South Korea mops floor with Japan, 2-0; wins Olympic Bronze medal in men’s soccer
Third place has never felt so awesome. Seriously, sometimes fighting for the bronze medal seems more prestigious than getting a silver, because in most versus Olympic events, silver is the consolation prize for being the guy who lost to the gold medalist. Bronze medal events are the ultimate tests for redemption; the losers get no medals, and only in the act of winning can you earn your spot on the Olympic podium and walk away with a medal at all.
The fact that the Koreans beat Japan for the bronze medal is just icing on the cake. The cherry on top. Gravy.
My only regret is that I didn’t get to watch this game on television, and had to follow the play-by-play on a computer, since I was at work. But I had pegged this game as being the more interesting game over the Brazil vs. Mexico gold medal game, because one, Brazil is so overwhelmingly favored in that match as they’ve been in every other match they’ve played in, and two, Brazil/Mexico doesn’t have nearly the racial tension between them as Korea/Japan does.
Sparks tend to fly in any sporting event where Korea and Japan square off. Japanese historically believe themselves to be superior to Koreans. Koreans have this chip on their shoulder that they have to prove their superiority over Japanese. And then there’s that whole Japanese invading and enslaving Koreans and attempting to denigrate them in the Roman alphabet, forcing the K into Corea so that it would fall after J in Japan.
This game wasn’t that much of an exception. With no tomorrow, no games after this one, the tensions flew. I stopped counting at 37 fouls, and six yellow cards, but there was no shortage of players getting their licks in, and doing their best to leave it all out on the field. I admit I was feeling tense watching the live-streaming of the play-by-play, but when I saw that the Koreans scored in the 38th minute, it took a great deal of restraint to not get up on my chair and start yelling GOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!
And then when the Koreans scored again in the 57th minute, I just smiled. I figured Korea would be content to just play defense through the second half and make the Japanese have to fight and burn themselves out, trying to equalize, but then I thought what the fun in that was? Putting nails in the coffin seems more fitting for an opponent like Japan.
Man, I can’t wait to watch some highlights as they emerge.
And since I couldn’t decide which image from AP to use as my champion image, here’s a glorious gallery of Korea’s ownage over Japan.
