Irritated Jackmo in cinq, quatre. . . .
That's a weak hit-- it's basically a shove.
Delivered by a French guy.
Did you not SEE the header Zidane made on the pass from Sagnol? Well, no wonder you don't like soccer--you don't know a goddamned thing...
Wait a minute, did I just fall into...
Salauds.
Dude, Labs, I don't know if this was what JackM. was trying to say in 4, but it's not just a headbutt, it's a headbutt from fucking Zidane. Have you see how far soccer players, particularly good ones, can make the ball go?
Anyway, the pain caused doesn't fucking matter. It was the deliberateness of the "shove" that matters. And that was pretty deliberate.
If you want to complain about boo-hooing, you should just check out this.
I agree with silvana and JM. I'd be afraid to have had my ribcage split.
After the game my friends and I tested le headbut on one another, and yeah, a hit like that from a professional header like Zidane is going to hurt real bad.
I'm standing my ground on this. Yes, he hits the ball with his head, but look at the angle of the blow. That's not positioning for maximum impact, not by a long shot. It would have been less dramatic, but just as forceful, to give him a conventional two-handed push.
it's a headbutt from fucking Zidane.
Oh, please. When Mo Lewis hit Drew Bledsoe on the sidelines, it sheared an artery in his chest.
Compared to some of the more brutal tackles that earn red cards? My point is that to hear people talk about this you'd think Materazzi needed a face transplant or something, but it's pretty tame.
The only way to verify what is or is not a flop on television is to have people volunteer to be hit or to flop, and to tape all of them. For comparison purposes, of course.
Also, I thought flop meant someone went down without being hit and embellishment meant exagerrating an existing foul to draw attention to it. But now everything seems to be collapsed into the category flop and precision has been lost.
Labs is so tall Zidane would have headbutted him harmlessly in the shin guard.
to hear people talk about this
Okay, so as I understand it, your complaint is not
a) the headbutt didn't hurt
b) it didn't deserve a red card
but
c) people are making too big a deal of it?
Well, it is only being made a big deal of because a) it was the final b) Zidane is the captain, and was already about to announce his retirement c) it wasn't even in the context of a "brutal tackle" while, like, attempting to get the ball or anything, just hit you in the fucking chest while jogging up the field.
Labs, put down the crackpipe.
Seriously, your position is that "it's only a little bump-ti-bump with the head and it couldn't possibly have hurt"? That's your position and you're sticking to it?
It was the head of mother-fucking Zidane. It's a lethal weapon! He has to register it with the police when he moves into a new town!
Actually, labs is so tall that the headbutt would probably have been just right for his solar plexus, in which case he wouldn't be so quick to write it off.
I agree with silvana and JM. I'd be afraid to have had my ribcage split.
Yes, but judging from pictures of you, you'd have reason to be afraid. Materazzi, OTOH, appears to be a full grown man.
16-- No, not exactly, it's just that I was expecting, from what I'd heard, to see a totally vicious hit, the kind of thing that sticks in your head the way the Theismann leg break does. And then I saw it, and, yeah, it was not the thing to do, but the level of violence left me disappointed.
What's crazier still is that the French were complaining that Materazzi ought to have been carded for giving Zidane a purple nurple.
I don't know, I think we aren't addressing the underlying question which is "What kind of sport settles its world championship with a penalty-kick contest?"
Like, it would be really stupid if baseball were to settle its world championship with a penalty-kick contest. Actually, it would be cool.
21--well, a red card would be a bit much.
There are two Farkings that are relevant to this thread:
8- someone photoshopped it to futher alter the angle of the, ah, blow
17- Someone already made the lethal weapon point (this one's pretty lame.)
the kind of thing that sticks in your head the way the Theismann leg break does
I still haven't seen that. I'm too afraid to watch it.
come on guys, it was a pretty sweet move.
22 is definitely the most important comment in this thread. Penalty kicks suck ass. Have a golden-goal if necessary, anthing is better than penalty-kicks. Also, there should be hungry tigers released onto the field during overtime. Now that's the way to settle a world-championship!
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/07/it_was_a_wonderful_headbutt.html
you don't know from headbutts, Labs. Probably comes of playing poofy rugby while wearing padding and a helmet, like a big girl.
"ooh, lacrosse and hockey are really tough games". In Mallory Towers maybe.
Also, there should be hungry tigers released onto the field during overtime.
Calvin Trillin has written of taureaux football, which is like regular soccer except there's a bull on the field.
dd, I disagree. I think all the power comes from Zidane's hands, which are conveniently on Materazzi's chest at the same time the head makes impact.
Oh lordy, Cantona's kung fu kick - that was class. As for whether Zizou's headbutt hurt or not (and I'm in the camp that said it did), that's not tha point is it? The point is the cold-blooded assault, that's what he got he red card for. I don't think Materazzi did any nipple-tweaking - Zidane didn't look bothered whilst that was going on, and he'd hardly come back a couple of minutes later to retaliate. I hope we do get to hear what Materazzi said to him one day.
Simple experiment here: stand up straight, then take a step forward with your right foot, put all your weight onto it, bend forward at the waist and see how hard you can push with your hands. Materazzi was knocked off his feet by the butt. Look at the way he moves; it's a sudden jolt, not a shove.
I wonder what Kientz said to Zidane.
Zidane aimed a headbutt at Jochen Kientz after both players fell over in the 29th minute and can expect severe punishment and four minutes later Davids was dismissed for a seond bookable offence after a foul.
Nah, his hands barely move! Oh, also, which you can't see in that shitty quality youtube clip, after Materazzi had his arm round Zidane, as they walked together, Zidane was smiling and looked pretty relaxed.
Alternative experiment here: stand up straight, then take a step forward with your right foot, put all your weight onto it, bend forward at the waist and slam the crown of your head into a nearby wall. I predict it will hurt. And if it hurts you that much, just imagine how much it hurts the other guy.
I hope we do get to hear what Materazzi said to him one day.
Rumor is it was a racist remark. Zidane, I'm told, is of Arab descent.
This is something my brother told me he read online. Strikes me as wrong, but I don't know.
re: 37, the rumor also shows up in the CT thread.
I think the rumor is based on speculation rather than any actual knowledge. People are just trying to think of what might possibly be so offensive as to cause Zidane to react that way. Presumably people, say, call eachother "faggot" or whatever in soccer pretty frequently, likely not something he would get that fazed at.
Penalty kicks are fine, and far better than golden goals.
Why? I don't wish to start an argument, as I am obviously not a fan of the game, but what's the appeal?
Maybe they could replace the penalty kicks with headbutts.
Or how about this: the ball is placed at mid-pitch/center ice/whatever they call it. The field is cleared except fot the goalies who then face off. Whichever goalie scores the ball wins the game.
I think they should play overtime until someone wins, at least in the championship game. I don't care if it's normal overtime rules or golden goals - and I think it was a mistake to replace normal overtime with sudden death while maintaining penalty kicks - but I don't like the bait and switch: now you're watching soccer, now you're watching a kicking contest.
Urple, I'm busy trying this experiment: jab finger in eye. If the eye hurts, imagine how much the finger will hurt!
That was the real tragedy of the Oedipus story.
The head-butt isn't that vicious by the standards of American sports. Didn't Ronnie Lott used to knock himself unconscious with his hits? And those were legal.
