The World Cup (Again)

It’s time once again for the Women’s World Cup, and I’m here for it.

It has been a long sports drought here in Baja Canada since the Stanley Cup Finals ended back in June. The Premier League ended in May. Hockey won’t start up again until October. I’ve been checking in on the Phillies in the standings but haven’t watched an entire Major League Baseball game in years. Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve seen our local minor league team in action – they got a new stadium that is shiny and fairly luxurious for a minor league baseball team but has none of the ramshackle charm of the old place, and they changed their name to Something Really Stupid But Marketable as a way to sell merch and pay for it and a lot of the incentive went away.

Plus, I enjoy watching women’s soccer. They tend to think more about their game than the men do, and it’s a more interesting game to follow that way.

This time around they’re down in Australia and New Zealand, which means that the time zones are just spaced out enough for me to watch some of the games live if I’m around later in the evening. And there’s always the replays. It’s new to me, so why not.

It’s also technically winter there, and it is a bit jarring to see them bundled up when the entire northern hemisphere is hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalks.

Of course, as with the recent Men’s World Cup, the official broadcaster here in the US is a network that I refuse to give money to, so the only way I can watch the games is on Telemundo which means that all of the announcing is in Spanish – a language I do not speak well enough to get directions to a bus stop, let alone follow a major sporting event. I recognize a few words here and there – “pelota,” which means “ball,” comes up a lot, for example – but mostly I just listen to the pitch of the announcers’ voices and as it rises I know that something important is developing. Eventually they’ll do that five-minute long “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAL!!!!” thing that has become standard among all Spanish-language soccer broadcasters now and I know someone scored.

I hope Andrés Cantor gets royalties for that.

So far I’ve managed to see two games, neither of which were close but both were entertaining.

The US women beat Vietnam 3-0 in a game that should have been about 10-0 but the Americans were disjointed and a bit sloppy – which will not be good against better competition – and the Vietnamese clearly decided that their only chance was to be as chippy as they could get away with, which in their defense was a fairly astute decision. Had they managed a shot on goal during the game, perhaps things would have been, well, not different, but closer. This game I saw live.

And on replay I saw the Japanese women beat Zambia 5-0 in a game that probably could also have been 10-0. The Japanese actually scored two more goals and were awarded two penalty shots ("Penal! Penal! Penal!  Penal!"), but the goals and one penalty were disallowed for offsides, and as for the last penalty, well. With fifteen seconds left in extra time in a 4-0 game the Zambian goalie managed to get red carded. The substitute saved the penalty shot but was called for encroachment, and then Japanese finally scored.

Oddly enough, both games were still fun to watch. The better teams weren’t that much better even though they should have been, and the losing teams fought to the end. As a Philadelphia Flyers fan that’s really all I need.

Rah teams!