC2006 because of a dive. Australia just lost directly because of a dive. Literally 100s of dives will lead to free kicks and goals in this year's cup. No other sport has such a culture of acceptance of cheating - hockey has it to a degree, but it is no where near as problematic as in soccer. But, what to do? The action is so fast, the refs can not be expected to see every dive. Of course not, the field is big and the action is fast - we can not expect the ref to be able to judge everytime some guy flies through the air and crumples in a heap. Usually the benefit of the doubt goes to the player that is now rolling around on the ground in "agony."

I have two proposals to fix this problem. Fix one is my favorite, but I think that fix two is probably more realistic (please keep in mind, these are my proposals for FIFA events - I think they should be implemented at all levels, but that is up to the individual federations - YOU LISTENING FA, FFF, and FIGC? Oh yeah, and UEFA, you guys may want to pay attention too):

FIX ONE

Active scouting by officials from the above organizations to create a player-by-player list about each player's relative "diving propensity (DP)." I think we could easily place this in a grid as such:
1. Player only falls in case of vital organ rupture or structural support system failure
2. Player is unlikely to dive, but will if stakes are high enough
3. Player usually stays up, but has shown an incidence of fair weather diving.
4. Player has high likelihood to fall under the smallest provocation, especially within 20 meters and in penalty area.
5. Italian

Players would be graded based on previous performances that would more heavily weigh recent matches than old matches. This would be done to attempt to convince the players to improve their game. If a player has a shoddy past record, but has played 4 or 5 games without serious incident, they would be able to move to a 3 rating. A 1 rating would probably be based on a life-time of play and would not be able to be earned after only a few solid showings.

How could we place this system into practice? Fairly easily actually. A group of international experts (or in the case of national leagues - a panel of non-biased arbitrators) would review game tape and make their assessment. After all of the assessements were in the scores would be averaged to create a rating given to the nearest 10th. A player may have a 2.6 rating, meaning he is better than average, but not to be completely trusted.
The referees would be given a list at the beginning of each game to memorize and would base their calls on this. Say player A has a rating of 5. He is running along and falls. The referee would look at the player and if there was no visible blood or visible broken bones, the call would not be made, because it is more than likely that the player is faking it. I could, for example, see an entire game against the Italian national team, with nary a call in their favor.
On the other hand a player that is ranked 1 or close to it would always be given the benefit of the doubt for that specific match. If he fell, it would automatically be a free kick (and possibly a yellow card).
The beauty of the system is that after the match the league would examine the video and adjust the players score. The players would all have a positive reason to stop diving. I can also just picture a player going to the ref and crying for a non-call and the ref pulling his scouting report out for justification.

FIX TWO

This one may be more practical: Any significant dive would result in a fine, maybe small at first but increasing with each offense. Any dive that led to a yellow card for the opposing player would automatically be a one-game suspension. Any dive that led to a red card for the opposing player would automatically be a three-game suspension. Repeat offenders would also receive increasingly strong suspensions (3, 5, 7, 10...). Any dive that results in a penalty at 93+ minutes of a tie elimination game would result in said player being sent to the city or country of the affected team and be forced to go from bar to bar and introduce himself - for 24 hours. No police protection would be given.

People are calling for instant replay in soccer - I don't think that a half-dozen maybe goals in the last 10 years is as big of a problem as these guys falling all over the place for no apparent reason. People over here, in Europe, say that diving is a "part of the game." They don't allow doping, but both allow one player to gain the advantage by flopping on the ground like a cod on land. Show me the difference and I will shut up.

I like fix one, but I doubt it would ever happen, but fix two is truly possible. Other sports review tape of games to make decisions about penalties. The truth is that the pitch is too big for one or two or three refs to be able to make split-second decisions. The current system very much favors the divers (hey, Italy's in the quarter finals) and the only way to be able to fix this for the leagues to step up and make a decision to put a system into place to dissuade the disgusting and unsportsmanlike play that is so prevalent in the game today.


