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Azteca vs the Three Lions

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Mexico’s Competent and Hardworking Footballers

It was a game for the ages. England beat Mexico by the skin of their teeth, with only ten players after Jarell Quansah was issued a red card for a studs-up challenge to Jesús Gallardo after only 54 minutes of play.

I did not think England would win because of what I saw in the earlier Mexico vs Ecuador game at the same Azteca Stadium. The 80,000+ roaring fans help propel their team to victory. Today, every Mexican fan in the stands was given a Mexican flag to wave. The sight of 70,000-some Mexican flags waving in unison must have sunk the hearts of the British footballers.

But then Jude Bellingham scored twice for the Brits within three minutes around the 30-minute mark of the first period. Six minutes later, Julián Quiñones answered with a goal, followed by a penalty kick from Harry Kane. In the second period, the only score was a Mexico penalty kick from Raúl Jiménez at 69 minutes.

With the score at 3-2 for England, Mexico took advantage of Quansah’s red card and attacked the goal from all sides. Somehow, the English held out for the win.

If the refereeing by Australian Alireza Faghani were not scrupulously honest, England might well have lost. I have seen some really dicey official calls in some of the games I’ve watched, particularly in the France-Paraguay contest.

Brazil vs the Tartan Army

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Brazil’s Vinicius Jr and Scottish Goalkeeper

As part of my broken collarbone recuperation program, I watched a great soccer football game between Brazil and Scotland. Played in Miami, the stadium was packed with Brazilian and Scots supporters.

Brazil played a great game, with the South Americans winning with a score of 3-0. The announcers seemed to be mostly supporters of the Scots. While Vinicius Junior was taking apart the Tartan defense, all the announcers seemed to talk about was the convoluted mathematics that would allow the Scots to continue after their mediocre showing in the group stage for Group C.

I can understand that the Fox TV audience would take to British announcers more easily than they would a Brazilian announcer with a thick Portuguese accent.

In the end, the announcers finally conceded that the Brazilians played a superior game in every category that they could measure, but the Scottish team was clearly the sentimental favorite. And, in my estimation, the Brazilians played with more heart. It was a pleasure to watch them.

Futbol

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Lionel Messi of Argentina at Work

Since I am still slowly recuperating from a broken collarbone, I have taken advantage of the 2026 World Cup to watch a lot of soccer football or futbol. Generally, I am not a big fan of spectator sports, but futbol is in my veins, so to speak. My father played the game in Czechoslovakia and Cleveland, where there were nationality club leagues active in the 1930s.

When I was a lad, my father took me to Moreland Park in Cleveland, at a time when there were still a lot of nationality clubs active. I was impressed that a lot of the older spectators knew the terrible Paris twins, Elek and Emil. Among the scuttlebutt was a story that my father kicked so hard that he broke the other players’ legs more than once.

Less believable was the story that Elek thumped a referee in the back as he was inhaling before whistling a foul, causing the ref to swallow his whistle, which had to be pulled out by the lanyard.

Mind you, I don’t know that much about futbol and am confused by concepts such as off sides and the rules regarding corner kicks and free kicks and such like. What I enjoy is the fact that the game is action-packed, with a minimum of time-outs and no lengthy breaks for advertising, other than halftime.

The sport today is more forgiving than in the thirties, where there weren’t so many substitutions, and injuries meant your side had to play with less than a full complement of players. And there definitely weren’t any hydration breaks.

Who am I rooting for? Of course, it would be nice to see the U.S. team do well. Unlike my father, however, I am for any team that plays with its heart in the game. And I secretly have a preference for Argentina, Brazil, and the other teams from the Americas. Whom would I like to see lose? Probably Germany. I still haven’t altogether forgiven them for two world wars.

Watching Sports on TV

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Messi and Teammates Celebrating After World Cup Victory

I woke up too late on Sunday morning to watch all of the Argentina-France World Cup Final. But I did see the second half, followed by the two overtime periods and the penalty kicks. And that hour and a half or so was the most exciting sports event I ever saw on television.

Now that pretty much everyone has weighed in on the game and Lionel Messi’s triumph and Kylian Mbappé’s stoic loss, I thought I would say a few words about the act of watching sports event. I am uniquely qualified inasmuch as I rarely watch sports events and have no clearcut team identification in any sport. Moreover, when I was growing up, my father would get so teed off when one of the Cleveland teams lost—and in those years they lost with amazing frequency—that I would have to go into hiding to avoid the paternal wrath.

