Updating my post below, there are more World Cup blogs to add to the site I mentioned previously. Jason Kottke has links to them. www.worldcupblog.org wins the domain name sweepstakes, and is quite enjoyable, with “real-time” updates and hilarious insight into the various teams’ hairstyles. Not surprisingly, the Japanese team comes in for some commenting here.
Speaking of the Japanese side, I watched their opener against on tape as recorded by my wife, since I was working during the match. Somehow I managed to make it home from work without hearing the score, although at one of the stops on my line I could see Japan supporters in their blue shirts in the train opposite the platform (obviously returning from Saitama Stadium, the site of the match and not very far from where we live), and they didn’t look exactly overjoyed, so I was assuming a Japan loss. What a joy then to see that the hosting upstarts actually make a game of it and play a lot better than the team I saw perform mediocrely in several friendlies recently. In fact, they perhaps should have won the game, because to my untrained eye it seemed quite obvious that they were denied two foul calls which would have given them penalty kicks, and I couldn’t help wondering whether Rivaldo’s recent admission of faking an injury in Brazil’s match against Turkey may have contributed to last night’s referree being overly forgiving. (However, when the play wasn’t in either team’s goal area, the Costa Rican referree was more than happy to blow the whistle — a total of 48 fouls were called during the game).
Speaking of Rivaldo and the Brazil vs. Turkey match, I was amused by this bit of hyperbole from the Turks on Korean referree Kim Young-joo:
Uh, the Turks should be the last one‘s using genocidal references in vain.