This video is a bit dated (Euro 2004), but it's still funny.

Can a broken soccer team be fixed?

Let's start with a very simple premise: Team A must beat Team B by at least two points to advance to the second round of a prestigious, world-class sporting event. Team A can possibly win by one point, if there is a winner in the match between Team C and Team D...Ok, this is getting complicated, are you guys confused? I always find it easier when I use real nouns to describe something...Let's give Teams A and B made up names to make it easier to follow. Team A we will call the completely random and made up word "France." Team B will also be completely random and even more made up: "Togo."

So "France" must beat "Togo" but at least two goals to assure advancement. Now to make this more interesting let's say that "Togo" is a tiny little country from one of those poor continents. "Togo" has trouble paying their players because they don't have enough money. "France" is a well-off country from one of those rich continents. Now to make things even better, let's say that "Togo" is already eliminated from competition and no one has expected them to really do anything spectacular, being their first entry in such a well-known tournament. "France" on the other hand is expected to advance, and not advancing will be a huge hit to their federation and country in general.

Now, let's continue on this hypothetical journey. Let's say that someone from the Federation of "France" (we'll call it the "FFF" for short) contacts someone from the Football Federation of "Togo" and says, "sorry that your boys are out of competition, however, we have noted that many of them are playing at a high level and may be in a good position to come to clubs in France. We'd like to help you out..." Or maybe he says something like, "we know that you guys are having trouble paying your players, maybe we can give you a hand by loaning you some money, or by taking other actions...how would you like to play a friendly between the "Togo" national team and the "French" national team in Lomé. It won't cost you guys anything and all the merchandising and revenues from the match goes directly into your cash register. You're not into the National teams? we could probably arrange for our national champions to come down and play some exhibition matches with your teams."

So, maybe they come to an agreement. Now the implementation may be a bit tough. How do you convince a team to fake lose? I guess the best place to start would be in Italy. But after, you need it to look like it wasn't fixed. You can't really get the whole team on board, too risky at such a high level. So you talk to a couple of the key players. Let's say a full-back and maybe a striker. You tell them to play hard, but to make the game turn out "right." Heck, they could even score a goal if they wanted too, as long as the difference is two to make our fake team, "France," advance. Let's say that both teams play hard, both teams fight it out, but eventually the "French" team scores their two goals...Maybe they weren't even fake, they were real goals, but now there are two of them. Let's say that this is around the 61st minute. Now what happens? Well maybe the striker who was aware of what needed to be done realizes that he has done his part and he asks to be substituted.

Maybe the speed of the game slows down greatly. Maybe both teams are happy with what they have done and relax.

I know, this could never happen. We're talking about the pinnacle of professionalism in sports.

On a utterly and completely different subject; good luck to Les Bleus who beat the The Hawks yesterday 2:0 to advance to the Round of 16 and I hope that Emmanuel Adebayor isn't too tired. He looked pretty exhausted when he went off at 75 minutes.

22 Hours - Phase II: The Car & Stuck in England

Here's the second installment of my recent eventful trip to lovely England. The first entry is here: Part I: Getting In.

So, British customs, in their infinite wisdom let me exit the airport. We meet our contact, Ted, who is going to bring us to the company and to look at the car. Ted's brother, Paul will also meet us at the company and we will get down to business.

Ted, Franck and I laugh a bit about the issues that we had getting in. Then Ted asks us what our plan was...We told him that assuming the car was as expected, we were going to take the car and drive it back down to Bordeaux. Ted laughed. A few minutes later he asked if either of us had driven a limo before. We said no. Ted laughed. Ted asked us if we had ever driven a box truck before, because it was about the same size. We said no. Ted laughed. It was becoming a bit disarming the fact that he was laughing about all of these things. Ted asked us if we knew how long the car was. We told him that we thought we did, but asked him to confirm the size. Ted said "big" and...he laughed.

