I give you Exhibit A. These are the highlights of the World Cup Qualifier the other night in Copenhagen between Denmark and Armenia. The Danes won the Euros in 1992 and have been one of the consistently good footballing sides for about 25 years now. The Armenians, meanwhile, are one of the many dreadful European teams that turned up after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They just lost a home game last Friday to Malta, who hadn't won a relevant game since 1994.
Roll tape ...
We needed some enthusiastic Armenian broadcasters for proper effect.
Denmark 0:4 Armenia. And while we should give some props to the Armenians here for playing hard and playing with class, this performance by the Danes has "let's get the coach fired" written all over it. That first goal was 25 seconds into the game, the second was 15 minutes later, and it's hard to tell at what point incompetence gave way to indifference by the guys in the red shirts. Apparently, what remained of the crowd at the end of the game applauded the Armenians 4th goal and applauded as their players were substituted off. Can you blame them? If I sat through 90 minutes of this tripe, I'd ask for a refund.
Those four goals feature some of the worst defending I've seen at an international level. Well, this was worse ...
That's an own goal from a game where Uzbekistan, verging on their first trip to the World Cup ever, lost 0:1 to South Korea. Pretty much the most important game in the history of the country and you lose like that. The Uzbeks can still qualify, but they're going to need some help. It would be fun to see them make it to Brazil, because it's a country that could use some good news, and what's the point of any of this if you can't bring a few hours of joy to people here and there?
And now I have spent more time researching football in Armenia and Uzbekistan than I ever would've thought possible. We would sometimes search for obscure stories when I was working at daily newspapers just to get unusual datelines into the paper, all journalists being devious rascals at heart. You've be perusing the wires and come across some story datelined VADUZ or NOUAKCHOTT and then you just had to find a way to get it in the paper. The research I undertake in writing this blog feels a bit that way sometimes. In following the WCQ for Brazil 2014, I've found myself looking up the likes of Namibian goalkeepers and the history of football in the Faroe Islands. (The Landsliðið played hard but lost 2:0 to Sweden the other night, just so you know.)
But this is a good thing, in the end.
I am someone who has always viewed the world as being far, far larger than just the small corner of it I inhabit. A part of how I choose to understand the world is through learning about how we, as humans, play games – how we compete and, yes, how we fail. And no game on earth is a bigger deal than soccer, a simple game with simple rules that takes on every sort of political, ethnic, ideological, and cultural connotation humans can invent. Just as it's been argued that understanding America requires and understanding of baseball, the same can be said of "the beautiful game" and what it says of the world around us.
Although in Denmark right now, they're probably not too excited, and understandably so. I'm not sure how you say "this team sucks" in Danish, but most Danes speak English better than I do, and I'm sure that particularly American English phrase has been uttered repeatedly.
