Well, there you have it
The octopus has spoken: England will lose to Germany in the round of sixteen.
Incidentally, I caught part of a TV spot last week wondering why Canada has never been a soccer "power" and wondering whether it ever would be. I'll tell you why we're not a soccer power: hockey. No, really: to do well at the World Cup, you need either a country with a large enough population to support a fairly large pocket of obsession with the sport (the US appears to be heading down this route) or in the case of a smaller population, nationally obsessed with the game.
The country simply isn't big enough for more than one game to obsess us. And since we're a cultural mosaic instead of a melting pot, new Canadians may be left casting about for some way to make a statement about their Canadian-ness.
Hockey. Really.
Which leads to, for instance, a Punjabi version of Hockey Night In Canada:
Nope, until hockey loosens its icy grasp on our hearts and our imaginations (and I say this as someone who rarely watches a whole game--I still get it) there will simply be no room for soccer. In my country, there is only one Beautiful Game.
I can live with that. Even though those damned horns people blast off inside the confines of a rink are a helluva lot more annoying to me than a vuvuzela in a big stadium. (At least on TV. In person I imagine they are deafening!) As far as I'm concerned, it's okay if the World Cup remains something that happens to other people.
Incidentally, I caught part of a TV spot last week wondering why Canada has never been a soccer "power" and wondering whether it ever would be. I'll tell you why we're not a soccer power: hockey. No, really: to do well at the World Cup, you need either a country with a large enough population to support a fairly large pocket of obsession with the sport (the US appears to be heading down this route) or in the case of a smaller population, nationally obsessed with the game.
The country simply isn't big enough for more than one game to obsess us. And since we're a cultural mosaic instead of a melting pot, new Canadians may be left casting about for some way to make a statement about their Canadian-ness.
Hockey. Really.
Which leads to, for instance, a Punjabi version of Hockey Night In Canada:
Click to viewNope, until hockey loosens its icy grasp on our hearts and our imaginations (and I say this as someone who rarely watches a whole game--I still get it) there will simply be no room for soccer. In my country, there is only one Beautiful Game.
I can live with that. Even though those damned horns people blast off inside the confines of a rink are a helluva lot more annoying to me than a vuvuzela in a big stadium. (At least on TV. In person I imagine they are deafening!) As far as I'm concerned, it's okay if the World Cup remains something that happens to other people.