I didn’t see it, I’m sorry to say, but from what I can gather, yesterday’s Carling Cup final between Arsenal and Chelsea was kind of a humdinger. First, John Terry nearly fucking died. He was kicked in the head as he dove at a header off a corner kick… maybe “almost died” is an overstatement, but he swallowed his tongue and needed oxygen on the field. I’d mention the stretcher, but you get a stretcher ride in soccer if someone gives you a wet willy.

It’s not only bad news for Terry, as he’s battled injury problems all year long (edit: Terry seems to be okay, and will likely play the next game)… but it’s bad news for soccer, because now everytime someone takes a dive, they’re going to demand the oxygen and a neck brace, or no one’s going to buy it.

There was also a bit of a fight. Observe:

I guess that qualifies as a fight. Toure hits the guy, followed by the briefest of pauses as both men think to themselves, “Holy fuck, we’re fighting… so we really wanna do this?” And it continues from there, with some very serious pushing, jostling, and calling each other “bloody wankers.”

Chelsea won, I’m sorry to say. Two Drogba goals did it for them.

I know we’ve beaten this thing to death, but just one more time … Zinedine Zidane is a pussy. Marco Materazzi revealed yesterday what it was that set Zidane off at the World Cup, and if you believe Materazzi… yeah, Zidane’s a pussy. Even if you don’t believe Materazzi, Zidane’s a pussy. Here’s what Marco said:

In Tuesday’s interview with the Gazzetta dello Sport, Materazzi disclosed that after he held his opponent’s shirt, Zidane said: “If you want, I’ll give you the jersey later.”

“I responded that I preferred his sister, it’s true,” Materazzi said. “It wasn’t something nice, true. But luckily there have been dozens of players who have confirmed that a lot worse things are said on the field.”

Well, here’s hoping that Zidane never ends up sitting in the front row at an Andrew Dice Clay performance.

I just can’t imagine that Zidane hasn’t heard worse than that. Either Materazzi is lying, guys just don’t talk trash to Zidane, or he was just overwhelmed with the pressure of playing in the World Cup, and the flipped out. I’d really be shocked if Zidane hadn’t heard worse than that before, but at the same time … that would be pretty consistent with everything that both Zidane and Materazzi said about the incident.

If he’s going to head butt someone’s chest because of this, then I don’t think the guy could even have a conversation with me. About 20 minutes ago, I accused a very close friend of mine of giving a handjob to a dead elk, for no good reason (as if there could be a good reason for something like that). Let’s just hope these two crazy kids can make up.

“He has not apologized to me and I certainly don’t have to apologize to him. If anything, I owe apologies to his sister, although I swear, before all this mess I didn’t even know Zidane had a sister,” he said.

Materazzi said that he thought the two could put the incident behind them.

“If peace can be made after terrible wars can Zidane and I not make peace? A peace between men, without much publicity, certainly yes.

“The door of my house will always be open to him and if he wants, Zidane knows how to find out my address,” said Materazzi.

The perfect way for this to end, obviously, is for Materazzi to put his Italian sausage down on Zidane’s sister.

Something about this feels kinda … off-putting. Five professional soccer players in Europe have had stem cells from their newborn babies frozen, for the potential future use in repairing their own bodies.

So, for example, if Joe Cole (and I’m just using him as an example) rips up his ACL in a few years, we crack open the freezer, find the stem cells right behind the Stouffer’s frozen pizza, shoot it into him, and bam, good as new.

I at least hope he saves a bunch of them … I’d hate for the child to one day develop scoliosis, and have to hear daddy tell him, “Oh, no, I’m sorry. We can’t fix your spine. I know, tough break. But this one time, daddy had a really important game against AC Milan. Yeah … I’m sorry. But hey, we got you a brand new walker, little guy. It even has Spiderman stickers on it! Be brave.”

I’m not really sure why this bugs me. I’m all for stem cell research, and funding, and I think it’s an exciting thing, I do. And I think the people who believe that using stem cells is an abomination against God are absolutely fucking crazy. But, I dunno… using them to repair a center-back’s torn MCL, at least at this early point, seems a little crazy.

Maybe I’d just like us to understand this better, and figure out some of the more pressing applications first. For example, let’s wait until we figure out a way to use these things to cure Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or some other debilitating disease first, before this just becomes a plaything for rich people.

Landon Donovan and his LA Galaxy were playing on the road at DC United this weeked, and someone help up a big banner that said, “Landon in Germany: Worthless.” And that’s a fairly accurate assessment.

So Landon went out, and he scored two goals, and he shut the crowd up, and he brazenly waved his arms encouraging them to boo some more. And that’s great, he took the heckling, and he bounced back, hooray for him. Really.

