Tag: futbol

World Cup 2026: in the end, futbol prevails

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I tongue-in-cheek declared the World Cup over after Mexico and the United States were bounced from the tournament nearly two weeks ago, I obviously still watched the remainder of the matches, and the tournament did a little roller coaster in that span and in the end, everything seemed to work out, kind of beautifully, and I find myself wanting to write just one more post about the World Cup, and how it’s truly sad to see that this magnificent journey, has come to an end – officially.

It’s interesting, because I don’t think I was really wrong about how the general fun and the feelings of elation and celebration of futbol were kind of sucked out of the tournament once Mexico and the US were eliminated, because fans of sport and story alike all love a good Cinderella story, and both were in the midst of impressive runs, before they hit the walls of Eurpoean opposition.  And once the pretenders were bounced, the World Cup kind of devolved back to its typical state of serious business, where the real contenders of the Cup were the last ones standing, and all of the remaining matches were these super serious affairs, between super serious futbol countries.

One by one, I found myself rooting for the lower seeds of all these matches, like Norway against England, Belgium against Spain in spite of their terse domination over the US, and true to the whole anyone but Argentina mentality, the Swiss as well.  And in each case, they all lost, reinforcing the notion that the World Cup always ends up being a race between the same pool of countries, narrowing down to a final four of countries that have all won a Cup at some point.

By default, I found myself pulling for France over Spain, because I had put France down as my champion in my work bracket that only three people participated in and I’m pretty sure the other two have already forgotten about it, and England over Argentina because they were the team opposing Argentina, plus it was hard to root against a guy like Jude Bellingham who seemed so talented on the pitch while being so charming off of it.

So naturally it ended up being the surgical dismantling of the French by Spain, who I didn’t even notice had only allowed a single goal the whole tournament to this point, and Argentina beating England after several days of artificial build up, swirling around all of the ugly and nasty factors of why people outside of their fans were all seemingly souring on Argentina, in a hard-fought contest, that naturally ended in controversy, with the generally classy Jude Bellingham almost coming to blows with an Argentinian bench scrub after FT.

Going into the final weekend, it basically boiled down to France vs. England in the notoriously seemingly unnecessary third-place match that neither team was going to care about, and a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists, where it was surprisingly easy to be pulling for the Colonizers, solely based on the fact that they were not Argentina.

Usually the third-place match is a pointless match that doesn’t mean anything to most participants, especially if it’s a clash between powerhouses like France and England.  It’s my belief that such is usually the case, except when it involves a host nation and/or a Cinderella surprise team, like when Korea found themselves in the third-place match against also-upstart Turkey in 2002, where both teams let it all hang out trying to end their journeys with a W, which naturally Korea would lose, but the fact of the matter is that they actually cared.  But the last few third-place matches have been apathetic and unwatched, and there was little reason to believe this one would be any different, seeing as both had high aspirations to win it all, and anything short of that was just failure.

But I happened to catch the third-place match, and at first it wasn’t really anything out of expectation, with both France and England emptying out their benches and letting everyone who had been wearing the pinnies throughout the tournament start, save for Kylian Mbappe for France whom most had suspected was going to be playing in order to take and possibly ice the Golden Boot award from Messi.

And England raced to a quick lead, scoring two in pretty quick succession, and going into half with an absurd 4-0 lead.  It was clear that neither team was really trying too hard, with the goals being all the younger players getting some international experience, as well as everyone just trying to avoid getting hurt.

The second half starts, and someone reminded Mbappe to go get his Golden Boot, and he scores two in the next 20 minutes, France closes the gap to 4-3, England stretches it out to 5-3, France closes it back to 5-4, and at some point around the 80th minute, Jude Bellingham, who had started on the bench, checks into the game, and goes on this ridiculous run and scores England’s sixth goal right before FT.

It was an absurd exhibition, but the primary thing about it all is that it genuinely looked like both teams were having a blast, and just having fun.  It was a true international friendly between two teams who had been facing extreme pressure over the last week, and I felt as if it was probably really cathartic for all the players, especially guys like Mbappe and Bellingham who had probably been facing the most pressure, being the scoring aces for their countries, and it was really refreshing to seeing everyone being smiles and laughing, and after FT, all hugs and respect from all participants.

A surprising A+ third-place tilt, from what everyone had written off as a pointless exercise.

