Soccer!
Believe it or not (I still don’t fully believe it), I managed to re-fracture my collarbone last Sunday. It is with great emotional and physical (but mostly physical) pain that I have decided to retire from competitive amateur soccer. I wasn’t even good to begin with.
Here’s yesterday x-ray:
In case you want to send him something, click here.
In order to help you take your mind off last nights sad developments, I post two cool (and happy) soccer videos.
It is a little late for this (some people are dumbasses when it comes to downloading photos off a camera), but here’s a photo of Mauricio Capistran (a.k.a. Picho) showing the score of last weekend’s match America VS Chivas of Guadalajara. He and Alejandro del Castillo (a.k.a. too many things to list in this reduced space) bet that whoever’s team loses the Superclásico would get to proudly pose wearing the winner’s jersey and remind the world what the final score was. Of course, the photo eventually makes it to the internet and the rest is history. Some people shouldn’t have so much faith in their teams (that last link you gotta click on).
Next weekend the Clásico Regiomontano is played… any takers among the few remaining fans of Tigres out there?
Not even remotely as big of a figure as Maradona, my cousin Israel Alkon had his photographed taken with former Mexican National coach Ricardo Antonio Lavolpe.
If it wasn’t for Lavolpe’s inexplicable decision to play with basically no midfield in the World Cup, Lucho would have gotten more playtime and my photo would be more valuable.
My cousing Israel Alkon bumped into none other than biggest soccer star ever, Diego Armando Maradona, on his recent trip to Argentina. I can’t believe he’s taller than Maradona (it gives some people I know hope).
This beats hands-down my Luis Perez Kodak moment, and at the same time leaves me with only 1 degree of separation of the greatest soccer god in history (sorry, Pelé, but you don’t have your own church).
Anand Narayanan received his prize for winning the FIFA World Cup 2006 Polla. Congratulations Anand! He finished 10 points ahead of me. I was 9th.
Click to see the full size photo and you’ll notice that Anand has also won an air hockey tournament and belongs to the world famous Austin soccer team the NI Eagles.
After a month of non-stop World Cup soccer Italy takes the championship for the fourth time. Congratulations to them. Cetrulo is thrilled. I’m happy for him.
But I don’t care.
What I do care about is that after a shameful start in La Polla I was able to recover and finish 9th out of 81. See for yourself. This means I beat my uncle in a head-to-head bet and I proved to Alejandro del Castillo that my soccer knowledge vastly exceeds his own (as if that needed to be proved). Impressively, if you count only the second round, then I would have finished second out of 81. Anand Narayanan wins, but we all know he’s just very lucky ever since he shaved off that mustache.
All in all, I watched 46 out of 64 matches in this World Cup. That’s a lot of fútbol my friend. And I must frankly admit I’ve had enough. I am ready to move on to something else. Such as the Mexican Soccer League.
