Netherlands/Denmark

I forgot they were playing against each other in their first match. Those are precisely the two teams that were supposedly targeted by a revenge plot motivated by various films/cartoons originating in the two countries, so I would expect massive security at this one.

best decision of the day

Not sticking it out for the 2nd half of Germany-Australia. The second first half goal, a powerful header by Miroslav Klose, had such a definitive feel to it that I figured Australia probably wasn’t going to be clawing back into this one. And now I see it’s 4-0 with time running out. Germany’s the most impressive team I’ve seen so far.

Who’s playing tomorrow? I’ve completely forgotten.

Oh, among others… The Dutch, the Italians…

Ghana

I specifically got on a bus that would have allowed me to get back to Zamalek in time to watch Ghana vs. Serbia, because both teams interest me. But just before the bus departed, I realized I had left some crucial documents in my office that were key to my ability to work from home rather than the office for the next couple of days. So I had to bail and catch a later bus, and as a result I only caught the tail end of Ghana/Serbia on ESPN GameCast, which is essentially a map of the field with some diagrams of what is happening, along with an announcer typing comments. (More on that in a moment.)

The upshot is, I have little idea of whether or not Ghana looked impressive in their big win over Serbia (following a Serb handball in the penalty area while already a man down). But I will say that I was quite impressed by Ghana in their loss to Egypt in the African Cup of Nations Final in February. Ghana is a young squad, but they struck me as well-drilled, serious, and emotionally mature.

And remember, this group (Ghana, Serbia, Germany, Australia) will be the first opponents in the next round for whichever two teams emerge from the England/USA group.

And if you trust the views of the ESPN GameCast announcer, it will definitely be England and the USA who emerge. He was so appalled by the quality of play in the Algeria/Slovenia matchup that he typed comments such as the following (I was laughing aloud in disbelief).

*”We seem to be headed for an inevitable draw in this one.” (In minute 40!)

*”The goal is not to put one million fans to sleep.”

*”These are both very, very poor teams.”

*”Slovenia has never won an international match, with just 2 draws and 4 losses in their 6 appearances. Why am I not surprised by that stat?” (Somewhere, Zizek is miffed.)

However, Slovenia and Algeria are the teams that knocked Russia and Egypt out of the Cup. And I think Russia and Egypt are the two best teams in the world who are sitting at home rather than in South Africa right now.

I’ll take it

1-1 draw with England? I’ll take it, even if it’s just lucky. Come on England, you’re better than that! After that quick opening goal I expected total humiliation, but it never happened.

Another Obama-loving taxi driver on the way home. It’s not just perfunctory– the taxi drivers of Cairo still really seem to love him, even as a good part of the American populace has soured on him (or at least that’s true of every taxi driver I ever get). I keep reading newspaper stories about the Arab world no longer liking Obama, but I have yet to see any evidence of it here. Of course we’re technically in Africa here, and the taxi drivers always make a point of the Africa connection when they bring up his name.

Speaking of Africa… The South African stadiums look nice.

World Cup

Because of all the work I have due, and the fact that I purposely do not own a television, I’ve caught only about 1.25 of the 3 World Cup games so far. And I have yet to see a goal: I arrived at a TV this afternoon to see South Korea looking pretty good against Greece, but they were already up 2-0 and did not score again. The one full game I sat through was France-Uruguay last night, a scoreless draw.

My usual location of choice for such events is the AUC Hostel in Zamalek, since they have a large-screen TV in the lobby with plenty of comfortable chairs. Also, it’s fun to watch sports amidst undergraduate student energy. It’s the brand new batch of summer students right now, most of them from the USA, and it’s always refreshing to relive my own discovery of Egypt through them: listening in as they tell each other where to get the best tamiyya sandwiches (the fava bean rather than chick pea version of falaffel), and so forth. Those first few weeks in Egypt feel like a decade, since so many unprecedented things happen every day.

