Random Hungover Sunday Afternoon Ramblings.....

Quite sad and distressing, actually. I was trying to make this a more lighthearted piece today, and then, something just pissed me off so badly I had to write about it.....

The Ugly Game in The Dutch Oven......

The Dutch get farted on and then blanketed by Portugal. In a rough match where Russian referee Comrade Valentin Ivanov quickly lost both, presence and control, he ended up showing 16 yellow cards and four red cards.

For starters, European football is such a dismal wretched affair to watch compared to the South American version of The Beautiful Game! I mean, during the Argentina/Mexico match, a hard, nasty kick to the cubes would result in the player jumping right up and getting RIGHT BACK AT IT.....whistle or no whistle!!

Shit, in Euro-soccer, a guy takes a veeeerrrry SLIGHT poke to the thigh, and he drops literally just like he's been fucking SHOT DEAD with a 30-06!! The Southern European National sides are the biggest offenders (though British club sides originated this art form)....looking at the USA-Italy and today's Holland-Portugal matches are all the proof of that that one needs!!

Despite Ivanov's obvious bias towards The Netherlands in his officiating, the Portuguese emerged victorious. Still, though, there were a couple of things that really pissed me off....

Initially, I was slightly rooting for The Dutch, hoping to see Holland FINALLY advance beyond the quarterfinals for the first time in, like, 30 years!

THAT all changed when The Oranj broke one of The Codes....

Now, there are literally like about three (MAYBE four) Codes in the world that are NOT to be broken! Full stop. Just NOT to EVER be broken......

All these codes are unwritten...........

An example of one of these three or four codes is The Man Code. Simply put: Any, ANY Ex-girlfriend (by Ex-girlfriend, we mean like they dated for more than a year) of a good male friend IS off limits after the break-up. Period. End of story!

A man who violates The Man Code is usually ostricised by his fellow men and told to walk out alone into the desert and never to return to The Village.

One of the other codes NEVER broken is the Footer Sportsmanship Code. This was broken by the side from The Netherregions today.

The Footer Sportsmanship Code is where, in a soccer match, someone is in clear possession of the ball on a very very good offensive opportunity, somebody gets seriously injured at the other end of the field, a player with the ball sees this and intentionally boots the ball out of bounds and thus the ref blows the play dead.....and the injured player is attended to. THEN, the team taking the re-kick to start play just gently passes it deep to the other team, as sort of a thank you.....

It's just what you do.....that simple!

In I don't know HOW MANY YEARS of watching soccer, I had NEVER seen The Footer Sportsmanship Code violated.....until today.....in a World Cup match, much less!!

A Portuguese player had a great opportunity as he was tearing through the centre of the pitch towards the Holland goal, when the referee was alerted that one of the Portuguese players back in the Portuguese defensive zone was writhing in pain on the ground!!!! So, he blows the whistle, kills a great opportunity for Portugal, and play ceases for about five minutes, and this injured guy is taken out.

Play then resumes with a drop ball. Portugal stands back and lets The Dutch take the ball......

.....now, in these sort of situations, the team with the ball (The Dutch, in this case) will ALWAYS boot it out of bounds to give the other team a throw-in, or boot it to their goalkeeper at the other end of the field, and the other team can start from there! Holland should have just booted it out of bounds!!!

It's just sporting.....and it's just what you do and what has always been done...

Instead, this jerkoff from Holland takes the ball off of the drop-ball situation and tries to go tearing down the field towards the Portuguese goal with it!!!! The Portuguese players are standing around, stunned at this action by the Dutch midfielder, until one of them tried to slide-tackle the ball away and ended up getting booked with a yellow for slide-tackling from behind!!

There were a couple of other uncool things Holland that kinda bugged me! It's just no wonder when, during important international matches with England, the English Hooligans all go over there and kick the hell out of the Dutch fans! Then they smoke black hash later and laff about it all......

The second thing that bothered me was FIFA president Sepp Blatter's comments about the ineptness of the referee. No, he wasn't THAT bad....but the point being that even if he actually WAS that bad, you DON'T publicly embarrass your referees!

Stern (NBA), Bettman (NHL), Selig (Baseball) and whoever is in charge of the NFL this week would NEVER publicly call out a referee!!!!!! Come on, I mean, they actually fine managers, coaches and ANY team official who makes ANY statement to the media about how horseshit the refereeing may have been, so I think for Blatter to make that statement was VERY unprofessional and undermining! ESPECIALLY when Blatter's OWN organisation (FIFA) keeps shouting from the rooftops that in THIS year's World Cup, we will take no shit and the ref's will be there with the cards at the ready!!! TO QUOTE: "Certainly one aspect to [the increase in yellow and red cards] is the fact that referees received before the World Cup very clear instructions on which types of things to clamp down on, [including] reckless foul play, elbowing opponents, wasting time and simulation," FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said. "Nothing has changed in terms of the laws of the game, they're simply being applied more strictly than they have in the past."

What the hell kind of signal does THAT send??

I've NOW seen it all.....Bass fishing Championships on ESPN where (this is no shit) two of the tournament participants were talking smack to each other!! Coming up next on ESPN2, the world paint-drying finals.....brought to you by Sherwin Williams!!


And finally, yet ANOTHER reason WHY hockey does NOT belong South of the Mason-Dixon Line.....

.....God, I HATE Drought Season (one of Portland's two seasons...the other being drizzle/mist/fog season).....100+ degrees here today. Thank God I live around a rainforest and not in the concrete heat island known as Downtown PDX!

-E-