Tag: futbol

It’s bad when Brazil is leading the pack in anything other than futbol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSJ (might be behind paywall): town in Brazil does “experiment” where close to 100% of adults get vaccinated, to “surprising” results

I obviously use quotations ironically, because it’s pathetic that American media is in this place where common sense is considered experimental, and the results are anything other than flagrantly obvious.  The fact that this is happening in Brazil of all places in the world, and not anywhere in the United States is pathetic, sad, disappointing and all other pejoratives applicable to describe just how third fourth world America acts sometimes.

Needless to say, since nobody actually needs to read the article behind the paywall to take a wild guess at what happens, but when 98% of all adults in a population of 45,000 get vaccinated, coronavirus numbers plummet, and the town of Serrana, Brazil has officially become somewhat of a safe haven oasis from COVID-19, and life has basically turned back into a state of being prior to the pandemic.

The “experiment” at this point can be considered a rousing success, and I can only wish that the legions of fucking idiot Americans would use this as a basis to follow suit, but we all know that that’s never going to happen because we are basically the dumbest country on the planet, cumulatively.

But yeah, a small town in Brazil; a mostly impoverished country, where they’re mostly known for futbol, Victoria’s Secret models, trolling League of Legends and annually converging onto Disney World much to the dismay of those who work there, has basically shown the rest of the world that they’re twelve steps ahead of the curve when it comes to handling the pandemic.  They’ve already declared check mate, while the rest of the world is still Googling what a Sicilian or the queen’s gambit is.

I don’t like to give Brazil credit if I don’t have to, but good on them for having the common sense to strive for 100% vaccination rates among adults.  The rewards are obvious and palpable, and the rest of the world looks like fucking idiots for failing to exercise common sense in the most common sense of scenarios.

MLS is clearly the preferred white people sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Driving around Atlanta, there are often a lot of tells on peoples’ cars that indicate the race of the people driving them.  Some are pretty blatant, like how white people all love to have shit like stick figure family stickers, black people have big flashy rims or the content of Africa silhouetted in some way shape or form, or Hispanics having pictures of their trucks airbrushed onto their trucks, while being looked over upon by the Virgin Mary.

However, some tells are more subtle, but no less obvious to those who see them.  Like blackout license covers or (likely) illegal shades of tint or a box of Kleenex wrapped in an ornate satin box cover sitting in the back window.  But there’s no more obvious tell that a car belongs to a white person in Atlanta, than an Atlanta United sticker or emblem on it.  Because there’s nothing short of Ponce City Market and talking about gentrification and urbanism that white people in Atlanta like more than Atlanta United soccer.

And then it got me thinking beyond just Atlanta United, and about soccer in general, specifically MLS.  And how it really seems like MLS has become the de facto preferred spectator sport of choice for white people, even above the NFL, NBA and MLB.  The more cursory internet glancing I do, I’m seeing that in major cities like Toronto, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia, if you take snapshots of the crowds, they’re unmistakably overwhelmingly white.  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s really all the justification I need to make my snap judgments; I’ve been to enough cities to watch sports, and despite being in different states, they really aren’t that much different from one another.

Ultimately, I think white people loving MLS really boils down to two very obvious white people traits: racism and a lack of commitment.  A low-key third would be the fact that so many are hipsters, so naturally, they gravitate towards a lower-tier popularity sport, especially if it meant that there were fewer minority fans to have to mingle with.

But frankly, upon thinking about it, it kind of makes perfect sense why white people love MLS so much. Go to any NFL or NBA game, and it’s abundantly clear that black people love football and basketball.  And the average white person is often times afraid of the average black person, so it stands to believe that white people don’t like going to these sporting events, because it puts them in too close proximity with those that intimidate them.  When the home team does well and the black people get excited, it scares the white people.  But when the home team loses and the black people get butthurt, it scares the white people then too.  This isn’t to say that white people avoid these sporting events outright, but typically they tend to go when they have privileges like corporate box seats, or are in large enough numbers to where they manage to feel safe, but even still it’s not the same white safety as an MLS game would be.

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When you look at Super Bowl Leee that way…

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Super Bowl Leee was a fantastic championship game… if it were soccer.

Not because the punters made more news and excitement kicking the ball a combined 14 times, setting some obscure records in the process.  But in the sense that it was an extremely low-scoring affair that resembled more of a soccer game that fútbol americano enthusiasts love to ridicule.

Seriously, when the game went into halftime with New England up 3-0, I was really hoping that that would be the final score, because it would be ironically hilarious to have a Super Bowl be decided by a 3-0 score.  The “best” teams in the league duking it out, only for a single field goal to be not just the decider, but the only score of an entire 3-4 hour affair.  It would roughly be the equivalent of a soccer match where the final score is 1-0.

And although it didn’t end up being 3-0, it was still an embarrassing exhibition that really was 10-3, before there were some more kicks, with the Pats getting an insurance field goal before the Rams booted their own; and it figures that both teams would have missed field goals, because Nantz and Romo made it very clear that throughout the entire season in the Georgia Dome Mercedes-Benz Arena, no Falcons or any opponent kicker had missed a field goal, 31/31 overall.

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The epitome of owned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I concluded that Atlanta United winning an MLS Cup “counts” towards the city getting a long awaited championship, but if you ever wanted more proof that MLS doesn’t get any respect, look no further than the fact that the reigning MLS Champions won’t be able to play its CONCACAF Champions League home games, at home; due to a scheduling conflict – with Monster Jam and Supercross.

AKA the Grave Digger white trash redneck monster truck show and a bunch of dirtbikes pretending like they’re Excitebike.

So despite the fact that Atlanta United accomplished the impossible in getting the cursed monkey off the city’s back by winning a professional sport championship, they’re still denied the opportunity to represent the United States to a likely packed home field against Costa Rica’s Herediano fútbol club.

