Missed PK’s Rivalry Checklist

With relatively uneventful rivalries Boca Juniors – River Plate (only reports of and no actual deaths) and Feyenoord – Ajax both ending at 2-2 last weekend, Missed PK ceased the opportunity to dive deeper into the rivalry issue.

Contrary to somewhat popular belief, throwing money at a team and playing against another oil magnate’s Afternoon Delight does not create a rivalry.  Rivalries, aka derbies if the teams are located in the same city or are in cities close to each other, usually have generations of conflicts (Barca – Real, Red Star – Partizan, Rangers – Celtic), many controversial games (many a Boca – River Plate), and at least a handful of players that would get lynched where they to show up in the wrong (part of) town (Ruggeri).  With rivalry claims running wild (those TV ratings need to stay up!), Missed PK presents your Rivalry Checklist.  Score less than 6 out of 10, and the match is not a rivalry, but just another game.  The impact?  Rivalries you attend or watch live, games you can record.

 And here your ‘Official Missed PK Rivalry Checklist’:

□   Pictures of players that move between the teams are burned, preferably by fans of both teams

□   There have been deaths amongst fans

□   At least 2 games got completely out of hand with over 5 red cards

□   The games between youth teams require police protection

□   The fans have vastly different background (e.g. based on religion, working class, boxers or briefs)

□   Players that score the winning goal, no matter how bad they are, will be celebrated forever

□   The fans must know at least 2 chants that seriously offend the other team

□   Everybody can recall at least 2 games with controversial calls

□   Minimum games requirement: at least 20 times over the last 15 years in League/Cup play, or 4 times in the last 10 years in international play

□   Marrying a fan of the rival can only occur in secret (with no family present)

 Extra free points can be added if the rivalry has a historical context that includes war, a colonial backlash, a craving for independency, territorial occupation or attempts thereof.

 Do the math for your favorite rivalry and let us know if they meet the standards!

Not done!!  Messi and Neymar hug after Brazil – Argentina.  During rivalry games, the only embrace allowed is a headlock.

Similarities between baseball and soccer/football

With the World Series dominating the airwaves, Missed PK spent some time around the baseball fields to identify the similarities between baseball and soccer.  Usually research pays off, but this time around it was slow going. 

Baseball, America’s favorite pastime and soccer, the world’s favorite pastime, are both played with a ball.  And usually at least part of the field is grass.  And there are players, a coach, and something called offense (when you bat) and defense (when you don’t).  There is some level of sliding, but the baseball sliding serves a different purpose altogether. 

That, really, is about it.  Oh – a lot of people come and watch!  We may have to look more into the place in culture and those kinds of things to find more similarities, but that topic we will save for another time.  Next up in this series: similarities between soccer and underwater hockey.

Elvis impresses a young baseball fan (who is actually the youngest Missed PK fan) that it is ‘2’ for ‘the Show’. 1 is for soccer (or nowadays for Football in the US).

‘Have Your Say’ – FIFA and UEFA live commentaries

Dear people behind ‘Have Your Say’ during FIFA and UEFA games

As US based football fans lacking 5 satellite tv’s and actually being employed, we depend during many European games on UEFA and FIFA match centers to track scores.  We (Missed PK) do not think our minds can be numbed more than by the ‘Have Your Say’ sections accompanying your match reports.  The Live Commentary (a neutral feed of events during the games including goals, chances, and cards) are a quick and solid way to stay informed on game progress, but the eye is too easily distracted by the witless comments in the next column.  Iran beats South Korea and Supersoundo goes: ‘Yes! Iran!! Bring it on Brazil!’  The moderator mentions that ‘surely with one more goal they will be up two and look good to win the match’.  On a FIFA match day or a CL day with Eastern European sides, it is anywhere between 4 and 15 hours of brain cell depleting nonsense.  Are we that stupid?  Is the average match center follower that mentally challenged? 

Can we simply ask you, dearest Match Center(UEFA) and Match Cast (FIFA) bosses to hire some decent moderators that can actually add some value and not insult our limited intelligence?  Perhaps a Jonathan Wilson who can inform readers what consequences substitutions will have on the formation and tactics?  Perhaps a statistician that lets us know how many goals Benzema has scored as a sub in CL games and against Ajax?  Please, save us from dying a little during each Match Center/Match Cast broadcast.

Debilatatingly yours,

Missed PK

 

 

Soccer in India

Recent travel has urged Missed PK to perform some research into the rise and fall of Indian soccer.

Thanks to 3 other Asian countries not showing up for qualification games, India qualified once for a World Cup (1950) but did not play due to the organization not allowing the team to play barefoot (or to the fact that the Indian Football Federation did not have the money for the long and expensive trip to Brazil – the barefoot story is the better one, though).  By the way, as during the 1938 first rounder Brazil – Poland the pitch was drenched Brazil’s legendary striker Leonidas also requested to play barefoot but was convinced otherwise and promptly dropped 3 on Poland in a 6-5 win.  Had India done their homework they may have strapped on the boots anyway.

The fifties were the golden age for Indian soccer with Syed Abdul Rahim coaching them to some Olympic and Asian Cup success, Neville D’Souza becoming the only Asian player to score a hat-trick at the Olympics and Sailen Manna being listed as one of the top 10 captains in the game in 1953.

Between then (1950) and now (2012) not an awful lot happened with Indian soccer, apart from little excitement surrounding players such as IM Vijayan (aka the Black Buck or Kalo Harin) and recently Sunil Chhetri who plays in Portugal for Sporting B (after not cracking the MLS’ Sporting Kansas City in 2010), an ill-executed attempt to start a Indian Premier League with the likes of Robbie Fowler, Hernan Crespo, and Robert Pires in the spring of 2012, and many very early World Cup qualifying exits (a trend Dutch coach Wim Koevermans will likely not buck).  A current 168^th FIFA ranking places them right alongside country Lesotho and Bangladesh.

In short:  soccer in India still has some ways to go but everyone here seems satisfied with watching local ESPN broadcast not only EPL, but also games from mammoth leagues such as the US’ MLS and the Dutch eredivisie.  We guess if Altidore, Van Persie, and Beckham keep up well, they can be part of another Indian soccer revival 62 years from now!

In the meantime, Missed PK tried to find an actual soccer field in Jaipur, but instead got drawn into something quite different (not out with 14 runs in 2 overs).

Well, there is also a ball and offense and defense involved…..

The Baggio miss

He didn’t start it, but he sure didn’t finish it either.  Baggio finds the sky in the World Cup 1994 final shootout.