Okay, now I've just had it with these people. Reading Tuesday's Financial Times wednesday morning (once a week my paper's a day late, today they outdid themselves by not giving me the Wednesday paper, which should have been an omen it was going to contain some extra stupid articles) they had the periodic fit of lunacy that passes for Simon Kuper's football coverage. Seriously I could take everything written on the subject across all media, then take the most superficial, jingoistic, ignorant, straight-from-somebody's-publicist material, write a brief summary with no fact checking, and come up with Simon Kuper's column. Actually I couldn't, because even without having an intern check it out, I would have already known not to reprint the Nostradamus thing.
His column from Tuesday is mainly raving about how Spain was going to beat France, because a) they're young, b) they blew through their group, c) they have Raul, d) Nostradamus predicted it. If I wasn't sure of his background, his argument that Spanish players ran about twice as far as French players in their first round games kind of proves he's English, because running hard, being able to boot the ball the farthest, jump the highest and hit the hardest are heavily valued in two places, the US and England. Generally, soccer is seen in a lot of the world as perhaps the only game where the primary requirement is being good at the game, not any physical requirements, in contrast to basketball where a phenomenal 6'4" post player really can't cut it at the top level no matter how well he plays.
As far as Spain blowing through their first round group, did this guy not see who was in it? Yeah, Spain won playing their reserves against an already eliminated Saudi Arabia team, and they jumped up and down on WC debutantes Ukraine in their first game, which was actually impressive. However, they struggled with Tunisia when it was time to put the group away, and Spain is legendary for being good in qualifying, getting seeded, doing well in group games and then collapsing under pressure. France has actually won a World Cup and two Euros (Spain won the first one when nobody knew if it would take off), and the pedigree of France's players is way beyond Spain's. Which brings me to point c, Raul. He's legendary for disappearing in big games for Real Madrid and Spain, and when Zidane went to Real Madrid, you never heard Raul's name mentioned again. The guy was benched by Spain's coach before this tournament, for god's sake, even getting on the field is an accomplishment for him. I seriously have no idea how somebody could take those three factors against Spain's history and France's players, and decide Spanish victory was not just likely, but inevitable. France winning was an upset, but not exactly a surprise. I'm not even knocking Spain, they played well and fooled a lot of... well, the same amount of people they always do into thinking this was the year they would do well in the knock-out rounds. Rotten luck getting France, they might have pummeled Switzerland, looking at how well they broke down Ukraine.
If none of this was stupid enough, the jocular reference to Nostradamus should have done it. Here is the relevant text:
When 2006 is six months over the King of Spain crosses the Pyrenees with his army.
Belzebu's legions await battle in the plains of Central Europe.
Destruction and defeat fall upon the evil ones.
The Holy Grail returns with the triumphant King to Hispania.
This quatrain was actually posted on rec.sport.soccer in November by a guy having a laugh. He's now killing himself laughing that mainstream media in multiple languages have gotten ahold of his and are taking it seriously. Seriously, nobody had an intern with web access who could have looked this up at Project Gutenberg or something? Or even tracked down the original reference on usenet, where the author clearly states he made it up as a joke?
More on this developing topic once I've read ABN-AMRO's report on the World Cup.
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