In the NBA, I think the gold standard (excluding fights, and specifically the Kermit-Tomjanovich hit) for the rough hit is the McHale clothesline of a running Kurt Rambis. I'm still angry about that, and it was twenty years ago.
"I hope we do get to hear what Materazzi said to him one day."
Apparently the spanish commentators said that he called Zidane's sister a whore. Of course, I have no idea how they would know that, but I can see it being borderline headbutt worthy.
No one has ever claimed the headbutt was vicious or said "poor Materazzi". Presumably FL knows this, but apparently not Tim.
Weman, see FL's #20: it's just that I was expecting, from what I'd heard, to see a totally vicious hit,
Le Monde had up a collection of speculative rumors. There seem to be three: 1) something racist--"terrorist" being a key word, 2) something about his mother, 3) something about his sister being a prostitute.
Although we're all curious (SOS Racisme has called for an investigation into Materrazzi's comments), I kind of hope we'll ever really know.
As regards the authenticity of the fall, one must remember that good footballers are trained to embellish fouls and to make it look real. That includes not only the attendant descent, flailing, and landing, but also the timing. As such, it would be very difficult to tell from the tape to what extent the fall was dramatized, since that is actually Materazzi's natural reaction to such physical contact.
If Materazzi is trained to take a realistic fall in such situations, it matters not whether Zidane's headbutt packed the force of howitzer or a French shove; both would have elicited roughly the same reaction. I think it's possible that the head-butt both hurt like the dickens and Materazzi is a priss.
I'm going to agree with Matt Weiner and eb here, penalty shoot-outs suck. I love the international game, and it always feels pretty illegitimate when a team wins through penalty kicks instead of a proper goal with all the precursor approach play.
I know for expediency's sake they do the penalty shoot-outs during the earlier rounds, but there's no big scheduling concerns about the Final and the Third-Fourth place matches. Return to the old-school tie-breaker method and just make the teams duke it out in repeated matches until someone wins.
That's a weak hit-- it's basically a shove.
Most people's skulls are significantly harder than their hands.
In all seriousness, if you're an experienced professional athlete, don't you pretty much expect opponents to say the most vile shit they can think of?
What Zidane should have done: kicked him apart! kicked him apart! oooo!
To test the head-butt hypothesis (Labs, you're wrong), take an energetic five year old and ask him to lower his head and charge at you. Then tell me that shit wouldn't hurt/knock you off your feet coming from a full-grown man in peak physical condition.
It's silly to say that penalties are decided by chance. They're decided by skill, and to a great extent, by your ability to cope w the temendous pressure. They're great drama and grat entertainment.
Penalty kicks are still sorta bad, because sometimes the inferior team wins them, like in this final.
I'm ambivalent of golden goals, but they do feel more disappointing, distasteful and random when you're pulling for a losing team, like when we lost to Senegal. The reason FIFA went back to penalties after the 2002 cup is that everyone hated them. Except Americans, I guess.
In all seriousness, if you're an experienced professional athlete, don't you pretty much expect opponents to say the most vile shit they can think of?
I don't know. I kind of feel like some people get a free shot for some sorts of insults. African-Americans and the n-word, for example. If your parent had just been killed, and someone made use of that--I think it would have been totally OK for Steve Kerr to go into the stands and beat the shit out of any fan at ASU he could find.
But most of them--including shots at your sister's sex life--yeah, you should be able to overlook that.
I think my pro-Zidane feeling comes from the fact that (a) it was so unexpected, so I assume there was a reasonable cause, and (b) I much preferred the French team to the Italian team.
Like when the Portuguese keeper Ricardo actually blocked, what was it, two or three penalty kicks? God, that was incredible.
But blocking a penalty kick is largely just about lucky guesses--it's not like you have time to see the kick and trajectory before you jump.
I hate penalty kicks too, but what else are you going to do? An hour and a half of running = exhaustion, and making the game go past that would be awful on the players and awful to watch.
It's silly to say that penalties are decided by chance. They're decided by skill, and to a great extent, by your ability to cope w the temendous pressure. They're great drama and grat entertainment.
Oh, I am not denying any of this. I just don't really like penalty-shooting skill, since it really gets rid of the teamplay and/or ball-handling that so define good football to me. Even the strikes that I really appreciate tend to be from greater distance, or show great skill threading the defense, or are very close-in play. Hell, they're even too one-sided for most goalkeepers to really show great skill in them, unless the kicker screws up a little and the keeper is just awesome.
When my boss started watching the World Cup this year, he thought the shoot-outs were weird. In his words "it's like an NBA game goes into overtime, but then gets decided by a free-throw contest".
I don't think penalties are decided by chance. I think they're a different game, and one I did not spend over 2 hours watching. The phrase golden goal is, and has always been, a terrible euphemism for sudden death.
Taking away penalty kicks takes away the incentive to defend in the hopes of winning on penalties. I don't think you'd see very many games take longer. I think you'd see more teams attack all the way to the end.
Which is to say I don't give a damn if it's sudden death or not. I just want to see games decided by playing the games.
Personally, I'd be more interested if they started pulling players from the field. Maybe one per team every two minutes. More and more concentrated skill on the field, more and more opportunities to score.
I hate penalty kicks too, but what else are you going to do? An hour and a half of running = exhaustion, and making the game go past that would be awful on the players and awful to watch.
They used to just schedule a new game a few days later if the overtime didn't sort out a victor.
How was it unexpected? Zidane is known to be a hothead. He's done headbutting before, as someone said upthread.
Matarazzi probably just asked if le Z was tired from all that hamming when Zidane fell down and behaved like someone had sawed his shoulder in two.
The reason FIFA went back to penalties after the 2002 cup is that everyone hated them. Except Americans, I guess.
But FIFA never left penalties right? They changed the overtime, but in the event of a tie there were still penalties.
"But blocking a penalty kick is largely just about lucky guesses--it's not like you have time to see the kick and trajectory before you jump."
Well, no. In that case all keepers would be equally good. Ricardo wasn't lucky, he was a great keeper.
But blocking a penalty kick is largely just about lucky guesses--it's not like you have time to see the kick and trajectory before you jump.
This isn't entirely true. The keepers do study up on the strikers--where they tend to shoot, where their strengths are, what habits they have. And, while the strikers try to fake out the keeper, if they get too fancy-pants about it, they're going to miss, so they actually do end up telegraphing some of their intentions.
The keepers usually can't block more than one in six, though, if that. Ricardo's saves were amazing.
71, no in 2002 we had golden goals, like in the Sweden-Senegal game.
72: I think it's pretty well established that there is no way the goalie can observe which way the ball is going on a penalty shot. You have to decide what to do before the ball is ever struck. Apparently the German goalkeeper during their last win in the World Cup was carrying a paper that predicted how each of the opposing kickers was most likely to kick the ball, and he followed those predictions and was just about perfect. You can also guess which way the ball is going based on other factors, but it's definitely guessing.
But blocking a penalty kick is largely just about lucky guesses--it's not like you have time to see the kick and trajectory before you jump.
This is 100% of my problem with penalty kicks. There ought to be a greater degree of parity between kicker and goalie, rather than having it be a case of just an occassional lucky jump by the goalie. I'd like to see something close to 50% of the kicks be blocked -- then, I'd feel like it was an incredibly exciting way to finish a game. I wonder whether it would be better if they kicked the penalty kicks from about 10 (15? 20?) yards further back? Whatever distance would be more appropriate to give a skilled defender the chance to block all but the better penalty kicks.
