If there's one thing we don't need in Fort Lauderdale, its another excuse to drink, particularly early in the day. World Cup fever had people eating chicken wings and drinking beer at 7am on a Weekday. On this Saturday afternoon, finding a parking spot near Maguire's Hill 16 on usually deserted Andrews Ave was a fantasy. It was Game On. The mighty USA against our arch rivals Ghana, a country where you're lucky if you have electricity for 6 consecutive hours. It was going to be a real dogfight.
Maguires dusted off the olympics USA paraphanalia and spread it about, and patrons young and old gathered around the TVs to cheer on the team in white. We learned today that the ceiling fans at Maguires are just for show, because it was hot and they weren't on. Ok, well it was still a lot cooler than outside.
The air was filled with the sound of vuvuzelas, those annoying horns that make even the most mild mannered of men want to bash in skulls.
Personally I'm really glad its over. I was a soccer goalie in High School, and like most Americans haven't watched many games since. While game 3 was certainly exciting, I came away from this 4 game adventure convinced that soccer will never be more highly regarded than bobsledding or any other "sport" that is nothing more than a good reason to drink and cheer for your country. The end of the Ghana game sealed the deal.
So here we are in "extended time", or overtime to us real sports fans, and Ghana scores a goal. Game over, right? If you score in overtime you win. No, they keep playing. Ok, so there's a few more minutes. Ah, time is running out, but wait, they're setting up for more extended time. Heads tilt in confusion. We finally surmised that they were just going to keep playing until the US tied the game. Or maybe you have to win by 2 goals? Finally after another 10 minutes with nothing even close to a shot on goal, all of a sudden, the game was over. Who knew?
In the big picture, who cares? Where we really going to have a national celebration if we won the world cup? Please. Its about as interesting as winning a gold medal in swimming, another one of those sports that nobody can watch for more than 2 minutes unless there's olympic gold at stake.
American sports fans will never put up with soccer, mainly because as a sport its as dysfunctional as the United Nations. The reason that the US is a great country is because we've figured out how to do things better; we've thrown our hands in the air and said that soccer is flawed and boring and we can come up with better, more exciting sports with more practical rules.
Bring on the NFL. I can hardly wait.