And then we get to the main event, where there’s not much to really say that hasn’t already been said at this point – Spain defeats Argentina, ending their insufferable onslaught, bringing relief and joy to futbol fans, old and new, almost entirely based on the fact that Lionel Messi and Argentina were denied the World Cup trophy, as well as FIFA who did very little to combat the narrative that they were trying to manufacture their victory.

It was an interesting affair from start to finish, with entertaining tidbits throughout the whole event.  The orange shithead getting booed the fuck out of New Jersey (no ‘and New York’ bullshit here, the match was in New Jersey and only New Jersey), Argentina playing dirty as ever, drawing five yellow cards, including two satisfying ones by the especially dirty-playing Enzo Fernandez, resulting in his ejection, and FIFA officiating doing absolutely everything they could in order to favor Argentina, with countless non-calls for Spain and a parade of bonus free-kicks and stoppage time that benefitted Argentina.

But the thing with futbol, as well as any sport or competitive contest, a competitor must attempt to score points in order to have any chance to win a contest.  I was apoplectic in 2018 when Korea took zero shots on goal against Sweden, so I can imagine the collective rage and anxiety and frustration from Argentinian fans, when their team took a big fat zero shots on goal, and it was very evident that their entire game plan was to get the game to penalties, if the refs couldn’t help them manufacture a scoring chance, to help negate Spain’s legendary tournament-wide defense, and this was magnified when Enzo was booted, and they had to play a man down for the remainder of the match.

However, Spain persevered the stacked deck against them, and 30 seconds into 2OT, scored their goal, which would be enough to overcome a dirty opponent with tournament-wide favor from FIFA.

Argentinian players and most importantly, their front-running fans were sad.  Unsurprising, the amount of post-match respect and congratulations were minimal.  The Argentinian fans were sad.  The orange shithead made (yet another) an embarrassment of himself, photobombing the Spain celebratory trophy hoist.  Argentinian fans were sad, and got the fuck out.

Futbol prevailed.

What a wonderful World Cup this was.  I’m sad that the whole thing is over now.  2030 has an insanely high bar to live up to, after how fantastic this one was.  But looking forward to it already.

World Cup 2026: the global heel turn of Argentina

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I thought about waiting until after the finals of the World Cup to write this, but I realized that it doesn’t matter.  With it being Spain vs. Argentina in the final, it’s basically a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists in a matchup between two top-4 FIFA ranked squads, and at this point I’d say that I’m pulling for Spain solely because I’d been hoping anyone at all could stop the freight train that is Argentina, but there’s little reason to believe that all the memes, narratives, accusations and perceived favoritism towards Argentina is going to let up at this point, and it seems like the inevitable is going to remain, inevitable.

And that’s what this post is basically about, how throughout the course of this World Cup, it seems to me that Argentina has gradually gone from defending champions and home to Lionel Messi, to this gradual, increasingly disliked squad that everyone outside of Argentinians and/or front-running bandwagoners are rooting against, and the deeper that Argentina has advanced into the tournament, the stronger the disdain seems to be growing.

From what I have been observing, it has been because of several factors:

  1. Lionel Messi is getting the Shohei Ohtani treatment, as in absolutely anything and everything he does is being glorified ridiculously out of proportion. A goal?  An all-caps Twitter tweet from every single sports outlet on the planet.  An assist?  ALL CAPS.  Converting on a PK from penalty drawn by someone else?  ALL CAPS.  His reaction after a match?  ALL CAPS.  Like Ohtani, I have little reason to believe that Messi is actually a horrible person, but when the media is forcing him down everyone’s throats, resentment begins to creep upward.
  2. FIFAvoritism – with each match it becomes harder and harder to deny these accusations, and the public have gone from what they’ve been seeing with their own eyes, to internet bean counters statistically making nifty charts to document the perceived favoritism Argentina has been getting as far as things like strength of schedule, fouls drawn versus the fouls they commit, how many times VAR has ruled in their favor versus against, and just the narrative that FIFA is doing everything in their power to tip the scales to constantly be leaning favorably for Argentina, be it referee selections, locations of their matches. As the tournament has progressed, we’ve the growth of numerous memes, with my favorites being VARgentina, Fix It For Argetnina and Get yourself a partner that looks at you the way FIFA looks at Argentina.
  3. Historical – One thing I’ve enjoyed throughout this World Cup are all the historical jokes that have been made throughout the tournament, poking fun at events like the Revolutionary War, colonizing done by various countries, and other historical factoids, shaped into futbol matches. I didn’t know this, but it’s through the World Cup that I learned that Argentina is where many Nazi/German/Axis people fled to after World War II, and the correlation many have pointed out how their futbol squad basically has nobody of any dark pigmentation, especially compared to the numerous Latin countries’ rosters.  And that perception alone is worth drawing a lot of hate from the internet and casual sports fans.
  4. THAT’S RACIST! According to my au pair, Argentina is a pretty racist country.  Their history of having racist refugees seeking asylum there probably has something to do with that, but there’s still a ceiling to her opinion since she’s Brazilian, and they hate Argentinians like I hated Marylanders growing up in Virginia, and how I look down on Alabamans as a Georgia resident.  But then you have the coach of Egypt throwing up the crossed arm X gesture, signaling for racism during a match, grumblings from players from Cabo Verde saying they heard some racist remarks, and most recently England’s Jude Bellingham angrily getting into it with Argentina’s bench warmers after what appears to be in reaction to something he heard one say, and given the fact that he’s a person of color, people are making assumptions, and perhaps my au pair isn’t just being a nationalistic neighboring rival.