Wrong:
After 120 goalless minutes, all of Korea is in raptures as they eliminated Spain in a stirring penalty kick shoot-out 3 : 5 in Gwangju. The winning penalty came from captain Hong Myung-Bo. The co-hosts have advanced further than any expected and move on to face Germany in a remarkable semi-final in Seoul.
Golden goals never ended penalty kicks.
77 is to 74 and should include this link.
JAC,
See, that would be silly, if only because basketball players can be subbed on and off willy-nilly throughout the game. Soccer teams, on the other hand, have 3 substitutions per game. And no TV timeouts. They've been running around for an hour and 15 straight (pretty much, there's no extended break between the second time and either of the extra times). so, yeah, at that point, vis a vis BPhD's comment, the soccer gets pretty crappy, and might as well be decided by PKs, because that's as good as anything, save playing the game again.
"But blocking a penalty kick is largely just about lucky guesses--it's not like you have time to see the kick and trajectory before you jump."
Well, no. In that case all keepers would be equally good.
All keepers would be equally good at blocking penalty kicks. I'd be curious as to the numbers on penalty kicks; do individual goalkeepers face enough to amass statistically significant, er, statistics?
75: There was an article about that in Slate last week or two weeks ago. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the article and post it here.
I have yet to see a convinving argument that lack of penalties would not provide an incentive to attack and score. Does anyone doubt the Italians were just trying to make it to penalties and not interested in doing much else? And I seem to remember Paraguay pretty much building their team around this strategy in either 1998 or 2002.
In any case, crappy soccer is still soccer.
79: See my 56 and 69.
Playing the game over again is exactly what I'm saying. If the time crunches of knockout round scheduling weren't an issue, I'd probably prefer that even the 30 minutes overtime be dropped in favor of a new game. I think it would just be the ideal solution for finding the side that's actually better at football.
I'd be curious as to the numbers on penalty kicks; do individual goalkeepers face enough to amass statistically significant, er, statistics?
Maybe the issue isn't the keepers, but the kickers. T. Cowen posted something about kickers, unpredictability in shots, and game theory predictions about how unpredictable the best kickers should be.
I wonder if my passionate dislike of penalty kicks is showing.
Betcha 85 is also the answer to 81. The goalkeepers also have to choose an unpredictable strategy. What I wonder is whether any good goalkeeper is better than any other at saving penalty kicks when you adjust for guessing correctly and possibly for the quality of the shot (no way could anyone have stopped the kick in Italy-Australia). It wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that there wasn't much difference, and that Ricardo basically got lucky at the right time.
He's gotten lucky a couple of other times too, then, and have been v. lucky in guessing which way in regular gametime too. But I haven't followed his whole career, and am far from an expert, so it's possible you're right.
It does not seem to be easy to find any sort of career statistics for Ricardo.
But I haven't followed his whole career, and am far from an expert, so it's possible you're right.
Typical weeny European attitude. Here in America if an individual has watched more than a dozen games in any particular sport, he feels justified in proudly calling himself an expert and forcefully asserting his opinion.
So, if soccer is lame, then arguing the rules of soccer / searching for data on penalty kicks is... what?
You are asking for a headbutt, slolernr.
Fuck that, I'm gonna attack his kid, Frisch-style. We need to make this comment section faster, more intense.
After the game my friends and I tested le headbut on one another
I wish I could have seen that. I bet it was happening in living rooms and bars all over the world.
I hope we do get to hear what Materazzi said to him one day.
Apparently he said - ' your wife gives great head.'
I'd be all for just rescheduling the game, but again, you can't realistically do that in a World Cup without screwing up the scheduling all over the place.
Arguing about baseball iszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I'm gonna attack his kid, Frisch-style
Hey, prominent academic kid-threatening leftist over here! Wingnut powers.... activate!
Arguing about baseball iszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
... something George Will can do. See, let us engage in civil dialogue across the aisle.
Huh, did someone say something? I must have drifted off.
There are certainly goalkeepers with reputations as good penalty stoppers.
There are some that seem to have preternatural shot-stopping ability, for example. They can get down quickly and seem to react faster than others. There's the famous Gordon Banks save in the 1970 World Cup, for example.
Or Andy Goram, who was a fat slob even at his peak, the Ranger's keeper from the 1990s who was an amazing close-in shot-stopper.
They aren't necessarily even the best goalies since goalkeeping is also about taking crosses, knowing when to come for a ball and when to leave it, organising your defence, covering angles on long shots, ball distribution when kicking out, etc. But some keepers are just superlative shot stoppers.
You combine that with a good sense for how to read a player's run-up -- which some goalies seem to be better at than others -- and the ability to psych out the opposing striker and you get a goalkeeper who saves more penalties than others.
TNR's world cup blog speculates the slur was "Harki".
I like moving the penalty spot (for shootouts only) back to the top of the box. Or maybe do some kind of 2 on 2 where the offense has 15 seconds to score- anything with a lower percentage so that you get some statistical significance in the winner.
I also read somewhere today a proposal that they should do PKs after 90 minutes, the winning team gets a half a goal (or advantage or whatever you want to call it.) They then play another 30 minutes, allowing the PK losing team a chance to take back the lead- if no one scores, the PK winning team wins. Obviously this favors the PK winning team since it's much easier to defend a lead (as we saw many times in the tournament), but still gives the other team a chance.
I imagine it hurt. On the video it looks like Zidane headbutted down, slightly, like directing a shot. Anyhow, it's the contact, not how much it hurts, that determines the foul.
And penalty kicks aren't fun to cheer for. Exciting, but basically you're waiting for someone to screw up on taking their shot. It seems that the great saves about match up with the misreads, so then you're just waiting for someone to hit it off the crossbar.
The Gordon Banks save is amazing, but it wasn't a penalty shot. I certainly don't claim that there might not be any difference among goalkeepers in shot-stopping in play, when you don't know in advance where the ball will be coming from.
The reasons you cite for thinking that some goalkeepers might be better penalty stoppers sound plausible, but I would like to see an analysis. Some baseball players have reputations as clutch hitters, but I think stats analysis shows that there's no such thing.
One other thing to bear in mind for advocates of the 'let them play until one side scores' theory. To reach the final, a team needs to win 4 knockout games. These would all now have to be open-ended games.
Judging from the fatigue of the Italians after playing 'ordinary' extra time against the Germans, I'd guess a single 2/3+ hour game would pretty much destroy a team that had to play again a couple of days later.
You'll end up with the fresher team keeping possesion and trying to score while the other camps out in it's own half trying to stay upright. Sort of like most of the second half of yesterdays game.
Playing on until there's a winner sounds like, and probably is, a better way to decide an individual game. But it's not a good way to decide a tournament.
107: Well, that's why we were mostly arguing that at least the final games, where there is no progression left, should be decided by a rematch.
That said, I do wonder how the old World Cup tournaments that my dad remembers dealt with the tie-breaking method being rematches instead of penalty kicks.
As JAC says, we were talking about the final.
But again, awareness that playing too defensively will wear you out over the long run = incentive to take chances to try to score. I remain unconvinced that removal of penalty kicks will result in no changes to the strategy of the rest of the game.
You could decide the team w the most posession or something would win, or something.
That would change the game in all kinds of screwy ways.
What about a series of set-plays, like corner kicks?
Kind of like the equivalent of starting on the 25-yard-line. Not bad. I'm not sure if it would make the game end faster, though.
