Gold Cup: 9-Jul-2009

I enjoyed the always pleasurable experience of attending a soccer game at little or no cost to myself. This time, courtesy of Alison. Thanks Alison. Also in attendance was Kejuan who drove and shelled out $20 for parking. (I hit him back at least in part with a moderately priced $8.50 Bud Light...) I'll be honest, this post would have been better if I was writing it at 12:15 am this morning when I finally got home. For all of my blogging fans, don't worry... perhaps a running diary of the US - Haiti game is to come. Oh wait, Haiti's supposed best player plays in the USL. I still promise to give you player ratings, point out things like how the US doesn't have a left back who can get a cross on target, question all the moves the coach makes, etc. 

Game 1: Guadeloupe vs. Nicaragua - not much to report. I spent most of my time on my BlackJack looking up Guadeloupe on Wikipedia. Here's the run down, technically it's part of France, it's north of St. Lucia, and it's population is smaller than Austin. Fairly impressive team all things considered.  I don't know much else about it. 

The game itself was not entertaining. Not exactly Battle of the Titans. Guadeloupe won 2-0 with the Guadeloupe cheering section conveniently located in the first 2 rows of our section. Their fans celebrated in what I can best describe as the equivalent of the Soulja Boy dance. Except instead of piping in music to dance to they were singing. Quite a treat.

Game 2: Mexico vs. Panama - much better teams and for the first 70 minutes what looked to be a very good game. Panama had a clear size advantage and appeared to be the more athletic team while Mexico was much more technical.  However, with the cards piling up (not sure what brought on the shove to the face of Mexico's coach, but my guess is that the guy for Panama has an anger management problem or the coach for Mexico had it coming) things spiraled out of control. Once this happened, the fans for Mexico (I know it's the idiot few that ruin it for the whole, but still the fact remains that they do ruin it for everyone else...) stepped up and showed a lot of class. This included stopping the game repeatedly as they threw popcorn, drinks and whatever else they could find onto the field and ideally / frequently directly at players for Panama (such as when they were being taken off, leaving the field, getting near the sideline). Very classy. Really, the part that is the most irritating is that it's the actions of these bozos that will probably result in Houston no longer being seriously considered as a site for future international soccer games; at the least diminishing the city's chances.  If the US is fortunate enough to host another WC in my lifetime, I don't see any reason the US federation or FIFA would select Houston. It used to be a large soccer supporting fan base comprised with lots of transplants from our neighbors to the south would work in Houston's favor - now that seems to me to be what will work against it. All told...

Thanks! Just so you know, buying a ticket to the game doesn't actually entitle you to throw stuff on the field. I hope you were recorded for posterity so that your family (children, grand parents, etc.) can celebrate you. I would expect that this will most likely be by refusing to be seen in public with you. Please move to Detroit where this sort of behavior is deemed more appropriate. Man, if only Ron Artest played for Panama...