La Copa Mundial

So obviously the World Cup is a pretty big deal in Argentina. I watched the game at a bar that was about half Argentians and half expats (mostly British and American I think) with a friend of a friend — Emily. We sat at the bar for the whole game. It was fun — pretty much what I would expect. Argentina beat the Ivory Coast pretty soundly, though a goal late in the the game by the Ivory Coast did give la seleccion Argentina a bit of a scare.

What was more interesting was that for the couple days which followed the game, I must have seen the replays of the three goals scored in the game about fifty times. I guess that's what's funny about highlights — there are so few of them. But the game was sweet. The whole city kinda shut down for two hours during the game, which was cool.

Watching the US game was a different story. The game started at 1 here, and I finish class at 1, so I ran over to a restaurant near where my class is to watch it. I was probably the only American in the restaurant. When I got there, it was already nine minutes into the game, and the Czechs were up 1-0. Great. Things only got worse, obviously. The US sucked — they just looked like they couldn't get anything going. I thought that when you were in the top five of the world rankings, you were supposed to at least look like you could compete with any team in the world. Clearly not the case. My frustration was exacerbated by the fact that all of the patrons and waiters at the restaurant seemed to get a huge kick out of the US sucking. Damn. The game was also kinda boring — I had to order another coca-cola just to stay awake. Like Zack said in the EF#1 blog, things are looking very bleak for the US. Guess I'll have to start rooting for Argentina.