Where The Hell Am I?: soccer/football

Showing posts with label soccer/football. Show all posts

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Tonight: Manchester United vs FC Seoul

Manchester United star players including Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Mikael Silvestre leave the arrivals halls at Incheon International Airport on Wednesday.

Yikes!

I forgot about this! I got an email a couple of weeks ago, so I'll be watching this match tonight with some of Britain's finest. From there, I'll head to pick up the last Harry Potter book in the series.

Woot! Woot! It looks like it will be a fun evening.

Here is the news story that reminded me they're in town.

Manchester United Land in Korea

England Premier League champion Manchester United arrived in Seoul on Wednesday to a massive welcome from football fans. Led by manager Sir Alex Ferguson, the team arrived at Incheon International Airport at 2:40 p.m.

The champion team are on an Asia tour that already saw them play a friendly match against the Urawa Reds of the Japanese league. They plan a friendly against FC Seoul at the Seoul World Cup Stadium on Friday.

Sir Alex, dressed in black suit and red tie, was first out of the arrivals hall, followed by star players in red T-shirt and navy sweat pants such as Paul Scholes, Wayne Rooney, Edwin Van der Sar, Ryan Giggs, Christiano Ronaldo and Rio Gavin Ferdinand. Owen Lee Hargreaves and Luis Carlos Almeida, who joined the club this summer, were also there.

Incheon Airport was teeming with football fans from the early morning. Fans thronged the airport, from college students wearing ManU uniforms and singing anthems to middle schoolgirls holding presents for the players. The 1,000 Korean fans sang songs, beat drums and chanted slogans to welcome the players.

Kim Gwang-woo, a 26-year-old member of an online fanclub, said, “It feels like a dream and I can’t believe they arrived in Korea. To us, four nights and three days (the time ManU is staying in Seoul) are like a festival.”

Lee Ga-ram said, “I came here from Busan to see Manchester United. I’m about to start my military service, and a Manchester United game is the best present to myself.” Close to 100 journalists were busy capturing the exciting atmosphere on video and cameras.

Sir Alex, in a press conference at the Shilla Hotel, where the team is staying, said, “Park Ji-sung told me that FC Seoul is a strong team.” Though Park can’t play in this game, Koreans can see the team’s new members Hargreaves and Nani in action, he added. FC Seoul manager Senol Gunes said, “FC Seoul consists of young players, and they will play a good match against Manchester United with its experienced players.”

The team leaves Seoul on Saturday for two more friendly matches in Macau and Guangzhou.

FC Seoul
Manchester United

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Tuesday, July 4, 2006

Two More Sleepless Nights in Seoul.../More World Cup Silliness

Well, here we go! It's just before 4am here in Seoul!

The Germany v. Italy game is about to start, and I'm all a flutter (no, not because of the cute players...well, maybe a little).

If you don't have it on TV you can tune into Matchcast on the Fifa World Cup site. There is also BBC - Radio Five Live. However, I'm not sure if you can get the broadcasts outside of the UK.

More World Cup silliness:

For you that are completely perplexed by football/soccer, here is a "How to" guide to understanding the sport's strategy.

If you played for Brazil (even though they're out), what would your name be?

My Brazilian name is: Reginundo.

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Come on England!!!

Well, I have to admit I was rooting for England to get further in the World Cup and hopefully provide a few upsets along the way. Alas, that didn't happen. I and others experienced the highs and definite lows of watching the England v. Portugal match at the Broughton Club in the British Embassy in Seoul. It was nice being with others because my neighbors wouldn't have cared much for the wails of frustration that would have come out of my apartment in the wee hours of the morning. FYI, the game started at 12am Sunday morning here.

It was also nice because being there allowed me to temper my frustration with many Boddingtons.

The BBC has a fun article highlighting ten things you can do with your England flag if you have one just hanging around with no purpose now that England has been eliminated. Since I'm American, I don't have one and thought it would be silly to run out and purchase one, but I can use a few of these suggestions for the US flag too since the US team was served a quick series of defeats at the World Cup.