But above all else, is the fact that Argentina just keeps winning, and it seems like inevitability that they’re going to be the first repeat World Cup winner since Brazil repeated in 1958 and 1962.  Like the MJ’s Bulls, Kobe’s Lakers, Tom Brady’s Patriots, and Shohei Freddie’s Dodgers, everyone begins to turn on the winning teams, especially if they start developing large numbers of bandwagon and/or disingenuous fans.

Circling back to #2, it’s not even like Argentina really needs any help from FIFA or anyone who may or may not be moving things around to ensure that they win.  Argentina is the defending champs and ranked top-4 for a reason, and even if they weren’t getting excessive favoritism from refereeing, they still have to make the crosses and accurate headers and kicks and get the ball into the back of the net.  They’ve been living life in time after 90’ with all sorts of late-match dramatic goals against Egypt, Cabo Verde, Switzerland, and England, and favoritism or not, they’re making incredible scores happen.

It’s funny, because from colleagues and sports fan friends I speak with, I don’t think I’m along in seeing the things I’m seeing, especially with Argentina’s heel turn.  At the same time, this World Cup has also witnessed the increasing love-fest for Mexico, helping eliminate decades worth of character assassination of their country, mostly from the United States, as people from all over the world have seen how vibrant, lively and generally welcoming Mexico has been throughout the course of the tournament, with many pointing out just how quickly things simmered down in the excitement department, once Mexico was eliminated and matches were no longer being held in Mexico.

Regardless, whether Argentina wins the World Cup or not, I think the heel turn has already been completed.  It’s not that people really want or care if Spain can defeat them, it’s all about just wanting to see them lose.  And I guess if futbol really did operate in the wrestling bubble, just getting people to have that reaction, negative as it may be, is still win, especially if it draws money.

My Español education has led up to this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I try not to live a life of too much envy, but if there’s one thing that I am often green with envy of, are polyglots and their abilities to be able to competently communicate with people of various nationalities in their native tongues.  Fewer things are as cool to me than seeing people who are able to change linguistic gears at the drop of a hat, multiplied by how competent they are at each language not native to them.

The more languages a person can bust out, usually the more envious I am, and there’s this one dude on the internet who probably makes his living through reaction videos of himself going around, mostly preying flexing on the Chinese, surprising them with Mandarin or Cantonese after putting himself in these deliberately orchestrated scenarios.  He speaks a large number of languages competently, but he seems to have his niche creating content surprising Chinese people, which makes me resent this rare form of white privilege he’s capitalizing on, but at the root of it, I’m just jealous that he’s able to speak so many languages.

Now I can say that I can speak a number of languages myself, but none remotely close to my ability to read and write English.  My Korean is adequate enough to be able to survive in Korea, but I wouldn’t be able to brog or be writing too many emails in Korean in a professional capacity.  I think I know enough Japanese to be able to go to Japan and not be completely invalid to the locals, and I’ve been determined to learn Spanish, seeing as how it’s probably the most utilitarian secondary language to know living in America.

Needless to say, I’m not going to be producing polyglot content any time soon.

At the time I’m writing this, my Duolingo streak is up to 556 days, entirely on Español.  I can count on one hand how many days that I’ve been forced to freeze, and every single one of them has been on account of being on cruises over international waters, and therefore being incapable of logging in to complete a single lesson.