Ties should be decided by headbutts to the chest.
the goal should be twice as big, and the ball twice as small. goalies should be limited to 5'6. strikers should not wear shoes. forwards should not wear pants. everyone should get to eat cake.
"get to eat cake" s/b "get up and dance."
Ties should be decided by insults. Teams line up three yards apart and yell at each other, whoever can make the opposing players attack them first wins. If they survive the attack, they also get the trophy.
Or, in the alternative, players should wear tight pantaloons with strange stripey socks and instead of kicking a ball in a net, hit a ball with a bat, and indulge in chaw.
In the event of a tie, whichever team gets all of their players off the field the fastest, while maintaing possession of the ball, wins. Regulations limiting what body parts may be used to control the ball lapse as soon as the second overtime half ends. Coaches and subs may go onto the field at that same time, though if they go on they are counted as a player who must get back off before their team can win. Hostages may be taken.
Or how about this: the ball is placed at mid-pitch/center ice/whatever they call it. The field is cleared except fot the goalies who then face off. Whichever goalie scores the ball wins the game.
You and Vince McMahon both think that's a cool idea.
Sweet jesus. Someone linked to this YouTube clip of Zidane's glorious goal in the 2002 Euro Masters tournament. Crazy beautiful.
I totally agree with FL. A lame headbutt. Just like the time Zidane headbutted Jochen Kientz and gave him a concussion and a broken jaw. Where's the plunk of plastic on plastic?
Seriously though, what's all the nonsense about the players' "dark side"?
Nonsense, all of you. Ties should be decided by which team is hotter.
I'm too lazy to make it a hyperlink, but you only wrong yourselves to hold that against the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdMyTDkC55w&mode=related&search=
PWNED!!!111!!!111!!1!!!1!!!!!11!111!!!!1
Zidane's volley was great, but I think Henry's volley against ManU is still the better goal.
130-amazing. Also, I do love fans.
My favorite goal of this Cup was Maxi (?) Rodriguez's, where he chests a well-placed cross to his own foot and nails it.
Good God. That shouldn't have worked. How extraordinary.
Also: when I was in Germany, I had Eurovision and watched a bunch of soccer, mostly the Erstebundesliga, sure, but that's still great soccer. The WC coverage has rekindled my jones; how do other American fans keep up with the better European teams?
It's like the Steelers' 'here we go' song. Zidane y va marquer!
If you're in NYC, there are Brit bars that carry the games.
By Wednesday, we're done talking about soccer for the next four years, right?
It was me. *I* replaced SCMTim with Folger's Crystals.
By Wednesday, we're done talking about soccer for the next four years, right?
If you want to not talk about soccer, get your own damn blog.
Okay, but we can't be completely done talking about soccer until we talk about this first.
I say Zidane is still the awesome.
137: I certainly hope so, though I have this terrible fear that it will just be replaced by chemically-enhanced freaks riding bicycles around France for a month. Which, I might add, makes soccer look positively spellbinding by comparison.
ESPN/ESPN2 usually carries at least one Champions League match every week there are matches. Sometimes you can catch things on Fox Sports, but they're often taped or not even same day. I haven't been paying as much attention as I used to, so there may be other places. I seem to remember some of the Spanish channels running European league matches - maybe Spain or Italy? - years ago.
The main problem, as I understand it, is that the rights fees are too high for the amount of audience the US channels get. ESPN had to drop Spanish league coverage - never live in the first place - for this reason.
Most of the voting reportedly was done at the half, though they had much longer. And at the half Zidane y va marquer!
Y reste Makélélé!
145: Is that whole video some sort of marketing campaign for the product featured at the end when the real kids is (apparently) pooping?
how do other American fans keep up with the better European teams?
Fox Soccer Channel. It's kind of a pain, 'cause you have to shell out for an extended cable package (and the financial hit may be more than you want to pay), but they have a ton of matches, plus the Fox Sports World Report and Sky Sports News. It's more biased towards the EPL than the Continental leagues, but they do show Serie A and Bundesliga matches (plus some of the South American leagues).
The honey gets ESPN2; I'll have to look into the scheduling more carefully, it seems. Watching matches in expat pubs isn't really my idea of a good time.
It struck me during this Cup that I played soccer for at least three years before I ever saw professional players on the tv. Even that was a fluke, and it remains one of my best memories from childhood--I was over at my best friend's house (who also played), it was raining for once during a gigantic drought, and we happened across a Univision-broadcast game on an 8"x8" black-and-white set. We were just astonished--we had no idea that soccer could look like that.
(Then we got really excited about the rain and went out to jump in muddy puddles--"we'll be able to take a deep bath, now!" Good times.)
The Champions League matches are pretty much always live at 2:30 PM ET on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I don't think they ever re-air them so you have to tape them if you have to be elsewhere.
Watching matches in expat pubs isn't really my idea of a good time.
You'd be surprised. I saw that Henry goal I linked to live at the Mad Dog in the Fog in the Lower Haight -- it was about 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday and the place was *packed*. It was a blast. Even for less popular matches, though, it's still fun to go down there eeeeeearly and have an English breakfast while watching the game.
More from Japan (you really need to watch through to at least the halfway point).
I don't know what the purpose of the video is, aside from our amusement, and to help us y va marquer.
I finally saw--and clicked through to--133. Holy hell.
151--It's the place's being packed that I object to, frankly. That, and the spending money part.
I don't know, but it's a pretty entertaining song. Everyone will play, except Cissé who is injured, unless he gets a magic potion to fix his leg, but that doesn't matter because.... we still have Makélélé! It's like they were going to rhyme it somehow....
152: about 1:30 is the breaking point I think. I've been howling. But that might be the $12 wine I'm drinking.
Cala, there is something hynotic about the image. I've watched it all the way through three or four times. I ought to suspend my broadband service.
no, hypnotic! It wasn't me, I typed it right. It was the comment box gremlin.
That pooping video makes me realize what a prudish American I really am. I'm especially disturbed by the talking toilet: "hey, kid, poop in me!"
I don't know what it says about me, but I find the entire thing hilarious, and don't feel any other response.
Toot-Toot go down the hole.
Toot-Toot come back!
It's the place's being packed that I object to, frankly. That, and the spending money part.
Yeah, I can understand. That particular match was an outlier (seeing as how it was between the two most popular teams at the time); more often it's a low-key experience. Not that that helps with the money.
Unfortunately, that really is the only way to see matches live in the U.S. You can do a pretty good job of keeping up with the leagues via the web, and I suspect that these days you can find a fair number of the goals from the weekend's matches on YouTube. (There used to be an Arsenal fansite that had videos of all the goals from Arsenal matches, going back several years, but the copyright holders finally asked them to cool it. Damn shame.)
I don't think they want it back. The video isn't about ))---((
160: It says that you are a sick, sick man.
Pooping in Japan is a much more silky experience.
poop is funny. there's nothing sick about that, so long as you don't go eating it.
sometimes you just shouldn't hit "post" right away. Anyway, it's sound advice.
I actually have a DVD of that poop video, because Shimajiro, the little tiger kid, is my daughter's favorite cartoon character.
On a rational level, I realize that the Japanese approach is far healthier than the Amercan taboos about the subject, but I'm always a little freaked out by this and all the other bathroom-themed children's programming and all the songs about peeing and pooping. My American cultural conditioning just can't get comfortable with little kids singing loudly and happily about poop.
