Beer...check.
Five-goal World Cup soccer match on replay... check...
Cat...check...wait...Missy, stop drinking my beer. Get your own. Good luck with the refrigerator door.
Wow. Italy is really crashing out of this World Cup in style. Or rather, they crashed out of this world cup in style.
At first, they took some legitimate knocks from Slovakia, who came out into this game like a circus bear, taunted for years. Then unleashed. The Slovaks tore threw everything in their path, pitch and Italians alike.
So I understand why the Italians started diving. But the Slovaks switched their strategy quickly and just played football. It worked. The goal energized them early, boosted their confidence and made them believe. The Italians were decimated. The first goal destroyed any confidence in the essential fairness of grit and determination in this beautiful game. Every team gets tough breaks, but those that draw energy from the experience will survive another day.
Oooo! Just saw the gash to Slovakia's No. 6, midfielder Zdenko STRBA. What a tackle and a tremendous injury to have! He goes back on! Little gauze, some athletic tape and STRBA plays on after a 4- or 5-inch gash to his left knee. Surely he'll get stitches at half time. Or will he?
I had a similar injury when I played soccer in high school. Only thing is, my injury was caused by my own stupidity, not the sharks-tooth studs of an opponent's boot. Preparing for a match with my traveling club team, the Hudson Valley Storm, I decided (perilously) to lace up my boots at the top of a five-foot bleacher. It had rained earlier in the day. The metal was wet. You can do the math, but I fell while walking off the side. The aluminum edge sliced through my right knee creating a 4-inch gash.
The blood covered my hand when I removed it to look at the injury. A tornado of expletives and 18 stitches later, I was good as new. Minus my pride.
Man, that hurt. And as soon as the stitches came out several weeks later, I slapped some liquid skin and a bandage over it and was back playing. A part of me wishes I had taped up the knee and played that day. But it was probably best to get the tetanus shot and the stitches.
So hats off to STRBA for showing the kind of guts that Italy lacked in the first half of this game. And that's from someone that wanted Italy to win. Kind of hard not to when you grew up in a family where people still spoke Italian from time to time, or intermingled it with English. I love hearing that bubbly, jingle-jangle of two languages.
And now some play-acting from Slovakia's goalkeeper, too? Ridiculous. Italy was doing enough of that themselves. This game is becoming an absurd display of theatrics. And there it is, the final whistle. The Italians will not be greeted kindly when they get home.
That does it. I need another beer...no, you cannot not have one, Missy...Nor you, Hunter.
[Post Script: The Italians did indeed return home to a villain's welcome. One right-wing Italian politician even decided to use the football team's plight as a crass launching point for his own headline-grabbing, blaming the team's poor showing on immigration...as in the Italian Serie A league didn't have enough Italians in it and the foreigners are the ones winning championships and that's why the national team can't win. It's an awfully stupid argument and a stretch, considering Italy has won four World Cups, including in 2006.]
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