Maintaining a streak is about the easiest thing in the world for someone like me to do.  Committing at least 30 minutes a day for most of that duration is a different story, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job, and even on days in which “I’m away” I still make sure to get in as much Duo as I can.

I think I’m still very much a novice at the language, repeatedly tripped up by verb conjugation and utilizing the correct form of them for all the variables that can change their use, but for the most part I’ve felt my confidence grow throughout the last two years at being able to actually engage a Spanish speaker, and I know that if I’m not already there, I’m going to hit a wall where I won’t ever develop further unless I actually use the language among others, on a routine-like basis.

Either way, the whole point of this post is to build up to the fact that the culmination of my current track has led up to a milestone occasion, in a slightly not necessarily just ironic sense: I was able to download the Telemundo app, navigate through the 100% Español log in process, and successfully get the Spanish broadcast of Copa Mundial de la FIFA going because mythical wife had heard that the Spanish broadcast was way more entertaining than FOX’s English broadcast, plus without the cringey right-wing ads they inject during half and hydration breaks.

It did not disappoint, even if we noticed that any goal scored by Argentina got three elongated gooooooooooollllllllls from Andrés Cantor while goals scored by anyone else just two.

This, is almost up there with being able to speak with and haggle with Mexican shopkeepers in Cancun over another La Parka mask for my collection of La Parka masks, as well as being able to respectfully dap up and ask Mexican tourists in Seoul if they were having a good time in Korea, after the Korea vs. Mexico World Cup match.

Tiny interactions, sure, but positive ones, and ones that I wouldn’t have had the thought to even entertain engaging, had I not taken the forward step to learn another language in the first place.

Ultimately, the level of comprehension I’d love to be able to achieve is, like Nate McLouth doing an interview entirely in Español good at Spanish, but at the same time there’s also that concern that if my Español proficiency were to surpass my Korean, it would be pretty disgraceful in some sense.

Either way, neither is going to ever really improve if I don’t use them, and I feel like if I didn’t have so many obligations in my life, and were independently wealthy, among the things I would do to pass the days in the absence of needing to work, learning moar languages would definitely be up there.

But hey, hurrah for my improvement in Español, y con suerte seguirá mejorando.

Nos vemos en cuatro años, Copa Mundial de la FIFA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And just like that, the World Cup is over.  Este fue un viaje hermoso.

Not really, but with the eliminations of Los Estados Unidos, as well as Mejico, within the span of the last 48 hours, and even Canada, all host nations are eliminated from the tournament, as are their Cinderella dreams of deeper runs, and general interest in the World Cup, I would predict are about to take a massive hit, with most casual futbol enthusiasts seeing little reason in continuing to watch.

I know it’s arrogant to predict such things based on the continued participation of the United States as well as Mexico, but I’d be curious to see the Fox One data for the rest of the World Cup, compared to when the US and Mexico were still in it, once the tournament is officially over.

But not only is it a sad albeit inevitable fate that the host nations are all out, but to the point of my general criticism of the state of futbol globally and the World Cup, the remaining teams are mostly the same pool of countries that always remain, including France, Argentina and Spain; Germany and Brazil were unfortunate victims to some upsets courtesy of Paraguay and Norway, but for the most part, it appears that the general script of the World Cup is still on course to have a rematch of 2022 in the finals, between France and Argentina, primarily the matchup between Kylian Mbappe and the MJ of futbol, Lionel Messi, over who can extend their all-time World Cup goals record, and if Messi can presumably go out as a two-time champion, seeing as how he’s possibly done with World Cup competition after this one.

I’m not going to say I wouldn’t watch any more World Cup now that all of the teams I’ve been generally supporting are out (Korea, USA, Mexico, Brazil), but personally my general enthusiasm for the rest of the field is mostly depleted, with a lingering hope for countries like Norway and laughably Egypt, to disrupt the status quo, but once they’re out, it truly is just another copy/paste field of World Cups prior and I can’t say that I’d have much interest if the finals do end up being comprised of France or Spain vs. Messi.

