I've got a good online friend from England - her nickname is "Minnie". She's a devoted fan of the Chelsea soccer (footie) team. A long time ago when we were chatting on IM, she asked if I followed soccer and if so, what team did I like. I allowed as I really didn't like soccer all that much, but if I did, I might follow Arsenal because that was such a cool name for a team.
Oops, wrong answer. I knew soccer fans were...well, "fanatical" about their teams, but I didn't know about the hatred they could have for other teams. (I like American football, but have grown less and less interested in all sports as I've grown older. I do follow the Dallas Cowboys and have been a fan since I was a young boy, but I don't watch them if they're playing badly. Why would I want to suffer through that? Personally, I don't "hate" other NFL teams, but will admit to disliking Philadelphia mostly because of their obnoxious fans) It wasn't very long until I got a pkg. in the mail from my British friend; in it were two Chelsea jerseys, one white and one blue. My allegiance to a particular footie team had been decided for me!
Chelsea played Barcelona yesterday; I wasn't for sure what was at stake, but I did some research and found out it was an important match (the Champions League Semifinal) and that the team from Spain was the World Cup Champs. (was? were? The British form of singular/plural confuses me a little. Where Americans would say "Chelsea is a great team.", the Brits would say "Chelsea are a great team." I guess it's something to do with the former thinking of a team as a singular unit while the latter thinks of a team being individual players. Just always found that odd. It's almost like the USA being considered a union of individual states pre-Civil War - "The United States ARE..." and afterwards being thought of as a single entity "The United States IS....")
Anyway....I watched a little bit of the match, but was confused a little bit by the Barcelona squad being able to keep the ball near the Chelsea goal as much as they were. I then found out that John Terry, a Chelsea star player, had been given a "red card" - being ejected from the match for a flagrant foul on a Barcelona player, Sanchez. Here's a video of the infraction:
Good Grief, that wasn't much more than a love tap. Sanchez deserved an Oscar for that acting performance. Terry could have shot him with a pistol and he wouldn't have gone down that fast.
As said, Terry was ejected from the match. I didn't know that a team would have to play short-handed the rest of the game. That doesn't seem right. Chelsea went on to play great defense and eventually knotted the score at 2-2. I know next to nothing about the game and even less about how that can be considered a win, but that's what happened and Chelsea moves on into the playoffs.
(I also don't understand how the various leagues work - my friend Min tried to explain it to me once but I was more confused after the explanation than I was before. I remember thinking at the time it would be like trying to explain the game of baseball to one of those remote Amazonian tribes. I did catch on that the worst teams have to "drop down" into another league and that sounds like a good deal to me and wish they'd try it in the NFL.)
The Terry "foul" reminded me of another foul committed by Albert Haynesworth, then of the Tennessee Titans, against Andre Gurode of the Dallas Cowboys from a few years ago.
What Terry did paled in comparison, wouldn't you say?
Note: Doing a little dab of research on this post has made me much more knowledgeable about soccer. I still don't know much, but I know more than I did yesterday. Now I need to find out what the fans sing during soccer matches. I watched a bit of a Liverpool match (scousers!) a couple of years ago and heard them singing "You'll Never Walk Alone". Odd.
I haven't asked her, but I bet my British friend Min might think Liverpool should sing the chorus of "Hair Of The Dog".