Finally we get to the office, and we notice that the driveway is a bit "difficult" to navigate. Ted told us that he would have someone help us pull the car out. We meet with Paul and then we look at the car. For me it was a normal sized limo - a Town Car with a 120" stretch. However, Franck thought that the car was smaller. The entire car came out to be 8.5 meters long and Franck thought that it would be 7-7.2 meters. He started looking over the car and started to get cold feet. He started wondering how we were going to get the car to the highway. How we were going to drive it to the train station to take the chunnel. How we were going to get it on the train. How we were going to clear customs to get into France. We started thinking more and more and I (while fairly unemotional about the whole episode - like I told the customs agents, I was there for translation and companionship purposes only) started to imagine seeing us discussing with customs officials for the second time in one day what "business" we had going into a country. If they blocked the car in Calais, we were really going to be in bad shape.

Long story short, after consultations between England and France, the conclusion was, without more knowledge, the risk was too great to leave almost 10,000 euros for a car that may become a big paperweight in France.

Ok great. We are now in Southampton. We have no return ticket. We have no idea what is in this town - is it big, is it small? We had no idea of anything. The only thing we did know was that there was no return flight from Southampton to Bordeaux before Thursday (it was about 4 pm on a Tuesday). Upon further research, the easiest thing to do was take a flight from Southampton to Bergerac, which is about 1 hour from Bordeaux. The problem was that this flight didn't leave until the next day at 11:40. So we were stuck in Southampton for the night. With nothing but the clothes on our backs and a toothbrush each. We then realized that England was playing their world cup match against Sweden and we thought, hey we'll be able to watch the game with the English.

Wow! These guys are really crazy about their footie. We go to the pub at 6pm (the match started at 8pm) to have a few drinks and try to eat (a small side note, English food is as bad as you've heard). The pub was maybe half full when we got in there, and it slowly but steadily filled up. By 7:30 it was full of screaming, and I mean screaming, hooligans. Every single play was cause for booing or cheering. I guess it's like watching the super bowl in a fan's bar in one of the cities whose team is playing. But this is on a country-wide scale. I can think of no sporting even equivalent in the US with this type of support.

In the end we spend the night in a cheap (but expensive) hotel, took the flight in the morning and got back this afternoon. It wasn't very productive, but I had a bit of fun, got out of Bordeaux and learned that there may be easier ways to buy a car.

22 Hours in [not so] great Britian - Phase I: Getting In

To make a long introduction short, a restaurant that I work with here in Bordeaux "purchased" a Lincoln 120" stretch Town Car on eBay from a seller in Southampton, England. Being that there are a plethora of low-cost airlines in Europe, the manager, Franck, found that he could fly to Southampton from Bordeaux for about 50 euros total. He, not an English-speaker, asked me if I would like to go with him to Blighty to translate and hang out and, assuming the purchase went as planned, take the car through the Chunnel and down to Bordeaux. I, having nothing I couldn't put off on my schedule, said Why not?

The flight was at 2pm out of Bordeaux, next stop Southampton "International" Airport. In retrospect, the fact that the plane took off on time for the outbound leg was probably the best thing that happened to us on this trip. Arrival, on time, at Southampton. Ok, we go through the customs line, and everyone else was either a Brit or French. I get told I have to fill out the landing card to get into their "wonderful" country. I do so and return to the line. No dice, the customs agent doesn't want to waste time with me, so she tells me to step aside and she'll get "back to me." Her two colleagues were standing there watching her work for about five minutes and after everyone got through the three of them came over to me. I still don't know what the problem was (we didn't have return tickets, but they didn't ask if we did either). They wanted to know why I was in Britain – To look at a car. They wanted to know if we were buying the car – I don't know, I'm just here cause I speak English. They want to know how were paying for the car – I don't know. They take Franck away, I guess so they can "question" us separately to see if our stories are the same. They ask me about my residency – I have French residency. They ask to see my French drivers license – I show it to them and they take many notes from it. They want to know why I don't work – getting pissed off at this point I tell them to ask the French government why the job market is so terrible.

