Travashamockery

The British press wants him benched, but Becks can still bend it better than anyone (how 'bout that onomatopoeia!).

What a difference a day makes. After spending Saturday watching one great display of attacking prowess followed by a nail-biting encounter only decided by the finest of goals - a day that had to remind every soccer fan why we love this game - we were all treated on Sunday to a bitter reminder of all the crap that we have to put up with in between.

England, a nation that can boast one of the world's best leagues, if not the best, as well as a conglomerate of superstars that few other countries can even dream of, continues to put in one lackluster display after another. If they had had to beat teams better than Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago, Sweden, and Ecuador, all of their fans would already be five days into another 80-pint bender to forget about the latest disaster. As it is, England is into the quarterfinals, thanks to absolutely nothing other than a few sporadic moments of individual brilliance. Speaking of benders, today's highlight came from that pretty boy married to that plastic freakshow that pasty faced Brits used to get all ga-ga over back when she & her Spice Girls weren't a national laughingstock. Now she's a joke and he's subject to more ridicule than any player of his talent has ever deserved. Excuse me if I'm missing something here, but all Becks does is put in one gutsy, team-oriented, selfless performance after another. He's never been the fastest player nor the most talented, but it's awfully hard to name many players more devoted to the cause. Before this match, the British press (the only one in the world to make America's journalism standards look remotely acceptable) wanted the captain benched; some suggested that he be played out of position at right back. As they say over in the land of pork-pies and pubs, bollocks. Beckham almost single-handedly won this game, aided by a nick-of-time Ashley Cole and a bullish Wayne Rooney. You can hate him because he's better-looking than you, but give him his due: in between some McNabb-like regurgitation, Becks put the rest of the boys on his back and carried them into the quarters.

After witnessing the horror show that England and Ecuador forces us to suffer through, one could be forgiven for confidently expecting Portugal and Holland, two of the world's ten best teams, to treat us to a match worthy of the World Cup. And maybe they would have, had one Valentin Ivanov not followed in the footsteps of Markus Merk and Graham Poll before him and given us all a masterclass on how to ruin a potential classic. At this point, FIFA now only trails the NCAA in the running for sport's most incomptetent governing body. And it all could have been so different if a little common sense were applied - like, for example, maybe realizing that 16 yellow cards and 4 red ones were not what anyone in the world tuned in to see this afternoon. One would think that the players must have been brandishing knives or wearing brass knuckles, but all of these cards are the result of an international referee having no clue how to manage a match. For anyone who's ever been a teacher or a student (and I like to think that my, er, audience is an educated one), think of a classroom. What happens if the teacher starts repriminanding every student for doing everything from sharpening a pencil without asking to coughing without covering their mouth to looking anywhere else but squarely at the chalkboard? It creates an environment of tension, discomfort, increased hostility and general unhappiness, it detracts from the real reason why everyone is there in the first place, and it prevents any constructive, positive learning from taking place. Today, it wasn't the Portuguese and Dutch players that made this a dirty, nasty game - it was Ivanov. As the 90th minute approached, I didn't know whether to hope for 30 minutes of stoppage time or three. Thankfully, it's over now, but with each passing game the World Cup, FIFA's pride & joy, continues to descend into farce thanks to refereeing that can only be described as unbearable, inexplicable, and somewhere worse than amateurish. And that's an understatement.

So it's Portugal through to face England on Saturday, where Sven Goran Eriksson gets a chance to make it three losses in a row at the hands of Big Phil Scolari (World Cup '02 & Euro '04 were acts 1 and 2). Barring a quick English turnaround, Eriksson will be able to point to one man who was single-handedly responsible for his demise. Of course, if England do find a way to win it, then it will be Scolari who may blame his own personal nemesis: Mr. Ivanov, who not only ruined today's game, but will keep both Costinha (no loss there) and Deco (muy grande loss) from taking the field thanks to their automatic suspensions; even Cristiano Ronaldo, a victim of one of the few red-card worthy tackles in today's game, may miss the match due to injury. All the same, Portugal has played far better footie than England thus far. Normally I would say that this game has the potential to be a dandy, but with FIFA running the show & their band of refs as the chief protagonists, all bets are off. Odds of another travashamockery? Now that's what the smart money says.