It is only recently that I have come to love watching two types of sports events which, coincidentally, occur at four-year intervals. I am referring to World Cup Football (men and women) and the Summer Olympics. (The Winter Olympics—Meh!.) I have little interest in baseball, which typically involves a few minutes (if any) of intense action stretched out over several hours. American football, to me, is characterized by lots of starts and stops, followed after the so-called two-minute warning, by another hour or so of play.

Basketball has a lot of action, but there’s a lot of starts and stops there, too, as if the sport were devised with advertisers in mind. As for hockey, I find it too hard to follow the puck across the ice. All I see is the mayhem.

Only soccer football has continuous action, except for times when a player is injured or pretends to be injured. The final on Sunday built up to a pitch of excitement such that I have never experienced with any other sport. There was so much skill spread among so many players that it was a pity that someone had to lose. I would have been equally happy for either France or Argentina to win the game.

Poles Apart

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Chanel High School R.I.P.

A strange memory from the past popped into my mind this afternoon as I was heading for the exit of the Century City parking garage. I thought back to our old high school cheer, which was openly contemptuous of Poles. Chanel High (later renamed St. Peter Chanel High) belonged to the North Central Athletic Conference, which consisted of a handful of Catholic high schools, including St. Edward, Elyria Catholic, and—most particularly—St. Stanislaus. I say “most particularly” because we had chosen St. Stan’s to be our official enemy. It was only a few miles away and located in a largely Polish Catholic neighborhood.

When our cheerleaders revealed the following chant, there were a few hard feelings:

OOH sah sah sah!
OOH sah sah sah!
Hit ’em in the head with a BIG KIELBASA!
Put ’em in a barrel
Roll ’em down the street
FIREBIRDS, FIREBIRDS
Can’t be beat!

We, of course, were the Firebirds. Fortunately, during my years at Chanel (1958-1962), we mostly prevailed over St. Stan’s. And it didn’t keep us Hungarians, Slavs, and Italians from enjoying Kielbasa sausages.

Back Then, All Our Cheerleaders Were Male

Once I graduated from Chanel, big changes happened. The biggest of them was the admission of girls. Then, there were a number of black students. Finally, the school was ceded to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland and was no longer controlled by the Marist order of priests. Around the same time, the name was changed from Chanel to St. Peter Chanel.

Unfortunately, it’s all moot now, as Chanel closed its doors a few years ago and has, I believe, been subjected to the wrecking ball. Sic transit gloria mundi!

 

An American Heroine

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Megan Rapinoe, the Star of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team

She was nowhere near the biggest bruiser on the field (that honor goes to France’s Wendie Renard, who at 6’ 1” was the biggest in the entire tournament). But when there were a few inches of daylight between her and the net, Megan Rapinoe found a way to corkscrew the ball between the defenders and past the goalkeeper and onto the scoreboard.

I don’t watch sports on television much, but I have a soft spot in my heart for what the world calls football and we Americans call soccer. That is because my Dad played for a Czechoslovakian club in the 1920s and for various nationality teams in Cleveland during the 1930s. When I was a child, he would occasionally take me to Moreland Park, where he was widely recognized by the old hands at the game. Elek and Emil Paris were the Terrible Twins of the Cleveland clubs. I heard all the stories about the players whose legs were broken by my father’s powerful kicks. These stories may have been slightly embroidered, but I ate them all up with a feeling of family pride.

The fact that Donald Trump is highly critical of her makes me admire Megan Rapinoe all the more. When asked by a reporter whether she would grace the White House with her presence, she replied that “she was not going to the f—ing White House.” That set the Donald off, he being rather thin-skinned by any kind of criticism.

There was a follow-up to that, however. “I stand by the comments that I made about not wanting to go to the White House with exception of the expletive,” Rapinoe told reporters. “My mom will be very upset about that.”

Still, during the Star Spangled Banner, all her teammates stood with their hand to their hearts—except for Megan, who had her hands at her sides. I like this girl: She’s a rebel!

 

 

Concussion Junction

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Are Two NFL Teams Coming to Los Angeles Next Year?

Are Two NFL Teams Coming to Los Angeles Next Year?

Los Angeles has not had an NFL team residents since 1994, when both the Rams and the Raiders picked up their footballs and took them elsewhere. Now it looks like the Rams are coming back in 2016—along with the Chargers. Am I happy about this? Not exactly. I don’t watch American football (though I like to see an occasional World Cup soccer game).

Both teams would play in a new stadium to be built in Inglewood, on the site of the old Hollywood Park Race Track. Until then, they’ll have to play in the old Coliseum (built for the 1932 Olympics), or maybe in some rinky-dink high school stadium.

Oh, well, whatever!