Is this stupid world cup over yet?

Still extremely bitter about the Brazilian loss to France yesterday, here are my thoughts on recent rounds...

-I'm definitely glad Portugal beat England. Even if I hadn't heard lots of Brits last summer talking about the British team like it was the best in the history of soccer (hello? England? You have one world cup, it was 1966, and it was in England), there were plenty of reasons to root for Portugal. There's the underdog aspect (at least within a Europe-only context, which, tragically, is what this World Cup now is). There's also the sort-of dominated-dominator aspect. I root for Portugal because, throughout the 15th-19th centuries, England basically bullied and dominated Portuguese economic policies to be most favorable to England, and given England's historic exploitation of the Portuguese empire, it's only fair to see Portugal exact some sort of "revenge." It's the same reason I pulled for Angola over Portugal in the first round, and WOULD have rooted for Brazil over Portugal, had the goddamned french not gotten in the way...

-Seriously, what the fuck's up with france? For the first time in 200 years (see: Napolean), the French defense actually works...Brazil played poorly, too, but come on....FRANCE?????

-In the England-Portugal game, the thuggish English player Wayne Rooney got red-carded for trodding his foot on a fallen Portuguese players groin-area (not sure if the family jewels were involved or not)....RIGHT in front of the ref. How stupid can you be? That blunder probably cost England the game (though, to be fair, it was rather surprising they made it all the way to the quarters, for they hadn't played a great game throughout this cup). After the game, the studio commentators at ESPN were discussing whether he deserved the red card. The only one who said he didn't was Julie Foudy. Easy for her to say - she doesn't have testicles that could be stepped on with cleats.

-Finally (and I'm dealing with this one as truly objectively as i can), the game commentators for the Brazil-France game were awful. Absolutely dreadful. They could have talked about France's style of play, how well they were changing their game. They could have talked about how poorly Brazil was playing. They could have talked about the poor decisions of the Brazilian coach (such as putting in two young stars, Adriano and Robinho, in when the game was nearly over). They could have talked about the outstanding strategy of the French coach. Marcelo Balboa (the other ESPN commentator, involved in the England-Portugal match, deserves high praise for his work in this regard).

But they didn't. What did they do instead? They proved themselves the Joe Buck/Tim McCarver of the soccer world, with French player Zinadine Zidane the Derek Jeter of the match. Zidane is no doubt a great player - one of the best of his generation. Yet they couldn't fellate him enough. Non-stop, talking about how this could be his last game (of course- he's retiring - he's naturally going to have a last game. Get over it). As the game went on, they just gushed over him more and more. I have no problem praising good players, but there was virtually no commentary on the game itself - it was like they were doing a retrospective of Zidane's career instead of broadcasting a game. And it just got worse and worse, as they heaped McCarver-like praise on his skills, elevating him to levels of Pele or Maradona (sorry - he's nowhere close to either). By the end, just like Buck and McCarver with Jeter, they were practically saying, "You know, I do believe Zidane is a distant relative of Jesus Christ himself."

Am I bitter? Sure - I really wanted Brazil to win. But what really marred a close game was the fact that I couldn't hear good insight about the game - I could only hear these two idiots. Thanks guys, but if I want Buck and McCarver, I'll wait for the world series and the all star game...