Undefined: World Cup 2006

Those of you who don't watch World Cup can skip this post.

Anyways, I'm one of those people who don't watch soccer unless its World Cup and pretty much know nothing about the rules, but once every four years, I am, like all the sweaty jersey-wearing, face-painting, cheering soccer fans that can't afford to go to the hosting country; parked in front of the TV for the games when they come on. I know what you must be thinking, that as a girl, I only watch World Cup to check out cute soccer players and ogle at their chests when they take off their jerseys at the end of the match to trade. Okay, I admit it, that is partially true, but what I like most about watching the games is seeing the excitement of the fans and watching the strategy of gameplay used by the players. There's also something about watching the ball go into the goal, the sudden increase of your heartbeat, you hold your breath, you watch Ronaldo (or Beckam, Ronaldhino, Figo, etc.) focus on the goal, lift his leg up and see his foot connect with the ball...whoosh! Sailing into the goal with the crowds cheering and singing. And the most entertaining part is when the camera cuts to the coach of the opposite team with his arms crossed and his face all red. By the way, the Czech coach is especially entertaining to watch, he doesn't just turn red, he turns purple. Another somewhat entertaining event was when the England team took Ronney off the field and he looked majorly pissed. He sat down hard on the bench next to his team mates and slammed his cleats on the ground with his face pink, turning slightly red while muttering what was probably a long string of swear words. This guy needs to learn an important lesson: never throw a tantrum in an international event, the whole world is watching you.

Lots of surprising things have actually happened so far in the matches. I mean, I totally didn’t think that Japan was actually going to score a goal in yesterday’s match against Brazil. Brazil still won (4-1) , but Japan actually scored the first goal. And Czech Republic actually lost against Ghana, the Czechs have a lot of experience and Ghana is a pretty young team, but in the end the score was 2-0. What about Ronaldo? He was (well, he still may be, I haven’t made up my mind about that yet) the best player on the best team in the whole world and in the match against Australia, he was subbed off. Which was probably because he looked tired, like me after fitness testing in P.E., running sluggishly behind the rest of his team mates, and from the looks of it, put on a few pounds since the last World Cup. But he did score two goals in the match against Japan, so maybe he needed a bit of a warm-up to get back in shape. The Aussies played very well though, it was a fun match to watch since it moved so fast. The Italy vs. USA match was one of those entertaining matches as well, because they kept on fouling each other. The USA team actually got two players kicked off for red cards. So in the end, the Italians won. The Korean team plays pretty viciously, they seem to have this very desperate determination that keeps them going throughout the whole game, which makes the match interesting to watch. The Japanese team seems to lose their momentum after half time and end up walking/jogging through the last forty-five minutes, this causes me to change the channel and set the reminder on my cable for when the next match will be on so I will not have to watch male Japanese versions of myself in P.E. class when I’m desperately waiting for the bell to ring so I can get out of there.

Finally, my predictions for some of the teams that might make it to the finals: Brazil, Portugal, Italy, England, Germany, and Spain.