Circling back to the USA vs. Belgium elimination game, man I just knew, I knew, that the United States was fucked as soon as the red card suspension controversy swirling around Folarun Balogun started, with our sad sack excuse of a dear leader meddling around and somehow got FIFA to allow him to play against Belgium in spite of the red card he had drawn against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The narrative powering the United States went from being the Greatest USMNT in History that was actually starting to garner some respect from the global futbol community, to [Orange fuck] Meddles with World Cup to Give USA Unfair Advantage and it was back to everyone hating ‘Murica again; but more importantly igniting a fire under Belgium and giving them all the motivation in the world to shake off the nerves that got them to the Round of 16 looking vulnerable with just two wins and two draws and 4 goals allowed, to looking like a top-10 FIFA ranked team in the world again.

Not only was the motivation real for Belgium, but the distraction was palpable for the United States, who basically played like shit for 80 minutes against the Belgians.  They couldn’t pass, they couldn’t touch, they lost seemingly every 50/50, everything was challenging, they couldn’t get the ball to the Belgian side of the field, much less have any attempts at goal.  Pulisic was shaky and invisible, Dest couldn’t dribble, Balogun being allowed to play was a complete non-factor, Remm was getting worked the whole match, and the whole team couldn’t handle Belgium’s pressure, and I can only imagine how pitiful their pass accuracy looked.

The Greatest USMNT in History looked completely outclassed and overwhelmed, and the prevalent thought going through my head throughout the whole match, as well as the Mexico vs. England match was that futbol of the Americas, unfortunately still has a long way to go when it comes to being able to compete with futbol from Europe.  Both the US and Mexico were completely defeated by higher-tier European squads, and it’s like they’ve both figured out how to dominate against the CONCAF, but are completely clueless on how to compete outside of it.

Sure, Mexico defeated Czechia, and the United States defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the US also got exposed by Turkey, and the conclusion is that European futbol is still in a class above North America, and this World Cup ends with continued head scratching on wondering what it’s going to take for the US to ever catch up to Europe, if they ever can.

Regardless of the conclusion of Cinderella(s), I can still fondly opine that this has been the most beautiful and entertaining World Cup that I can remember since like, 2002, when Korea (and Japan) captured the imagination of the world when they hosted.

The amount of wholesome and wildly entertaining content to come from this World Cup have been stuff of legend, with tourists and visitors foreign to the Americas coming in and documenting and sharing their amusement, wonder and culinary discoveries with the internet, and there’s been no shortage of happy entertainment over the whole tournament.

Mexico welcoming everyone, and making BFFs with everyone from Korea, Japan, Czechs, Uzbeks and even the English has been a delight to watch.  Tourists from all over Europe and Japan making their journeys into the United States, and experiencing quintessentially American things like fast food, Buc-ee’s, barbecue, Tex-Mex, ‘Murican portions, MLB baseball and of course, ranch dressing, have all been amusing and helpful as an American to see what others actually don’t hate about our country.

There was a great meme narrative that summed it up pretty well, along the lines of that the World Cup is showing that we don’t all hate each other, we just hate our world leaders, and the World Cup is like a giant fun gathering of cousins where the parents all hate each other, and it really couldn’t be any more true.  The amount of unity, acceptance and general copacetic peace shown by so many throughout the United States, Mexico and presumably even Canada has been genuinely the best part of the whole tournament, completely regardless of the outcomes on the pitches, and even if the end result is yet another boring France or Argentina win, it doesn’t change that this has still been the best World Cup ever.

O PILSUNG COREA, MOTHERFUCKERS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time every four years, where large swaths of the world suddenly becomes experts in futbol, and everyone is talking about the World Cup as if they’ve been paying attention to global soccer on the regular and not just what ESPN has been Cliff’s notes-ing for everyone over the previous week.

Obviously, I’m no expert myself, but I’m innately aware of who’s good, who’s that second and below tiers where simply winning a match or two, or even getting out of groups is sufficient enough, and enough to remotely believe I can fill out a competitive bracket at my office’s pool.

Anyway, Korea was lucky enough to get real action on the official Day 1 of the World Cup, and it was what I felt was a winnable game against Czechia.  And despite the dreadful 0-1 deficit that Korea fell into early in the second half, they got their shit together, scored twice, and came away from day 1 with a critical W, much to my elated delight.

It’s no secret that I’m a sports fan of a pretty wide variety, and when the day is over, I’m always happy with a win from the Braves, Virginia Tech sports, and other athletic organizations that catch my fancy at various times.  But few things ignite a level of elation in my sports fandom than Korea, be it in baseball, professional League of Legends, and of course, futbol.