Then they ask if I've been to GB before – yeah, I was a student in Northern Ireland. Oops. Now, I'm no longer just trying to sneak into GB, I'll probably a bloody IRA member. Why Northern Ireland? Cause I wanted to go to Ireland, and the North had the best program. What did I study? History, Political Science – crap, now I really am a terrorist. But why the University of Ulster? Cause I had to do a program abroad, Europe seemed good and Derry was cheaper than Copenhagen. But WHY CHOSE DERRY and not some other Irish school – because my school had an exchange with the University of Ulster – oh, that's what I've been looking for all along.

Moving along now, do you have any papers for the car? No, I'm just here to translate. Do you have any documents related to the purchase? Ditto. Who may you buy this car from? Coastal Credit. Do you have a phone number for Offshore Credit? Coastal Credit, and yes I have a number...I'll be back in a minute.

He comes back and now wants to [again] know how we're going to pay for the car – I DON'T KNOW! They bring me into the same room as Franck. He tells me that he told them that the money was going to be paid by transfer (but he actually had cash). They make 2 or 3 phone calls – one to Coastal Credit and then they go out and interview the guy who came to pick us up – taking his driver's license.

They then ask if they have searched Franck's bag (they searched mine twice) and the guy says no. The guy the says, so you have no cash and Franck says yes, yes, cash. And shows them €9,500 in cash. They do a little math, say that comes out to about the agreed price in pounds, they say have a nice day and they leave. That's it.

I still have no idea what they were thinking or looking for...If I wanted to, as a legal French resident, I think I could go to England and request a work permit. Ok, the Derry thing, fine, it may be important to know why an American student chose to go to Derry, but come on – it's not freaking Afghanistan. The whole incident just strikes me a weird...In retrospect I think they may have been bored and don't get too many opportunities to mess around with people...Who knows.

I've never had these problems – Jeff and I went to Switzerland a couple years back, no problem. I've been to Germany, Ireland, Spain, Italy, THE UK before, and of course the US many times and never had the smallest problem and they chose a stupid 1:20 minute flight from Bordeaux to Southampton to do this...I just don't understand. Oh well.

So, 2 hours into our trip we were just clearing customs. I'll post the rest of the trip later.

Seeing Red

I don't know if anyone watched the Italy-US match yesterday, but it was a good match and a VERY good match for the US team. However, the refereeing was absolutely horrible. Just terrible (and both ways, not just against the US).

As ESPN reported after the game, the ref in question, Jorge LARRIONDA from Uruguay, was suspended from the World Cup in 2002 for irregularity. The DeRossi card was absolutely deserved. He elbowed Brian McBride in the face, McBride's face was covered in blood and he required stitches. Agree 100% with this call. I guess the obvious follow up is a red card for the Americans to "even things up" (another reason to hate soccer), but the card against Mastroeni was not a red. It was a yellow card in any other game. He was late, it was violent, the Italian acted as if his ankle was physically removed from his body, but there is no way that that is a red card in any other game. I didn't see the Eddie Pope second yellow for a red, but I saw the first yellow to Pope and it was not really a yellow. Hard to argue against some yellow cards because a lot of refs pull them out for any reason just to calm things down. But the first booking was marginal. Apparently the second booking was even less obvious and to book a second American for a red after having already screwed up the first red for the Americans, inexcusable. His wackiness continued. He booked an Italian with a yellow for a push that was barely even worthy of a free kick. The waved off goal was probably offsides, but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

Anyway, getting to the analysis of something other than the ref: The Americans played with a lot of heart. If they got red cards and McBride got bloody and they came away with a draw it is because they played a real soccer game. They didn't give the Italians anything. They played physically, basically telling those guys - if you're going to dive, we'll give you something to dive for! Down one man for almost 40 minutes, they played hard, physical, inspired soccer, doing the right stuff and even scoring (even if they goal was waved off, it wasn't scored because of the offsides. Beasley broke in and ripped a shot from the left hand side, Gigi Buffon (that's his real name folks) couldn't control it and it went into the net. The line judge determined that McBride, in an offsides position, interfered enough with the play to wave it off). Great goal, terrible it had to be called back - that's the way it happens.

