Rush Hour

So far, the United States got beat by Ghana (again) and England got creamed by Germany (1-4). Tonight Argentina play against Mexico, which should be a good match although I believe Argentina will win. (I hope so for Maradona, even if he made the grave error of not calling Javier Zanetti to play, an error I hope he doesn’t regret.)
I’m disappointed that the Americans lost, nonetheless, I’m glad at least one African team made it to the semi-finals. I don’t think they’ll go much further but it’s an excellent result especially since this is the first World Cup on African soil. I have noticed something very interesting, exciting, and contradictory about the African people; on the one hand, many of its countries are being destroyed by civil (and tribal) wars, yet on the other, there is no continent as unified as Africa. They are Africans first, and then Nigerian, or South African, or Kenyan, or Ethiopian, etc. later. It’s an amazing and moving thing to hear the African people talk about their Africa. That kind of unity is non-existent on the other continents.
As far as England losing, again…this time they really had one of the best coaches in history: Fabio Capello. He is the only football coach to have won major titles in four different European cities, Milan, Turin, Rome, and Madrid. There is a serious psychological block in the English players because they haven’t won the World Cup since 1966. I think we need to stop considering them favorites every time the World Cup comes around because they never play up to par. This year, there are many other clubs that are playing much better: Uruguay and Japan, for example.

It must be said that one of England’s goals was literally ignored by the referee. Yes, ignored. Outrageous. It’s as if in American football, someone makes a touchdown by one yard and the referee just simply acts as if it had never happened. Unreal, eh? I tweeted and wrote in my Facebook page that this is one of the reasons why this sport will never take off in the States: no instant replay. This is the only aspect I hate about soccer. With all the technology we have at our disposal, it is ridiculous, absurd, archaic, and, anachronistic that they refuse to use instant replay when a goal or a foal is in doubt. They leave it up to a simple referee to decide. That is rubbish. In the case of this particular match, the ball went in and the referees turned their heads the other way. Take a look:

Why do the teams put up with this? The older generation says that’s the ‘beauty’ of the game. My answer: there is no beauty in unfairness. There is no beauty in the wrong team winning or the wrong team loosing.
Another aspect to remember: the ancient Mr. Blatter who runs the show is still living in medieval times or let’s just say he’s not too Internet-savvy so he prefers to act ’sentimental’ about the present rules only because he would lose control if technology were introduced. It is all about control and how can he control what he probably does not understand. Or perhaps he understands it too well and that is why he doesn’t want it: soccer would become totally fair, hence uncontrollable. I cannot wait until they remove him and allow soccer to enter the 21st century and truly become the beautiful game that it is.