Thoughts on the soccer so far...

Well, it seems the soccer world cup is well underway - so who better to give a progress report than someone half a world away who's seen maybe an hour of play in total, and has developed a tendency to fall asleep before half-time when he actually tries to watch a match?

Anyway, all the news here has been about our 'heroic' Socceroos (clever combination of the words 'soccer' and 'kangaroo', in case any international guests were wondering...) and how they beat Japan so spectacularly before losing to Brazil last night. Now without having seen any of the match (I'm definitely not gonna get up at 2am on a weeknight to watch soccer!), I've heard that the Aussies actually did reasonably well. They may not have lived up to the overhyped media coverage (particularly in the Age, of all places!) suggesting that they might actually pull off a win against Brazil - but they didn't disgrace themselves either, unlike certain other teams I could name (cough Argentina 6 Serbia & Montenegro 0 cough). This is almost undoubtedly a good thing. And I do like the comments from this reporter:

Never in the history of humanity has so much yellow and green congregated in one location. The walk to the stadium made my eyes hurt, the Australian and Brazilian fans all dressed so brightly in the same colors, like a sea of sweaty, human, liquored-up corn on the cob. The Croatia-Japan match just finished in a 0-0 tie, leaving Australia in the driving seat for qualification in Group F. A Croatian journalist is literally crying in the corner in fetal position, having been warned by a FIFA official that he has to stop screaming and making a scene.

Oh, and in non-Australia-centric news, some American dude got his nose rearranged by an Italian elbow. When this happens in soccer, it's front-page news. When it happens in rugby, it's not always even a penalty. Yeah, I know that most of the story was about how the US beat the Italians despite having 9 guys playing against 10 (the same ESPN blogger I linked to before complained that even Survivor didn't eliminate so many of its contestants...), and how it was a brilliant game - which it may well have been, but it happened while I was asleep. Unfortunately, the game I watched some of last night was Japan/Croatia, which wound up 0-0 - and from what I saw (which admittedly wasn't a huge amount), never seriously looked like deserving any better than that.

I guess in general my attitude towards the world cup is best summed up by the word 'ambivalent'. I'm not gonna sit up all night watching it, but I'll flick the tv on just before I go to bed to see the first couple of minutes of a game, and read about it in the papers the next day. I'm enjoying the complete lack of traffic on the roads to work on the mornings after Australian games as well - had a brilliantly fast trip to work this morning - but my overriding sentiment yet remains: Bring on the Bledisloe Cup!!