But here’s my problem. The criticism of Donovan is that he can’t do it on the big stage. He was borderline invisible in the World Cup, and he did bomb in Europe before deciding to come back home to the MLS where he feels more comfortable. The knock on the guy is that he won’t accept the challenge and play against better competition. He won’t leave his comfort zone to make himself better.

So his answer to that is what … to score more goals in an MLS game? Well, congratufuckinglations, pal, you did it. That stopped being a challenge for Donovan a long time ago. He’s the best player in the MLS. But that’s never really been the question, has it?

From an EA Sports press release concerning the upcoming release of FIFA ‘07:

FIFA Soccer 07allows players to recognize their favorite athletes by the way they move. The human biomechanics of each athlete are taken into account and replicated in the game because the new engine is data-driven — the player motion is driven by individual attributes, physical characteristics and for the first time, traits.

“The FIFA Soccer 07 engine unlocks ultra realistic player motion and delivers complete responsiveness due to its ability to branch animations and the real-time calculation of real human biomechanics. Essentially our software engineers are writing human decision-making code,” said Hugues Ricour, Producer for FIFA Soccer 07on the Xbox 360.

I don’t know if this should frighten or excite me, but I do know that I am not about to apologize for my erection. According to the EA people, the game engine for FIFA is going to be completely reworked. They’ve started from scratch and built something new. They’ve spent two years on this thing. And the game was already, in my opinion, damn good. I liked the FIFA Series before I even liked soccer.

If you’re in the market for a beer bottle opener, you really can’t do any better than this new item that comes to us from Brazil. It’s the Ronaldinho bottle opener. That is marketing creativity at its finest. The design takes advantage of Ronaldinho’s unusually-shaped teeth and helps you crack open a beer in celebration of the next FC Barcelona victory.

If anyone knows how I can get my hands on one of these, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me.

There’s a song in France right now that celebrates the Zidane’s World Cup headbutt of Marco Materazzi. I don’t feel like it’s something to be particularly celebrated, and I’d be willing to chalk it up to just a few French idiots who wanted to write a dumb song, however… the song is the #1 song in France right now. Soccer fans of France, you are skirtbags.

Check out the translated lyrics, courtesy of SI.com.

Watch out, it’s the head-butt dance!
(Head-butt, head-butt)
Head-butt to the right
(Head-butt, head-butt)
Head-butt to the left
(Head-butt, head-butt)

Go, Bleus, Go!
Zidane, he hit [him], Zidane, he slapped (him)
(Head-butt, head-butt. Head-butt, head-butt)

The guido, he was hurt
Zidane hit (him)
The Italian is not doing well
Zidane slapped (him)
The referee saw it on TV
Zidane hit (him)
But we lost the World Cup
We had a good laugh anyway

Well, that’s the best fucking song I’ve heard since Mambo No. 5. Just inspired, Frenchy. Brilliant in its simplicity. It’s good to see that we’re not the only nation prone to falling in love with terrible songs.

What a tremendous thing to celebrate. Hey, we lost, but at least the best player in our nation’s history failed to keep his shit together for long enough to help us out in a penalty shootout. Italy has the World Cup, but at least Zinedine Zidane’s mother doesn’t have to be offended by an insult she never would have heard, anyway. Pat yourselves on the back for that one.

And for those of you who could care less about soccer and/or my rooting interests for any sport, you can skip this post. I certainly wouldn’t blame you.

In addition to Man City, I briefly flirted with Tottenham and West Ham. I liked West Ham for a few reasons… the movie Green Street Hooligans not insignificant among them. If you haven’t seen it, rent it sometime. And then just stop the movie as soon as Elijah Wood gets back to America and pretend that’s the end. It’s better that way, trust me.

I also liked the “Forever Blowing Bubbles” song, but it occurred to me that I’d never ever have anyone to sing it with. If West Ham wins a big game, and I take to the streets singing “Forever Blowing Bubbles” at the top of my lungs, all it’s going to do is confuse people and excite men named “Bubbles.” So that was a bit of a downer.

The other thing that attracted me to West Ham was the fact that Clint Dempsey could soon be a transfer target of theirs, and I think Clint Dempsey is the man. But you can’t choose a favorite team based on a favorite player. It doesn’t last.

Once upon a time, I like the New York Rangers because Wayne Gretzky played there… and when Gretzky retired, I found that I hadn’t really grown fond of any of the other Rangers, mainly because, at the time, they were an extremely poorly run organization who employed players who had many vaginalistic qualities. Mistake on my part. And rather than “pick another favorite team,” which you just can’t do, I had to give up the sport all together.

I was really intrigued with Spurs, too, but to be perfectly honest, Bill Simmons selecting them kinda turned me in the other direction. Not that I don’t like Simmons, I do, but I just didn’t want to go the same route. It’s a shame, too, because having a logo comprised of a “cock and ball” would’ve made me positively giddy. But it felt like that badwagon was getting a little crowded.