This is what I liked to declare, owned.

It’s really kind of silly too, because anyone who lives in Atlanta has probably seen just how maniacal it gets in the city whenever there’s an international friendly featuring one or two Latin American squads.  Mexico vs. Venezuela easily filled 65,000 at the Georgia Dome, and Honduras vs. Mexico easily matched that. 

If Atlanta United drew 73,000 into the Benz for the MLS Championship game, imagine just how easily it would draw another 73,000 featuring the heroes of the city versus, a Latin American squad?

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Does an MLS Cup break the Curse of Atlanta Sports?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No, serious question.  Don’t get wrong, I like soccer and I can sit down and watch a match and understand what’s going on, but the truth of the matter is that soccer doesn’t get a fraction of the respect and acknowledgement of The Big 3 sports (MLB, NFL, NBA) when it comes to general recognition, at least in America.  I feel like hockey and the NHL took a serious ding from their last strike and lockout, and they’ve fallen to a second-tier of prevalence where it only matters to the people whose teams are actually in contention, but it’s really difficult for those outside of those fandoms to actually care. 

And that’s where I get the impression that MLS is at, in spite of the fact that Atlanta United just won the top prize in the organization, the MLS Cup.  Personally, I don’t know how many teams there are in MLS.  I don’t even definitively know how many teams are in New York.  Obviously, I know Atlanta’s got a team, and I know for a fact that there are teams in Toronto, Seattle, Portland, Orlando, Los Angeles, and I think there’s one in Kansas City.  Otherwise, I don’t know much else about MLS as a whole, and I indulge in a lot of sports, be it on television or partaking in sports news on the internet.

That being said it brings me back to my original question, does Atlanta United winning the MLS Cup actually break the Curse of Atlanta Sports, the superstitious mythos behind the sheer inability of Atlanta sports teams to win any championships?

When sports media started coining the discussions about “cursed cities,” it almost always started with Cleveland, since for the longest time, the Browns sucked at football, the Indians sucked at baseball, and the Cavaliers sucked at basketball.  An NHL team lasted there for two seasons, a WNBA team for just six, and they’ve never had an MLS club.  Needless to say, they were undoubtedly the worst luck sports city in America, until LeBron James gave the city a second shot and basically willed the franchise to an NBA championship in 2016.

But ever since the debate of cursed cities came into existence, it really wasn’t hidden that curses and droughts really referred to championships in The Big 3; this was never made more prevalent than when the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2014, and for the ensuing weeks, there were all sorts of statements flung around about the first major sporting championship brought to Seattle in history, completely ignoring the fact that the Seattle Storm had won two WNBA titles prior to this.  The Kansas City Royals’ World Series win ended the drought in 2015, despite the fact that Sporting KC won the MLS Cup in 2013.  And Washington D.C. often ignored that D.C. United won four MLS Cups before the Capitals “broke the curse” with a Stanley Cup win just this year.

And the last two instances are prime examples of just how ignored MLS is in the grand spectrum of professional sport organizations, and why I pose the question on whether or not Atlanta United’s MLS Cup win actually breaks the Curse of Atlanta Sports.

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Don’t look now but…

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

…an Atlanta professional sports team is playing for an actual championship.  Caveat?  It’s Atlanta United, the city’s soccer team, playing for the MLS Cup.

Don’t get me wrong, I think soccer/futbol is great.  I enjoy watching the game, and I understand the vast majority of the rules, and think a 0-0 game that ends in a shootout is a marvelous thing.  It’s just that there’s no secret that it’s often perceived as a second-tier sport to most ‘Muricans who think real sports are limited to fat guys in pads who call themselves athletes crashing into one another, or who can slam dunk a basketball to make black people get out of their seats and overreact the colorfully.

When people think about which team is going to bring some championship pedigree to Atlanta, most of the time people are often thinking about the Falcons, or the Braves first; but never the Hawks, because the NBA is busted as hell and the Hawks suck lol.  But the vast majority of football americano fans probably don’t even consider the idea that Atlanta United just might do it first, and I get the impression that it would be as met in the same manner as the Washington Capitals did for DC; initial surprise, but then immediate bandwagon embracing as if the Caps held the entire fate of Washington on their shoulders, and not the Redskins, Nationals or Weezards.

Regardless, the very young Atlanta United club, two years removed from their introduction into MLS, are on the cusp of immortality, and have one more team to overcome to get there, the Portland Timbers.

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O PILSUNG COREA MOTHERFUCKERS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On this date, June 27, 2018

South Korea 2, Germany 0

I sat down to watch this game with pretty much no expectations.  With two losses already, South Korea was pretty much done already, but thanks to the low-scoring in the Group of Death™ they were still mathematically alive.  They just needed Mexico to blank Sweden, and to win their third game against Germany; you know, the defending World Cup winners, by at least a two-goal margin, to cover the differential.

Frankly, after their pitiful performance against Sweden, I stated that all I really wanted to see was for Korea to score a single goal, so that they didn’t go home after being blanked the entire time they were in Russia. 

They got their goal against Mexico, but I wasn’t satisfied by it.  It happened in the 93rd minute of the game, when Mexico was already up 2-0, so to me, it’s basically was a meaningless pity-fuck of a goal that happened long after Mexico had already begun the victory party.  However, it turned out to be an important goal nonetheless, because, due to the low-scoring of the group as a whole, goal differential turned out to be a big deal going into the final games of groups.

Basically, Germany wins and they’re in.  However, too many goals by Sweden would make things murky, as would too many goals by Mexico.  And despite the fact that they were dead last in the group, too many goals by Korea would actually have some impact on the standings as well.

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