Needless to say, I was quite thrilled with Korea’s match 1 win against the Czechs, because in the grand spectrum that is the World Cup, each individual team doesn’t play that many matches, unless they advance deep into the tournament, and usually that distinction is reserved for a small number of national teams despite the fact that there are 48 countries represented.

Realistically, I do believe that Korea can get out of the group stage, and depending on the draw for the round of 32, a Hail Mary’s chance of 16.  But more than likely no more than that, so any win is worth celebrating, if there’s only going to be 3-5 games for my boys.

Anyway, how about my boy Hwang In-beom???  Man gave a stop and juke that would have made peak Allen Iverson stop and clap, en route to lofting the critical equalizer and bring hope back to Korea.  And when Oh Hyeon-gyu delivered the eventual game winner, it was ecstasy.

Frankly, this iteration of Korean futbol that we witnessed against the Czechs was so refreshing and exciting, and it gives me hope for their future.  The aggression and the attacking of their opponents was so unlike all versions of Korean futbol of the past, that relied so heavily on defense, stamina and counter attacking.

It was so fun and like I said, refreshing, to see Korea on the offense, putting pressure on the Czechs, and they have a level of touch and passing precision that just seems to different from Team Koreas in the past.  I don’t think this is going to immediately make them world beaters like they were in 2002* but it definitely looks like it puts them into a tier above a lot of the lower-tier teams I’ve seen in some of the other matches I’ve watched.

*as exciting and memorable as 2002’s run was, I’d be remiss to not acknowledge the tremendous amount of referee assistance Korea enjoyed

It’s going to be interesting for the rest of groups, considering I will be in Korea for at least the next match, which is against Mexico. Circling back to 2002, it was one of the best memories of my life going to watch parties with my dad, in parking lots in Annandale in the middle of the night, since the games were in Korea.  I’ll definitely be on the lookout for watch parties in Seoul in the am hours to compensate for the opposite time change, with Team Korea playing in Guadalajara, against host Mexico.

And shout out to all the Korean fans who ventured over to Mexico, and the Mexican fans who have welcomed them all with open arms and gracious hospitality.  I love that it’s these two cultures, who have developed one of the most beautiful cultural bromances, showing the rest of the world what world peace could look like. 

Even thought they’re opponents next, I really hope the friendship continues on, because win, lose or draw, it’s what world needs, what people need to see, and a great demonstration of the positive power of sport.

lol MARTA #437

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AJC: (Paywall, but headline tells the story) Days away from the start of the FIFA World Cup, the new, state-of-the-art MARTA trains of tomorrow have not passed mandatory safety tests, and remains possible that they will not be ready for the largest sporting event in the world

There’s really not a whole lot to add to this story.  I figure to most people who live in the Atlanta area and are familiar with MARTA’s history, this is pretty much the least surprising thing in the world that Atlanta and MARTA fumbled the bag and in all likelihood won’t be ready for the World Cup despite having years to get shit done.

Progress in Atlanta moves at a snail’s pace, and frankly the metaphor is an insult to the speed of snails across the planet, because Atlanta routinely falls short of expectations unless there are millions of dollars in a treasure chest at the end of a rainbow to incentivize expediency, like when they miraculously rebuild I-85 three weeks ahead of schedule, which was still about like six weeks slower than the time it took Fukuoka, Japan to repair a sinkhole the size of a crater in a weekend.

I vaguely remember a similar situation way back when the College Football National Championship was being hosted in Atlanta, the city really wanted to get the Atlanta Streetcar up and running, mostly for appearances on a national level, because the little ass street car wasn’t going to be realistically moving more than a few hundred people for an event the size of the Natty.

But they failed, and didn’t complete it on time, and when they did finally get it up and operational, nobody cared, nobody rode it, and it’s about as much of an afterthought to the city as much as the Dallas Austin-produced ATL Anthem that was supposed to be the city’s song, akin to Sinatra singing New York, New York, but still cost taxpayers around $5M to make.

So it’s not the surprise of the century that Atlanta and MARTA are on a one-way crash course to yet another failure, and more than likely won’t have the purported trains of the future ready in time for the World Cup.  And even if they did miraculously pull off the impossible, there’s no way that they would have passed the mandatory safety checks and requirements, and I could see a situation where a shiny new Cerberus-looking train car, packed to the gills full of Spaniards* and the motherfucker goes off the rails and causes some tragic accident.