I don't remember whether it was the same video or another from the series, but there's one where the little tiger kid runs around in tighty-whities saying "I'm 'Pants-man' now! I don't need diapers anymore!" I can testify that my daughter's potty training was made a lot easier because she wanted to be like Shimajiro and be "Pants-man" too.
Cute!!
That Japanese book, "Everyone Poops," is pretty popular nowadays. I'm cool with that. I think it's the anthropomorphization of poo/potties that just crosses the line for me.
I think it's the anthropomorphization of poo/potties that just crosses the line for me.
Especially when the poo waves bye-bye as it spirals down the drain, and then the toilet smiles and says, "Yummy!" (actual scene in my daughter's video)
and then the toilet smiles and says, "Yummy!"
It was cute right until that.
My aunt (the kind of weird one who had the Ren Faire wedding) decorated her kids' bathroom with the theme "Everybody Poops". She matted and framed pages from the book and hung them at different heights and painted the bathroom in a matching color scheme.
Actually I kind of like that idea.
It sort of works, in its own way. Although it's weird to be brushing your teeth while looking at a drawing of an elephant taking a dump.
I can imagine. We sometimes have mouse poop in or near the bathroom sink (b/c the mice live on the bathroom counter), and periodically I realize that that's kinda gross.
At the risk of reviving the soccer thread, this is for Jackmormon.
177: A few of those are truly vicious hits.
Also, an expert lip reader says the taunt was "son of a terrorist whore."
Just at the moment when I expected that clip to show the headbutt as, you know, deserved retribution for Materazzi's nastiness, the "ACMILAN" production credit showed.
I bet true soccer fans end up holding the headbutt more against Materazzi than against Zidane. I mean, more people than just me.
I bet true soccer fans end up holding the headbutt more against Materazzi than against Zidane. I mean, more people than just me.
I'm not a fan, and I know that I do.
I firmly believe that this book is superior to "Everybody Poops". German engineering, you know.
Despite that, the Japanese lead the world in toilet technology, so pooping in Japan is a much more silky experience, at least once you figure out what all the buttons and gizmos do. And since the toilets are basically friendly and solicitous robots anyway (and the leading brand name is "Toto"), I can see how it's only a small leap to have them talking and saying "yum!"
I bet true soccer fans end up holding the headbutt more against Materazzi than against Zidane. I mean, more people than just me.
It seems to be somewhat common, at least in comment threads where people are saying, 'yeah, fine, it was a red card but people should headbutt the italian team more often.'
I have had the Zidane y va marquer song stuck in my head all day.
That's fine with me. I've long been content to hold Zidane's 1998 stomping of a Saudi Arabian player who was already down against him.
my french is too weak to understand much of it, but I think zidane y va marquer shall be my personal anthem for the next few days.
Here are the words. I love the last verse, in which Zidane is injured and they call out for "the minister of health, the minister of that magic cold spray that repairs broken legs."
C'était Cissé qu'il était blessé. (Watch me butcher French!)
Jackmormon, maybe you can answer me this. If I were normally translating loosely, I'd translate 'Zidane y va marquer!' as 'Zidane is gonna score!' since 'Zidane will there mark' doesn't make a lot of sense in English. But would 'Zidane will hit his mark'? make sense as an alternate sense of marquer?
Oh, and these are my favorite lines, but I think I may be misreading it; am I close? :
Ribéry y va jouer
Et Wiltord y va jouer
Anelka y va jouer...
seulement sur sa PSP
Ribéry's gonna play,
And Wiltord's gonna play,
Anelka's gonna play
only on his PSP... [since he wasn't selected for Les Bleus]
Oops! Now I've destroyed my cred.
"Zidane y va marquer!" could be rendered "Z is gonna score there" or "Z is gonna hit his mark there" or "Z is gonna leave a mark there." The first is probably just fine.
You're fine on the second bit. The pronoun "y" gets a little confusing to render, but it's safe to ignore it.
I was just thinking that it's cute pun with a song meant to say 'Go France! Our lineup pwns! Zidane is gonna hit his mark!' with the attack on Italianwienie 'Zidane will hit his/leave a mark!'
'Y' is a bitch of a pronoun. More of a bitch when one's only had a semester of French. But I could read your blog pretty well, even if they didn;t teach us all the swear words.
Argh, I fell prey to my own too-quick willingness to write away the "y." In "Zidane y va marquer," the unstated antecedent for the "y" is "au but." Since the more standard "Zidane va y marquer" doesn't scan very well, they switched it up. So the correct translation IS "Zidane is gonna score." The other senses we mentioned are just lurkers.
In the second example, I think the unstated antecedent is "à la Coupe." That one's not so important, I think.
God, I need to give my French a work-out more regularly.
Ils passent la douane. "Allez-y, allez-y"
man, there is some sore losing going on aroudn here!
but it started with zizou, when the italian goalie buffon made an amazing save of zidane's already amazing shot on the goal. that's probably why he was feeling out of control, more than anything mazerotti said, whatever it was he said.
it looked pretty cold-blooded too - first the two of them are walking side by side, not really looking at each other, and then zidane suddenly jogs in front of m. and knocks him on the ground. and is smiling a little too. pretty thuggish. and this comment is brought to you by someone who likes watching zz normally.
france colonized italy in the nineteenth century -- i can't believe none of you progressive folk are happier about their win! they played a great game, e i francesi, li hanno battuto. e buttato fuori.
viva l'italia!
france colonized italy in the nineteenth century
Italy had it coming, what with all that romping around in Gaul the Romans did.
And I think overall France looked better than Italy in the final, but that Italian defense is pretty damn impenetrable.
Not to mention that Italy was allied with the country that invaded and occupied France in WWII.
So the way I see it, every Italian player should have been headbutted, just out of principle.
178/179: The British/Algerian friend who taught me to love and enjoy soccer is of the opinion that Zidane should have controlled his temper, but that if the lip-readers are correct, Materazzi deserves to be censured as well. However, FIFA doesn't really have a great track record, I understand, about combatting racism. B/A friend also is highly amusing on the way that the European press is pretty much falling into (racist) stereotypes all the way around, including the attitude that the Italian player was, like all Italians, being a dick.
Oh, also according to B/A friend, Zidane's mom has been really ill, making the whole insulting-your-mother thing even more touchy.
197: European soccer has an enormous race problem.
"Behind national fervor, for many, lies hatred. And worst of all, of course, is the endemic racism. From a U.S. perspective, it's shocking that Spanish fans are given to making monkey noises at black players, that certain players, after scoring, give Nazi salutes to the skinheads in the crowd, that a widespread opinion holds France doesn't 'deserve to win' because of all the 'Africans' on their team. I'm not being sanctimonious; this kind of outright racial prejudice is unutterable in U.S. publc discourse, however widely it might be held."
Also here.
Ah, Lindsay has already addressed the point I was thinking of, although with a little less WTF than I would have.
Here is an excellent new angle in real time that shows:
1. Materazzi probably wasn't faking
2. How much taller Materazzi is than Zidane
202: It just makes me love Zidane more.
Il parle!
Basically, he wants the children to know that headbutting is wrong, he doesn't disclose what was said ("cela touche au maman, à la soeur"), but, non, il ne regrette rien.
202: That clip also makes it clear that Materazzi was talking shit right up until Zidane took him down. I hadn't seen that, before.
204: Huh. His point of view doesn't make sense. He doesn't regret it even though it's not justifiable, and yet the person responsible is the person who does the provoking, not the provoked.
