Category: Sports

This is it, folks. My first football-related fan post. Liverpool striker Milan Baroš is in talks with German club Schalke, despite his desire to stay with Liverpool. I’ve grown to like the happy-looking Czech, especially after two impressive goals in Liverpool’s 4-3 win over Olympiacos in Liechtenstein last weekend (a game I saw only through the magic of BitTorrent). But Liverpool now has four strikers, with the recent acquisition of storky Peter Crouch, and that’s probably one too many.

So, Liverpool is one of my Premiership favourites, mostly due to their perennial underachievment (notwithstanding their fantastic come from behind victory over AC Milan in the Champions League final in Istanbul a few months ago). My other favourites for this season will be Manchester City (shadow-dwellers) and recently promoted Sunderland (giant-killers?).

Well, that is partially true. But I’ve been feeling incredibly run-down most of this month, and not too excited about updating here. We’ve had the hottest summer in memory and I’ve just been sapped of energy. I also might be sick. Think I’ll see the doctor next week if nothing improves.

As for the footie obsession, I found an amazing free online game called HatTrick, where thousands of teams compete against each other every week. It’s a tech geek’s paradise, too, because there are all sorts of plugins and statistics to help you get the jump on the other guy. I also picked up a copy of Football Manager 2005 on eBay. It’s almost impossible to find here (where it’s called World Soccer Manager 2005) but is hugely popular in the UK, where it outsells most other PC games by a wide margin. It also has a robust online community who contribute patches, skins, and roster updates to keep the game as realistic as possible. Both of these games have been instrumental in my ongoing education about the “beautiful game”, as has the excellent series History of Football: The Beautiful Game, narrated by the supercool Terence Stamp.

Last weekend, on a whim, I picked up a book with the rather interesting title How Soccer Explains The World. After finishing the book in one day, I’m starting to grow in my appreciation for the Beautiful Game. I’ve always liked football (soccer to North Americans), but found a lot of the competitions and leagues and teams confusing. I’ve preferred to follow the World Cup every four years. But I must admit I find the fact that the game is played in almost every corner of the earth completely fascinating. And the book, by journalist Franklin Foer, uses all the controversies of the game (racism, fascism, corruption) as well as its transcendent joy to talk about wider issues of globalization and nationalism.

So, since the weekend, I’ve picked up the latest issue of World Soccer magazine, added a dozen or so websites to my bookmarks, and ordered a heap of books to help explain this World Cup world to me. I’m also about halfway through Nick Hornby’s love letter to Arsenal, Fever Pitch, which I’ve owned for several years but not yet read.

I’m actually not that fond of the English Premiership teams, so my newfound enthusiasm will have only limited value when conversing with my Manchester-mad father-in-law, but it’s a beginning. After reading Foer’s book, and remembering my own time in the city, I think my new love is FC Barcelona.

Can’t wait for the World Cup next year. Check out their comprehensive web site.

P.S. One of the more interesting sites I’ve come across is for the Mondiali Antirazzisti (the Antiracist World Cup), which is a tournament of 192 amateur teams (men, women, and mixed) from all over the world that is played in Montecchio, Italy. It began yesterday. What an amazing event.

Brooke and I have been glued to our television for the past two weeks for the Olympic Games. Tomorrow it comes to an end with one of our favourite events, the men’s marathon. In checking the start list tonight, I discovered to my delight that Mustapha Bennacer is running for Algeria. Mustapha is a Canadian resident (he trains in Montreal) who runs all (and wins most) of the Canada Running Series events. We actually ran with him this year at the Spring Run-Off (he won in a time of 23:44.9), and watched him in his marathon debut in Ottawa (he came in 2nd in 2:12:03.1). It’s pretty exciting to think that he’s preparing right now for the biggest race of his life. It’s only his second marathon, but he’ll be among the best in the world. Maybe by the time the next Olympics comes around, he’ll have decided to become a Canadian citizen!

Fellow Canadian Jonathan Crowe has a project running for the duration of the Olympics called DFL. Though “Dead F***ing Last” sounds cheeky and disrespectful, he reminds us that he’s “celebrating last-place finishes at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Because they’re there, and you’re not.”

I guess the irony is that his blog, which he started precisley ten days ago, has been picked up by MetaFilter, The Register, and even Reuters. My similarly-themed-but-not-quite-as-focussed project, Runner-Up, started in April, is…well…a runner-up. Maybe as a result of his blog, Runner-Up will get some much-needed attention. Then it could be, you know, like the consolation champ or something…