*I double-checked Atlanta’s guaranteed match list, and holy fuck did we get the shaft on country draw, where Spain is pretty much the only powerhouse country playing here, with the rest of the field being Czechia, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Haiti, Cabo Verde (?), and Congo; I didn’t even know many of these places even had national teams, much less ones good enough to qualify for the World Cup

Alternatively, once the festivities begin, futbol fans will be subjected to the old and busted, urine-smelling incumbent trains, where local bums and panhandlers are probably rubbing their hands together at the opportunity to grief and harass riders from various other parts of the world, who just want to get to Mercedes-Benz Arena (that’s not allowed to have their own logo in sight, lmao).

Either way, I heard that thanks to the political situation in ‘Murica, there was a lot of reconsideration of would-be fans, travelers and futbol enthusiasts, as far as hotels, tickets and the promised influx of money that an event the caliber of the World Cup is capable of bringing in, and I thought to myself, even if Korea isn’t going to get a match here, it might still be a cool thing to go to a World Cup match, and maybe even take my dad with me.  But then I discovered that the duration of the entire Group Stage, I will be out of the country, and by the time I get back, will be only critical knockout futbol matches, where the cost of those tickets will probably be back up to $FuckYou.99/each.

Perhaps I might luck into some watch events in Seoul for when Korea takes the pitch, I can’t imagine that even remote, they could be any less chaotically disorganized as Atlanta and MARTA are.  But thank goodness I won’t be around in the city for when the World Cup will inevitably be causing all sorts of chaos around town, and no thanks to MARTA.

In other news, there is such a thing as the National Lacrosse League

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

YT: two lacrosse goalies fighting at an NLL game

When I first saw this clip, one of the first things I thought to myself was, how old is this player that took off the jersey with the logo that look precariously similar to the Washington Capitals logo?  When he turned around, the male pattern baldness on his head shone like the fucking diamond on top of the pyramid in The Mummy Returns, and I thought to myself, man, high school boys got it rough if they’re going bald this early in their lives.

But then I learned that the NLL at the corner of the screen stood for National Lacross League, and it wasn’t an abbreviation for some city or province in Australia that I’d never heard of in my life, so that meant that these guys were somewhat grown men, playing lacrosse professionally, and I’d just learned that there was such a thing as the National Lacrosse League, that actually affords a bunch of Chads, Trents, Jaxsons, Rhetts and Wyatts the opportunity to get paid to play lacrosse.

The only thing that I can fathom being whiter than the NLL is the crowd of people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th.

Secondly, I wondered what in the world had to have been said or done in order for the two goalies to get so triggered to where they thought the absolute next and only option was to start throwing hands?  I admit that I don’t really know anything about lacrosse* beyond it’s a bunch of white guys using nets on sticks to try and get a ball into the net of their opponents.  But I do know that said nets are a substantial distance away from one another, and a quick Google search says that they are 100 yards apart, which is the same distance between endzones in futbol americano (a real sport), so that’s quite a distance between nets, and their goalies.

*to the point where my hands don’t even have the muscle memory to type out lacrosse properly; seriously, I’ve forgotten to write the ‘e’ at the end of it at least six times at this point, and I keep having to correct it

Needless to say, I’m curious to know what the heck possibly could have been said or done between these two Chads from so far apart, to where they mutually agreed to meet up and start swinging.  Surely, there had to be a preexisting beef that just needed a spark to ignite physicality; maybe they had a disagreement about a Charlie Kirk podcast or one accused the other’s dad of insider trading or something, either way, the wussiest fight in the world was still the result of it.

Seriously, when both guys shed their MegaZord’s worth of armor, it was basically two guys whose offseason regimen is clearly 2-3 cycles of P90X, and they really had no business trying to throw punches.  Neither guy went down, there was no blood or even the slightest indication of a bruise, and I’m guessing even before the first punch was thrown, one or both of them probably felt the sense of wtf am I doing, but because they had started it, it had to happen, regardless of how pathetic it ended up being.

Regardless, poor form though, from both Luke and Trey.  This fight was enough to get NLL some ESPN exposure to where people under rocks like me can learn of their existence, but not nearly to the quality to where I talk about it any other fashion than ridicule and airing out my grievances with white guys.  Had they gone a little more full R-word and maybe hit a good pro-wrestling move like this kid dropping an avalanche head-scissor Fame-Asser, then people might be willing to put a little bit of respect on the NLL’s name.