Which brings us back to Man City. The two biggest factors: the uniforms, and the fact that they’re called “Man City,” which lends itself to a nearly endless stream of jokes about my own sexuality, and I didn’t want to pass that up. I’ve already got nearly a year of experience with them, too, so… it’s probably a bad idea to just throw that away.

But again, this isn’t yet set in stone. I’m certainly leaning that way, and I can’t really predict when it will cement itself. Sometimes, you just have to let a favorite team choose you. So I’m adopting Manchester City right now on a trial basis. We’re dating right now. Manchester City and I are seeing each other exclusively, but we’ve decided to hold off on the physical part of our relationship for the time being. But I hope to be putting the wood to Man City a few weeks into the season. We’ll see how it goes.

Tampa Bay Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer owns Manchester United, Patriots owner Bob Kraft once wanted to buy a piece of Liverpool (though I don’t know if anything ever came of that), and now Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner could be looking to purchase Aston Villa. I find this strange.

Doug Ellis’ desire to sell Aston Villa could finally be realised with American billionaire Randy Lerner reportedly joining the race to buy the West Midlands club.

It is understood Lerner, who owns NFL franchise Cleveland Browns, will enter the bidding for the Premiership club when Villa chairman Doug Ellis returns from holiday this week.

I love how they say he “owns NFL franchise Cleveland Browns.” I wonder if there’s some obnoxious asshole American football fan in Britain who’s reading that and fuming because you’re supposed to say “the Cleveland Browns.”

But I digress. In the case of someone who’s responsible for the product that the Cleveland Browns trot out to the field every Sunday, it’s perfectly believable that he heard about a football team called Aston Villa and he thought, “Hey, they play pro football in England? I’m buying them! Who’s their quarterback?”

I don’t get why these NFL guys all the sudden want to buy Premiership (and most certainly not EPL) teams. I doubt that they’re just rabid soccer fans, looking for an outlet. If that was the case, they’d just buy MLS teams and save themselves a few bucks. Could it be that they feel that the Premier League has a chance to develop an audience in America? Anyone else have an explanation for me?

And I, for one, am fucking psyched about it. I know that there are those out there who have their issues with Bill Simmons, but I feel like he’s as observant, and certainly as funny, as sports fans come. And he’ll only be slightly newer to the EPL than me, so in a way, we’ll be doing this together. From his mailbag column last Friday…

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed suggestions for my new English Premier League soccer team that I haven’t picked yet. Out of any challenge that I’ve ever thrown out to the readers, I can’t remember getting a more passionate, entertaining and informative batch of e-mails. If anything, I’m even more dedicated to making the leap now. And this isn’t going to be a half-assed thing, either. I’ll be buying the merchandise, TiVo-ing the games, traveling to see a couple home games, throwing myself into the team … I’m going all out. Obviously I’m not a huge soccer fan, but I’m a huge sports fan and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that I missed the boat with the English Premier League and UEFA. Better late than never.

Couldn’t agree more… I still maintain my belief that more people could/would be soccer fans if they give it a legitimate chance (which involves more than watching one or two games), and I’m somewhat regretful that I didn’t do it sooner. But I’m glad that Simmons is hopping on the bandwagon.

And I’m sort of in the same boat as he is, on the favorite team issue. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes. I watched a season of EPL last year, and I still don’t have a favorite club. I don’t even know if that’s the sort of thing you can choose, or something you just have to wait and let happen on its own. I was kind of leaning towards Manchester City, because that’s where Claudio Reyna played, and because I like their uniforms.

But that’s the problem with the EPL… there are only a handful of teams who can win the thing, and if I started cheering for Manchester United or Chelsea, I’d feel like a front-running prick. Liverpool’s also right there, with Arsenal and Tottenham not far behind. But after that (and I’ll admit that I don’t have the greatest understanding of this yet, so feel free to correct me) I don’t think there are too many teams that can hope to finish in the Top 4. Newcastle has kind of a high profile, I think. But after that, no one else is a real threat to compete for a league title. It’s like there’s a handful of teams, and then the NFC North.

So I could root for Man City, but really, the best I can hope for is an upset or two of Man United, and perhaps a UEFA Cup qualification. So I don’t know what to do. It’s not like the NFL, where there’s hope that sometime in the near future, they could rise up and be good. And I’m not saying that I can’t ever root for a bad team, because I have plenty of experience with that, but… it would be nice if they at least had a chance to compete at some point in the reasonably near future.