My best soccer friend in Cairo thankfully decided to host England-USA at his own home rather than risk high unpopularity by the two of us cheering for the USA at one of the two English-dominated drinking venues we’d been considering. Argentina-Nigeria, should be worth catching a bit of that, but I’m very busy.

One thing I’m really curious to find out about is which team the Egyptians will support in Algeria vs. USA. Normally they would obviously support their Arab brothers against the Superpower Menace, but Algeria may be a very special case after the events of last November. We’ll see.

World Cup pools

Anyone else in a pool? We have a fairly large one here in Cairo.

I did pick the Mexico-South Africa draw correctly, but got the France-Uruguay draw wrong like most people probably did.

England-USA tomorrow. My most serious World Cup friend, also American, wants to watch it at one of two heavily English drinking venues in Cairo, which I’m not sure is the best idea.

good reader point about my “English curse words” post

Yesterday I expressed puzzlement over why Brazilian referees would want to learn English curse words just to detect abuse that they could easily have left alone if not understood.

But a message from reader Matt convinces me that I simply missed the point of what the referees are doing:

“Now, from the quote I could not understand your point because I inferred that the abuse they were trying to detect was that between players, i.e. ‘sledging’, and not between player and referee. In rugby, the sport I most understand, one of our (Wales) international players has a strategically superb (if morally questionable) tactic of surruptitiously saying something to the opposing team which then results in them hitting him. (He comes from a family of boxers and is, to quote one commentator, ‘quite handy’ – that is to say, not unaccustomed to the language of violence). He then looks mournful and surprised at the referee, who accordingly penalises the oppostion player.”

This must be it. Talk between players can become quite ugly and does need to be policed. In the NBA the referees make a distinction between trash-talking and taunting. In principle, taunting between players is penalized severely, whereas trash-talking is not. Taunting tends to be really personal stuff, such as: “Hey, I think I left my keys under your wife’s pillow, did you find find them?” That’s enough for a technical foul. Simply belittling the other player’s skils, by contrast, is merely trash-talking and hence not punished.

Anyway, Matt must surely be right about what the Brazilian refs are up to. I stand corrected, and I now salute their hard work. The talk could get pretty nasty between the England and USA players.

I’m not especially hopeful that the USA can do well against that England team. A draw would be a big victory for us, I think.

learning English swear words for the World Cup

Now here’s an odd story:

“RUSTENBERG, South Africa — The Brazilian referee and his assistants who will work the England-United States match at the World Cup have been studying English-language obscenities the players might use.

Carlos Simon will referee Saturday’s match in Rustenburg, assisted by Roberto Braatz and Altemir Hausmann. They want to ensure players can’t get away with abuse.”

I’m not sure this makes much sense to me. Yes, I usually detest the intellectual method of trying to out-clever what other people say and poke holes in its logic (because I agree with Whitehead that logical blunders are ultimately a fairly trivial portion of what makes for bad thinking). But I’m going to make an exception in this case, because I’m not sure a verbal offense really occurs if the recipient can’t understand it.

In other words, if someone in Cairo were to throw a string of unknown Arabic curse words at me, I’m not sure it would be a problem (unless it were a prelude to some sort of more tangible threat). Why go out of your way to learn the words so as to be able to detect insults that would have meant nothing to you previously?

There’s also the problem of possible misunderstandings; after such a minimal training session as this, the Brazilian refs might easily mistake non-swear words for swear words. One of the weird events of the past year for me was to learn that someone was deeply wounded for five months by a remark I supposedly made that I did not at all make. This wasn’t a non-native speaker of English, but a native speaker I was addressing at a concert, and my words were heard completely incorrectly due to the loudness of where we were standing (at least the person later brought it up again and I was able to set the record straight!).

The Brazilian referees could easily fall into the same trap and red-card someone for entirely innocuous remarks. I say, just let the Anglo-Americans say whatever they want– and if you don’t recognize the words, no harm done.