June 05, 2010

World Cup fever

I thought I'd post about soccer since it's right before the world cup of soccer, which starts next week in South Africa.

I've been thinking about soccer quite a bit lately, as I have been playing soccer video games, playing soccer myself (well rec 6 on 6 soccer..) and reading about soccer.

I recently bought John Doyle's new book The world is a ball , after hearing him interviewed on CBC about it. So far it's a pretty good tale of his experience in following the game of soccer worldwide. He's not a sports columnist so it definitely has a different flavour to it. He's the regular TV columnist and I actually quite enjoyed his previous book on how TV changed things in Ireland when it arrived.

I'm looking forward to watching the world cup games. For whatever reason (maybe because they wear my favorite colour orange), I cheer for the Dutch soccer team. I've cheered for them since the mid 1990s. Don't really know how I ended up being a fan of theirs. But I've been loyal to them.

I've been lucky also since the last world cup to have enjoyed watching games with two of my Canadian-born Dutch friends.

I'm hoping they can win it all this year. I think that because it`s the first time the competition is being held in Africa, like the first time it was in Asia it`ll be chock full of surprises.

I just hope it is well organized and everything runs smoothly. The soccer will be beautiful regardless.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know. I somehow don't think that the Dutch deserve to do well in Africa. They have a pretty long and unpleasant history with South Africa in particular.

Justin said...

Fair point, though isn't part of having the tournament in South Africa about renewal and hope?

I was intrigued to hear that you caught some of the world cup fever, as you didn't strike me as a soccer fan, but maybe that's the point, world cup goes beyond soccer.

Anyways I continue to enjoy your blog.