So I dunno what to do. I think teams like Tottenham (another team I’m leaning towards), Liverpool, and Newcastle are still in play. I’m ruling out Manchester United and Chelsea, because they’re too powerful, and I kind of hate them anyway. Manchester City and Tottenham are my leaders in the clubhouse. And I think West Ham’s got an outside shot, because of the movie “Green Street Hooligans” (a very underrated film that I really loved, except for the first and last five minutes of it) and the “Forever Blowing Bubbles” song, which is awesome.

This video’s been making the rounds in the last day or so… it gives a little bit of an idea of what Marco Materazzi is all about. Good player… and dirty son of a bitch. Picked this up at The Airing of Grievances, via The Sports Frog…

So there you go. Clearly, not a man that is at all concerned with fair play, or the well-being of his fellow competitors. He has no qualms about attempting to injure a guy, if he thinks it’ll give him an advantage.

In other news, FIFA president Sepp Blatter says that FIFA may step in and take the Golden Ball award away from Zidane… which I think would be absolute garbage. His play was still brilliant, whether or not a dirty player goaded him into a physical attack. If FIFA’s going to do this, I hope they spend some time investigating exactly what it was that provoked the attack. If they’re going to penalize Zidane, something might have to be in store for Materazzi, too.

But I still maintain that Zidane, by doing what he did, let Materazzi win. I know it’s only human nature to respond as he did, but… by doing that, Zidane gave Materazzi exactly what he wanted, he screwed himself, and he cost his team. But I agree with the A of G… it’s amazing that someone, somewhere along the line, hasn’t beaten the guy until he pissed blood.

I felt about the Zidane incident kinda how I felt about Ron Artest going into the stands… sometimes, no matter how bad something is, the right thing to do is just sit and take it for the time being. However… according to some lip readers, Italian Marco Materazzi called Zidane a “son of a terrorist whore.”

Well, that’s just not a very nice thing to say. In fact, it’s the most vicious trash talk I’ve ever heard of. And before we get to Zidane’s reaction, first I’ve got to sort of begrudgingly tip my cap to Materazzi. I mean, it’s a terrible thing to say, and he’s a vile son of a bitch for saying it, but when the goal is to get under a guy’s skin, well… hats off. You’re going all the way on that one, all morals be damned. Your committment to your ideals can’t be questioned, and you really can’t do much better than that. And it has the added bonus of making me no longer feel bad for any messed-up thing I’ve used to heckle a player.

Oh, and for good measure, Materazzi also called Zidane a “negro,” which is about the Italian equivalent of calling someone the n-word. Nice touch, cocksucker.

As for Zidane, who’s mother is Algerian (and also quite ill at the moment)… I mean, the head butt is understandable, but… you still can’t do it. In a way, it sounds crazy, but in that situation, with his teammates depending on him, the right thing to do is just take it and not respond. I’m not saying that’s what I would’ve done, and I’m not saying that it would’ve been easy, but… if he doesn’t respond at all, he stays in the game, he gives France a better shot to win, and he doesn’t tarnish his legacy. If he responds with a head butt to the chest, he gets tossed, everyone in the world calls him a dirty bastard, and he may have cost France at a shot at a World Cup. And he can always hunt down Materazzi a week later and beat him to death on his own time.

Son of a terrorist whore. That’s messed up.

The World Cup Final drew 16.9 million viewers in the United States… a number that shocks me a little bit. I’d have never guessed it would be that high. According to this New York Times article, that’s about 4 million more people than the average rating for an NBA Finals game, it’s almost as much as the 17.5 million that watched the NCAA championship between Florida and UCLA, and it’s roughly half the number of people who have been blown by Paris Hilton. And the 16.9 million people were pulled in on a Sunday afternoon, as opposed to primetime, when it’s a lot easier to bring in a huge audience.

That 16.9 million does include 5 million viewers from Univision, on top of the 11.9 on ABC…. so neither of the individual ratings is going to be setting records. But still, it proves that there’s an audience in America that is, at the very least, soccer-curious. Now, I’m not predicting that the MLS is ever going to take the nation by storm, but if they can improve their marketing, their level of play, and maybe get some help from a decent American performance on the World Cup stage… maybe there’s a market there for them after all.

After Italy’s victory over France in the World Cup finals, a 77-year old man in Rome decided to head to raise an Italian flag in celebration. He didn’t make it all the way up the ladder, though, and fell to his death. He died instantly, and was clutching the flag to his chest when he passed. The fall is being reported as an accident, though I wonder if the man’s dive was an imitation of the Italian style of play.

But, you know, if I went out like that… I couldn’t complain. It’s still sad that he died, obviously… but he was 77 years old, and if the victory was stirring enough to move a man that age to climb a ladder and raise a flag, then he probably died pretty happy. If I died in the midst of celebrating a Chargers Super Bowl victory, or something of that nature… that wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, that would be pretty high up on the list of ways I’d want to go.