Wow, that clip is cool. From the other angles it made no sense, where the verbal conflict was apparently over and then Zidane headbutted him 3 seconds late. This is more mid-sentence...
"your sister is a whor--oof!" Pwned!
Does anyone have a pointer to an article that gives a sense of fan opinion? Because most people I know are on Zidane's side.
If you read French, both Le Mondeand Libéhave "what those crazy bloggers are saying" features--from what I've read, it's about 70% Zidane is our hero and 30% "Pourquoi, Zidane?". The Guardian has good interfacing features with blogs. I don't know about the Italian side.
My feelings are kind of like the feelings that spawn the calabat or the feelings that make me cheer when I watch a show where the brave hero breaks rules to do what is right. I know that one can't really bat one's political opponents, or that bomb plots aren't really foiled by the actions of a rogue agent (in the ten minutes before the hour!), or that headbutting assholes is really productive in combatting racism.
Wouldn't the world be more fun if it worked that way, though?
I think I might get a jersey. Because I'm all about Le Bleu.
My co-worker came in on Monday telling me that he finished watching the game, went home, got online, and ordered a Zidane jersey. Awesome.
re: 210
This seems right. And it is why, although completely understandable, Zidane was nonetheless wrong and not admirable. In the real world, all he did was maybe make the difference between his team winning and his team losing. Sure, he wanted to deck the guy for talking shit about his mother. But he is a professional at work, and it is unprofessional to let taunting like that stop you from doing your job, which is exactly what Zidane did.
I think le headbut puts the French on top. Sure, they lost one soccer game, but they sort of decided to lose it. And now the whole world knows that you don't fuck with France. Who would've thought?
I thought the lesson was that Trezeguet does not always come up with big plays.
Lucky guy at least doesn't have to explain how he missed the free kick with le headbut around.
I see le headbut and I think "the headgoal". Is this a Sausagelism we're propagating?
ever seen the movie "tin cup"? what zidane did was like that, only totally sweet.
the whole world knows that you don't fuck with France
But that's not how it works. Zidane's Algerian by origin, and the French fucking hate the Algerians (by and large). Part of what makes Zidane such a hero is that he's a French hero who's Algerian. And he's pretty excellent on the race and nationality issues, as well.
Needless to say, I disagree with Idealist (at least partly): yes, from one point of view he shouldn't have done it, but from another point of view there are things that are more important than soccer/one's job.
But it's probably not the first time in Zidane's career that he heard a racially* based insult; and is a run-of-the-mill insult by a dickhead in a soccer game more important than the game? That I'm not so sure. It's not going to open a dialogue on racism (cf. 'All Italians are assholes.'); at worst, it's going to play as 'those Algerians are so barbaric we can just taunt them and they lose their heads.'
Hence the fantasy aspect: in a movie, we'd all cheer and they would have won the Cup anyway.
*It boggles the mind a bit. To me Zidane looks like a bald hot white guy with a tan. Yes, yes, I know 'race' is a construct and it varies between cultures & histories, but it still strikes me.
there are things that are more important than soccer/one's job.
No doubt. We simply disagree on whether responding to a schoolboy taunt is sufficient justification for attacking someone and possibly losing one of the premier sporting events in the world.
Alright, come on, y'all, do you really think that the French would have necessarily won the Cup with Zidane? 'Cause I don't think that's obvious, or even true.
do you really think that the French would have necessarily won the Cup with Zidane?
Not a claim I have made. However, it is hard to argue that his presence might not have made the difference. Certainly, he was in no position to know that getting himself thrown out of the game might not have been the difference between winning and losing. The fact that he was on the field means that in his coach's view, the team was better off with him there than without him there.
I think they might have lost the shootout 5-4. (Since I think the first team gets to five wins, and Italy shot first.) It had to have affected morale.
From America's favorite sportswriter:
"I thought it was fascinating to watch him wipe out two stereostypes at once: That soccer players are wusses, and that French people are wusses. I'm also delighted that the Euro papers hired lip readers to see what the Italian said to him -- you know how I've been pushing for lip readers to replace sideline reporters for the past few years. But I didn't think the Zidane thing was as big of a deal as everyone made it out to be -- 8 minutes left in extra time, and it's not like they didn't have 10 guys left. Plus, their keeper, Paul Shaffer, didn't come close to stopping any of Italy's penalty kicks. They would have lost either way. I'm just excited that Tyson's ear bite on Holyfield finally has a sports rival."
The people have spoken!
the first team gets to five wins
You mean that the first team to get to five wins? I thought it was that it's best of five shots for each team, and then (if both make all five) sudden death thereafter (i.e. first missed shot means the other team loses). But I'm not quite sure where I got that.
At 5-5 (or 4-4 or whatever the tie is after five attempts for each team) the shootout continues, but at that point it's only one shot at a time instead of another 5 attempts. The team shooting second always has a chance to match.
Yeah, that. But I may have it wrong. Sudden death would make more sense (but so would a golden goal.)
229: So let's say that each team makes their first five shots, and then team A misses a shot, team B gets to shoot again, and if they miss, they keep going? Is that how it works?
Georgildo, Rumsfeca, and Clarencinhosa Peres
and
Zidane.
Okay, Wikipedia sez:
"Teams take turns to kick from the penalty mark in attempt to score a goal, until each has taken five kicks. However, if one side has scored more goals than the other could possibly reach with all of their remaining kicks, the shootout ends regardless of the number of kicks remaining.
If at the end of these five rounds of kicks the teams have scored an equal number of goals, sudden death rounds of one kick each are used until one side scores and the other does not."
So, what eb said.
231: Yes, I believe so. It's like innings in baseball. But I'm only going on what I vaguely remember from a game I saw where the teams were tied after 5 attempts (but possibly not at 5-5). It was probably over 5 years ago.
They should make them kick simultaneously at different ends of the field.
I wrote and posted 234 before seeing 233, if that wasn't obvious.
235: Good idea, but not different enough from what we have now. How about...instead of having alternating kicks from France and Italy, you have:
- At one side of the field, four French players trying to score on one Italian defenseman and one Italian goalie
- At the other side of the field, four Italian players trying to score on one French defenseman and one French goalie.
The whistle blows, and whichever team converts their 4-on-2 situation into a goal first gets a point. First team to 4 points wins. (i.e. best of 7)
Now that would be AWESOME. Wouldn't it?
The thing about le headbutt is, it was bloody beautiful. Sudden, deft, full-on, and knocked the Italian dude flat on his back.
Aesthetic, French, professional.
Also, it was civilized. Zidane pulled his headbutt -- if it had landed where a headbutt is supposed to land, on the nose, there would've been le blood instead of simply le beautiful action.
