6.1 billion people can't be wrong
While most sports fans took a nap Friday in preparation for Saturday's awarding of an oversized army man toy, the rest of the world is buzzing.
The final draw. World Cup is coming.
The groups for World Cup 2006 in Germany were announced today. Most agree that Group C, featuring two powerhouses (Argentina, the Netherlands) and two popular sleeper picks (Cote d'Ivoire, Serbia and Montenegro), is the toughest draw. The other group making noise happens to feature the Cup's perennial disinterested party, the US.
This may sound like cliched American paranoia, but I can't imagine it's much of a coincidence that this team, arguably the best US team ever to compete in a World Cup, has been tossed in a Group of Death. The US will face a slightly faded but still dangerous power (Italy, ranked #12 in FIFA), a recently surging favorite (Czech Republic, #2), and what many consider to be the best African team in the Cup (Ghana, #50).
But why shouldn't we get such a tough draw? Short of winning it all, I can't imagine this World Cup doing what all the others have not been able to do - shoot soccer out of the US sports fringes. And can you imagine the worldwide despair over a US win? They don't even call it the right name! They don't care!
The lack of popularity for soccer here is still perplexing to me. In a country that gives NASCAR, golf and frickin' poker primo television coverage, how can soccer be called boring? It has political intrigue, crazy fans, cool post-scoring dances - what more do you want? I do believe that the difficulty of ad placement in a sport that never stops does have a lot to do with it, but that can't be the whole of it. At the very least, this years Cup will feature a less severe time difference (2002's Korean edition had the US playing their huge quarterfinal match against Germany at 7:30 AM ET).
June is usually a pretty busy month for US sports. Major League Baseball is slowly gearing up after the doldrums of the first few months of the season, while both the NBA and the NHL (when they're actually playing) decide their champions. For the rest of the world, there is World Cup and nothing more.
Whether we watch or not, it'll be a blast.
Posted by Joel at 12/09/2005 08:28:00 PM
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