At the 80 minute mark, the Americans couldn't play anymore. They were just holding on by their fingernails with the hope of getting away with a draw (from 80 minutes on I was screaming for Arena to bring in some fresh legs, but I guess the 1000 kms from Bordeaux to Kaiserslautern was too far for him to hear me). Landon Donovan had to be replenished by IV after the game. Now, if the Americans beat Ghana on Thursday (this is not necessarily a given, Ghana beat the Czechs 2-0) and Italy beats the Czech Republic, the Americans are going to the second round (most likely to play Brazil!!).

Nike has a new set of commercials called Joga Bonita. Using French legend, Eric Cantona, as a narrator the ads discuss soccer and playing. There's one where the punch line is, "America: The world no longer looks forward to playing you." Even with absolute apathy at home, the American team is not too shabby. They won't win this year, they may not win in 2010, but sooner or later, the US will field 11 men who will be as good as their peers from Brazil and Germany and Argentina.

Hockey? Are you stilling thinking about that?

Ok, so I know that since the Sabres lost in Game 7 I have been quiet about the whole hockey aspect of professional sports. Why? Cause I don't have a lot of say. I was really routing for the Sabres, but unfortunately all their freak injuries (they had lost 4 starting defensemen by game 7), culminating in Jay McKee's really freaky leg infection, and a very good Carolina team pulled it off in the end. Suffice it to say, I'm routing for the Oilers for the cup. First and foremost, because the Oilers didn't eliminate the Sabres, so there is less animosity there and second, the Stanley Cup should be in the North...or at least north of the Mason-Dixon line!

This is the crux of the problem. North Carolina does not deserve to call itself the home of the Cup for the next year. Hockey has no business being in southern states. When I look at the Hurricanes, I don't hate them as a team. I kind of like Mike Commodore - he reminds me of Ogie Ogilthorpe with his bush of flaming red hair (yeah, I read that somewhere else, but it doesn't mean that I didn't think about it). Cam Ward has the makings of a terrific goalie ('course he's no Ryan Miller). Laviolette is a good coach. So, in summary, I don't have anything against the team. It's against where they are.

In an excellent article by Chris Shott in Slate, the author basically says that hockey should not attempt to expand their fan base. He argues that it's better to stick with the die-hard fans that they have, to become a sport with a cult following, nothing more. He advocates contraction (notably from those too-hot locales such as Florida and, yes, Raleigh, NC). To help back up his point he quotes the following figure:

During Carolina's semifinal matchup against the Buffalo Sabres, hockey ratings in western New York were between three and seven times greater than in Raleigh.

Not to say that NYers are better than those down south, but as hockey fans they surely are. It's commendable (to a point) that Gary Bettman et al have tried to expand hockey's reaches beyond the Northern US and Canada, but let's get real. It's time to make this league smaller, more efficient and not try to attract only fairweather fans for a couple of odd playoff runs. Go to Toronto or Boston or Montreal, all cities that have teams that missed the playoffs or got knocked out in the first rount (Montreal). Ask some people about hockey. They'll talk until blue in the face about hockey. Now go to Phoenix or Tampa or Atlanta and ask them. I've a pretty funny feeling that it will be different. Sure you'll find fans in the southern cities, just as you'll find non-fans in the North, but I'm pretty sure that the fan base is significantly stronger up North. Leave the South with NASCAR, football and spring training, we'll keep the Cup where it belongs: in a region that sees "snow" and "ice" that have naturally formed.