It was symbolic and virtual instead of actual and for real -- very Barthes, that.
i was defending italy more out of sport than out of feeling, because the headbutting & penalty kicks took a lot of the pleasure out of that game (as opposed to the italia-germania one, which was great).
however, because ppl seem to forget: WE DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT Materazzi said. so we don't know if it was racist or not. to just assume it was seems, well, a little racist as well. as bitchphd's friend pointed out:
B/A friend also is highly amusing on the way that the European press is pretty much falling into (racist) stereotypes all the way around, including the attitude that the Italian player was, like all Italians, being a dick.
in fact from the apology materazzi gave, it probably was some sexual insult to his sister or mother. which, well, i don't like either but it's not racist.
i would point out the wonderful moment where materazzi also said his insult had nothing to do with z's mother, because "the mother is sacred to me, you know."
which would be awesome stereotypical comedy gold, except that his mom died when he was 15, so it becomes not funny but probably true.
it is also hilarious that zidane will not tell us now what the insult was, because it is "too terrible to repeat." or too light to justify his reaction, given all the press?
perhaps the funniest bit of all is that those lip readers who claim to shed light on it all also admit to not knowing a word of italian.
in italy (where i am temporarily right now) ppl don't seem to have noticed the negative reactions of the rest of the world too much now, because they are so happy. 4 coppe mondiale, comparable only to brazil's 5! also they are concerned about pessotti, who is still in hospital. but i don't think the romantic pleasure the rest of the world gets in applauding zidane is bothering anyone too much now.
Zidane il l'a frappé!
Zidane il l'a frappé!
Zidane il l'a frappé!
O, Zidane il l'a frappé!
The Italy-Germany game was okay. The ending was great, but till then it had been 118 minutes of no one getting close to scoring.
Mmf, I think the fact that everyone assumes it was something racist, and horrible, has more to do with Materazzi's reputation than with general stereotypes against Italians. And from having watched the various Materazzi highlight films floating about on the web, I think he would have deserved what he got, and worse, even if he was silent throughout the game.
I'm curious why you think that none of the lip readers spoke Italian.
Text, the newspapers I read stated clearly that the lip reader didn't speak Italian. I can't find the funniest quote I read about it, but here is one from BBC sport:
"BBC Radio Five Live asked a deaf lip reader to read Materazzi's words phonetically to an Italian translator:
She deciphered the insult as being "you're the son of a terrorist whore""
also, the Gazzetto dello Sport got this lip reader's reconstruction of what Materazzi said, and it's gibberish. my literal translation of her version of what M. said is. "and therefore go do make in ass." Here:
Il Times ha assoldato una specialista che collabora con Scotland Yard, Jessica Rees, esperta oltre che di labiale anche di italiano. Risultato: "Al termine di uno studio esauriente della registrazione del match - ha fatto sapere la donna - siamo giunti alla conclusione che Materazzi ha detto a Zidane che è il figlio di una puttana terrorista". Versione che sposa le due ricostruzioni più accreditate, aggiungendo un particolare: Materazzi avrebbe anche proseguito con un "e intanto vai fa fare in culo". Please?
where do you get the impression that materazzi ahs a reputation for being racist? i've never ever heard that.
how do you feel okay judging Materazzi when we don't have the facts?
here's a fairly non-partisan p from the London Times:
Protagonist or antagonist? Materazzi, nicknamed “The Matrix”, is no angel, but those who know him claim that sledging is not his style. Something must have happened for Zidane to react as he did, launching his head into the Italy defender’s chest during extra time in the World Cup final, but Materazzi, 32, is an old-fashioned sort of hard man, the type who kicks his opponents but then helps them up, albeit usually in the hope of avoiding a booking.
also, what does this mean?
And from having watched the various Materazzi highlight films floating about on the web, I think he would have deserved what he got, and worse, even if he was silent throughout the game.
you want to get in touch with tonya harding??
I don't really have a dog in this fight; I don't follow soccer very closely, so you should probably discount my opinion on this.
First, with regard to the lip readers, I got the impression that there were an awful lot of lip readers, internationally, trying to figure out what was said. If you were a lip reader, wouldn't you want to know? Evidence that one lip reader for one paper didnt' speak Italian does not demonstrate, in my opinion, that no Italian speaking lip reader has contributed to this debate.
Second, I think it's more likely that a generally classless player would use a racial slur to try to get into an opponent's head. That's just an assumption I'm going to make.
Third, there is a lot of evidence that Materazzi is classless. Granted, my evidence for this is a collection of highlight reals on UTube. But those reals show a player who tries to cleat his opponents in the face and groin, repeatedly.
So, what I meant by the language you quote in 243 is that a player, in any sport, who goes out of his way to take cheap shots can expect to get it back one day. I wouldn't be surprised if part of Zidane's motivation was that this guy really deserved to get back what he's been dishing out.
I don't particularly care what happened to Materazzi, but I wouldn't be surprised if many of his opponents throughout the years were very happy to watch him take that head-butt. Anyway, lots of people have found the situation very interesting.
I think I've contributed what little value I have to offer in this debate.
bah. reels. youtube.
I will never comment here again.
That's from someone who's identified himself as knowing and liking Materazzi, but these incidents don't seem to be a matter of opinion or lip-reading:
A more plausible explanation for Zidane's actions is that he was simply exhausted and frustrated and he lost control, just as he had done so many times before. It started in 1993, when he got into a fistfight with Marcel Desailly; it continued through a career that saw him stomp on a Saudi defender, punch Parma's Enrico Chiesa, head-butt a Hamburg player, lash out at Villarreal's Quique Alvarez and, finally, nail Materazzi.
And:
Those people should be apologizing to Materazzi, the people who blackened his name by throwing out baseless accusations, the people who -- in their frenzy to figuratively burn someone at the stake -- accused an innocent man without a shred of credible evidence (and no, those lip-readers' fantasies do not constitute credible evidence), the people who ignored Zidane's teammate and possibly the French team's most intelligent and sensitive player, Lilian Thuram (a guy who knows a thing or two about racism), when he categorically said there "was no racial slur."
That article is kind of obnoxious, actually, I think.
What is the ethnic slur for Berbers? "Barbarian"?
251: No, I said it was obnoxious, not weak. I think 250 gets it right: the articles hangup about "whatever religion you practice" and it's outrage at the suspicions of racist remarks seemed a bit, well, racist. It wasn't an unreasonable suspicion, given who Zidane is, that the remark that would piss him off was a racial one. And his dismissal of the mother/sister thing as petty is, well, dismissive: it wouldn't tweak me, but I'm not Zidane and I don't know what particular resonance that kind of idiocy has with French/Algerian Berbers, and it wasn't my mom, anyway (nor do I know what, precisely, he said--plus I do know that Zidane's mom is supposedly quite sick).
I liked this piece, although it still assumes that the insult was racist which apparently it wasn't, because it does a good job of placing the reaction to the headbutt in the context of Zidane's cultural role. I'ma blog on it tomorrow.
Joni Mitchell is headbutting me all over the room. Oof.
That'll teach you to say nasty things about Canadians.
B, are you ever going to cough up the taxonomy of male attractiveness that you promised in the Gadamer thread. My comment asking for your follow-up has been orphaned in an abandoned thread.
That'll teach you to say nasty things about Canadians.
I did no such thing.
Ah, I missed the comment. Lemme see.
Hot = sexy, and knows it
Gorgeous = sexy, famous, completely unavailable
Cute = attractive, interesting
Handsome = classic male features: strong jaw, good bone structure, good posture, looks good in a suit.
A good-looking man = handsome, but it sounds less dated
Adorable = cute, boyish/puppydog eyes
Beautiful = either "gorgeous" with less affectation, or alternately, not immediately handsome but has something striking/intriguing about his face
Sweet = attractive personality
I've already done the bad boy/nice guy/genuinely nice guy thing. Feel free to suggest categories I haven't thought of, I'm doing this on the fly.
257: Then what was she headbutting you for? Did you insult her mom or something?
Then what was she headbutting you for?
It was a colorful way of saying I was digging her tunes.