Here are the suggestions:

1. Use them to dry your eyes.
2. Continue to display your England flag with pride (part I).
3. If you're a Sun reader you could consider using the flags as stuffing for an effigy of the newly-crowned "least popular man in the Premiership" Cristiano Ronaldo.
4. Recycle it.
5. Return them to China.
6. If you know anyone who's a dab hand with a sewing machine why not consider turning the flags into clothing and shipping them out to developing countries.
Did you notice these are getting meaner as we go? Maybe the writer was working on this while having one too many martinis?
7. Bleach flag, convert into cross of St Andrew*, get behind Andrew Murray.
8. Continue to display your England flag with pride (part II).
9. Try and get a refund or exchange.
10. Save them for next time.

*the cross of St. Andrew is on the flag of Scotland

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Monday, July 3, 2006

World Cup Vandalism - World Cup Silliness in Seoul

A Bit of World Cup Silliness From Seoul

There is such enthusiasm here in Seoul for the World Cup that folks are now vandalizing subway signs. Vandalism in Seoul is a rare thing in comparison to other big cities, so this gets attention.

The picture was taken by a classmate of mine at Ewha Womans University subway station. Thanks for the pic, So-eun! The Korean team's first match was against Togo on June 13th. Korea won 2:1, but somewhere in Seoul one of Togo's players has a fan committed enough to alter public property to spread his good name!

The Korean is altered from 이대 (that sounds like "E-dae") to 토고 아데바요르 (which sounds like "Togo Adebayoro"). This is some sort of homage to Emmaneul Adebayor who is on the Togo national football team and who plays in the English Premiership League for Arsenal.

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Sunday, July 2, 2006

The World Cup and My Country...

I've had a great time enjoying the World Cup games. Most people find that odd when they realize I'm American. I got into football (soccer) in the late 90s when I lived in San Francisco.* It's just a really fun game to watch and the fans are a joy (but for those psychotic football hooligans).

*I choose to use the term "football" over "soccer" as the soccer term is distincly American because we have already have a game called "football". In which the players, ironically, rarely use their feet to maneuver the ball.

There is nothing like enjoying an exciting game of football with a beer and some cheerful folks. I had a blast in 2002 and this year chanting "대한민국!!! 대한민국!!!"* with my Korean friends during the Korean team's matches! *("Republic of Korea!!! Republic of Korea" - just like the "USA! USA!" chant that we do at big international tournaments).

It just seems that in relation to football, Americans are displaying again just how ignorant we tend to be at times. Prior to the World Cup getting started I was watching CNN. They had people call or email in their predictions for who would win. Of course, some dimwit in NYC said "The US team will win!". Hello? Our players are in the MLS which is just not fertile enough of a training ground against the other world class players the best of whom cut their teeth in the various UEFA leagues.

I'm an American! I'm an idiot! :::insert soundbyte from the Green Day song here:::

That's how I've felt watching CNN, and when I was following the Ghana v. US Matchcast on Yahoo! One American who went to Germany said he was looking forward to following our team all the way to the final! (I'm assuming he seriously meant the final two...but maybe he just meant the quarter or semifinals). I saw another American saying some other stupid stuff.

Now, our team wasn't bad, but we weren't on a par with those other teams. Some people on Matchcast were blaming the US coach or the US team captain. Maybe it was the coach, or maybe it was the team captain, but it's a team sport. I'm sitting there thinking "you idiots...it's a TEAM game. The whole team has to come together, so blame them all if you're going to play that silly game."

Ghana's team was strong and they've proved it by whipping our butts. They're on various international professional squads and have, what is crucial in the World Cup, which is INTERNATIONAL experience. I say good for them because it's great to see a strong African team make it to the quarter-finals.

I'm just embarrassed hearing Americans opine on a sport they know very little about. I got into it a few years ago and I'm still learning, but I'm not dumb enough to think that the US team was a serious contender at any point in this. I think we could have played stronger. We could have put up a stronger fight, but from the first game against the powerful Czechs we weren't very strong in either offense or defense. Americans just seem to not have a clue that our team got put in one of the hardest draws of them all. So why folks thought we could "pull something out" at the last minute is beyond me.

Don't get me wrong. I love my country (most of the time), however, being abroad has shown me how quickly Americans tend to stick our big foots in our big mouths by opining on things when maybe we should just sit back, watch, listen and learn. Granted, the same could be said for me, this blog and this entry, but I'll call this critical social commentary and that always is an exception, right?

For now I give it to France for an awesome upset! I cannot wait for the final, and I'm hoping to see Germany (and their sexy and tough captain, Michael Ballack (the dark haired one), and that built like a brick wall and hot like lava goal keeper, Jens Lehmann) against France.