Yeah, I got that. I was trying to make, you know, like a headbutting joke? Jeez, SB. Are you drunk?
Oh man. Someone slap me with a trout.
Troutslapping
Deserves a quiet night.
I'm not sure all these people understand.
It's not like years ago.
Trout with pilsner sounds pretty good, actually. I myself had roughy and orzo with Pimm's for dinner.
I could take le gran headbut
And I would still be on my feet
Ohoh I would still be on my feet.
Thanks. And to bring this somewhat back on topic. Some of those soccer players were definitely hot, and a couple of them had chiseled features that were downright beautiful (gorgeous too) while remaining hot.
And to bring this somewhat back on topic.
Careful, that's a banning offense.
I am horrified by the existence of pet-haters on that thread.
But pleased to finally master the biscuit conditional.
Oh sweet Jesus, what happened to Chopper's old blog?
Bridgeplate, I've got to second B's question: are you commenting Becks style?
Then get cracking! (I am mildly Becks-style. OK, maybe a little more than "mildly". "Fairly".)
and he lost control, just as he had done so many times before. It started in 1993, when he got into a fistfight with Marcel Desailly; it continued through a career that saw him stomp on a Saudi defender, punch Parma's Enrico Chiesa, head-butt a Hamburg player, lash out at Villarreal's Quique Alvarez and, finally, nail Materazzi.
This whole "Zidane the madman had a history of losing his head" business seems kind of strained to me. Over a 13 year period they note five times he got physical with an opposing player? I'm not saying it's a great record, but it doesn't particularly indicate to me that he had a hair trigger, either.
the French fucking hate the Algerians (by and large).
There's kind of a fascination/hate thing going on. Music, food, art, etc: c'est bon! Young Algerian men: dangerous! At least that's been my impression.
275: Well, you know, Arabs. They're inherently violent.
Which reminds me, I've been fully expecting to see some wingnut go off on the obvious twofer of a Frenchman who's also a violent Muslim extremist and what that shows about corrupt Eurabian culture, the clash of civilizations, the perfidy of Dhimmicrats, etc.
Of course, I haven't gone looking for it. I was counting on The Poor Man or some other worthy to root it out. Anyone seen anything like this?
278: No, but I'm sure it's out there.
There's kind of a fascination/hate thing going on. Music, food, art, etc: c'est bon! Young Algerian men: dangerous!
This seems oddly familiar.
Great players never lack for people to do whatever they can to rationalize their behavior. Zidane seems no different in this. Although I'd be interested to know how many players have his track record. Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone else red carded in two separate world cups for head butting and stomping on a guy while he was down since I started watching world cups in 1998. Doesn't necessarily mean he has a hair trigger, but it sure doesn't seem like the headbutt was such an outlier that only the most extraordinary of circumstances could have provoked it.
I mean, I'm not a Zidane hater or huge Zidane fan, but all of this seems like a bigger deal than it should be. Absent evidence that I haven't seen produced, it seems like it was just an on-field confrontation not really different from other similar in-game confrontations in soccer and other sports. A big name was involved and it was in a big game. Big deal. It's over.
Big deal. It's over.
He says five days later.
Yeah, I'm a little surprised people are still talking about it. But then I never cared at all.
What I mean was that I don't think, now that it looks like no more information is going to come out, that anyone is going to change their mind about the whole thing. And I don't think, on the whole, it's going to turn out to have been some dramatic moment in the history of sports and cultural conflict. Was a sport integrated for the first time? Was a racial theory beaten on the track? Hell, if Zidane had been responding to a French player it would have been a bigger deal because of the history of France and Algeria. Italy and France? Not as much history. Italians and French people of Algerian heritage? Not as much history.
Here you go, M/tch. Note the blog name.
And yes, because I'm sure someone will point it out, France and Italy do have a lot of history. I mean not as much of the same kind of history. Italian unification wasn't quite the same as decolonization (although the comparison could be interesting).
I cannot comment without getting an error today. Probably a sign I should quiet down and stop posting.
Huh. I haven't been getting any errors.
They are the burden I must bear. Having risen from lurker status, having endured threads in silence, having been ignored in early comments I am still filled with rage. I want to headbutt that kitten, but for the sake of the children I will refrain from doing so. However, the kitten should not be held blameless. Each appearance is a provocation.
Also, the comments on the post B links to above in 253 are pretty good.
You know, there's a way to have that kitten killed...
This is pretty disgusting, but also seems to be what M/tch was looking for. I wonder if it will take someone with Zidane-like skills to integrate the Italian team (which I assume does not use an explicitly discriminatory selection process) or if it will just be a reflection of gradual demographic change.
I think M/tch was really looking for something more American, combining the anti-French stuff with the Islamophobia. I haven't really found anything that fits the bill, but I haven't been looking very hard.
And yes, that's disgusting. Especially the part about his t-shirt causing riots in Libya. What an asshole.
The news program that plays on the U-bahn claims Materazzi insulted Zidane's mother. However, I didn't know what the particular verb used meant and now I've forgotten it. If this (mother insult confirmed on german mass transit) has been pointed out above, please forgive me; like Farber, I simply can't be bothered to read the whole damn thing.
The MC Hammer one made my morning. Can't touch this.
I really liked the kitty with the shot gun. I kind of thought it would be cool if there were one of Zidane shooting a kitty. Very appropriate for frustrated denizens of the Mineshaft.
i liked spinning zidane myself.
And yes, because I'm sure someone will point it out, France and Italy do have a lot of history. I mean not as much of the same kind of history. Italian unification wasn't quite the same as decolonization (although the comparison could be interesting).
Napoleon is actually what I was thinking of, eb. It was pretty bloody.
and to text who was talking about the terrors of materazzi in Clips of Sport Games Past, how is that different from most other football players? did you see the Portugal-Netherlands game?
This whole "Zidane the madman had a history of losing his head" business seems kind of strained to me. Over a 13 year period they note five times he got physical with an opposing player? I'm not saying it's a great record, but it doesn't particularly indicate to me that he had a hair trigger, either.
actually, zizou has gotten 14 red cards since the mid90s. so he's statistically above-average for violent fouling. i assume the reporter whose article you guys read was just summarizing. you know, they have word limits.
but here is where i agree with eb:
I mean, I'm not a Zidane hater or huge Zidane fan, but all of this seems like a bigger deal than it should be. Absent evidence that I haven't seen produced, it seems like it was just an on-field confrontation not really different from other similar in-game confrontations in soccer and other sports. A big name was involved and it was in a big game. Big deal. It's over.
okay, that's off my chest, we can all go back to trout-slapping. (or staggering around in the noonday heat, in my case)
I didn't see the Portugal-Netherlands game and if kicks to the groin and face are a common part of soccer, then I'm sorry, I'm an ignorant fool, and why haven't I been watching more soccer all these years?
Here's the thing we're all forgetting: the headbutt to the chest looked awesome. I must say it again: that move looked so very awesome. So ignoramuses such as myself who have no bias one way or another would prefer to construct a narrative wherein it was the appropriate thing to do. And I have, and I cling to it.
also, 300, bitches.
(I don't know anything about soccer)
Here's the thing we're all forgetting: the headbutt to the chest looked awesome. I must say it again: that move looked so very awesome. So ignoramuses such as myself who have no bias one way or another would prefer to construct a narrative wherein it was the appropriate thing to do. And I have, and I cling to it.
the honesty, it refreshes me.
