Help! I'm Totally Addicted
I am totally and completely addicted to soccer. Arsenal played in the 4th Round of the FA Cup playoffs yesterday. I scheduled my Comcast DVR to record it. Not thinking about it being a playoff game, I then casually perused the rest of the channel line up to record one or two other games.
During the day, my mind would occasionally wander thinking, "Ooh, I get to watch Arsenal play tonight. Yippee." And when I finally arrived home, I settled down to what I hoped would be an enjoyable evening of winning (for us) football. I was very happy that Fox Soccer Channel showed a little more of the mundane-ish pre-game stuff like the coin toss and the players jumping around on the field to warm up. This is silly stuff, but it makes me feel a little more like I'm there. FSC usually edits this stuff out to only show the meat of the game in their rebroadcast. That's how they keep games to a tidy 2 hour time block. Anyway, it was a fun change.
Then the game was so stinking exciting. Arsenal have gone behind in something like their last 13 games only to either eek out a tie (yes, soccer allows ties in regular season play) or to barely win the game at the last minute (or second). But this game got off to a great start when we scored the first goal in the 13th minute (a game officially has 90 minutes, but it's always a little more than that). What was even more nail-biting is that Arsenal didn't bring their best players to this game either because the manager decided to give them a much needed rest or because they were out on injury or suspension (Henry, Fabregas - resting; Van Percy, Gallas - injured; Senderos - suspended; Lehman - resting AND suspended). So while we still fielded a good team, it wasn't the squad we would have put up against say, Manchester United.
But none of that seemed to matter because the Arsenal side looked fabulous the first half of the game. All except for one player. Julio Baptista (who sucks). "Who sucks" is now my tagline for this guy. Every time they said his name on TV, I added "who sucks." I'll concede that he didn't suck when he scored 4 goals in one game last month (that's REALLY impressive for you non-soccer people). But he just was "off" for the entire game last night. What is so frustrating for me is that no one in the Press seems to have noticed. He really really really sucked. He should have been pulled after the first half, but Wenger let him stay in. (And it turned out to be a good thing that Wenger didn't burn one of our three subs that early in the game.) There were other frustrating mistakes made by important players during the second half. Notably, Gilberto missed a penalty kick and Adebayor missed a one-on-one shot that even the 50-something year old announcer claims he could have made. But Baptista "who sucks" went on to miss a penalty kick as well as all the crappy missed crosses and bad shots he made during regular play. At least those other two mistakes were basically the only mistakes Gilberto and Adebayor made during the whole game.
(I know none of you care about any of this, so I really appreciate you reading anyway.)
The bad news finally came in stoppage time (they don't ever stop the clock during a football game so at the end of a half, the refs tack on a couple of minutes to account for any delays that happened like penalty kicks or injured players laying on the ground or refs having to talk to players about fouls they committed) when Bolton finally tied the game. A normal game would have ended there, but this was a playoff game. We had to have a clear winner to advance to the next round of play. So for the first time since the World Cup, I watched a game with Extra Time. They play an additional 15 minutes (with stoppage time added on if it is needed). If the game is still tied, they play another 15 minutes of Extra Time (with stoppage time tacked on). If it is still tied, they go to a penalty kick shoot out.
Just as the announcer was saying, "We'll have to go to Extra Time," my recording ended. I literally screamed at the TV. Fox Soccer Channel had used up the 2 hours they'd allotted to this game. I knew they would have continued to broadcast the game, but it would have rolled into the program name of whatever was to follow. So the only way I was going to see the end of this game is if I had recorded whatever was supposed to be shown next. Did I?
Find out next week...
Just kidding. Of course, I did. See, the title of this post is that I'm addicted to Soccer, not just Arsenal. When I was choosing which games to record, I noticed that the game coming on after Arsenal's was some championship for some league I'd never heard of. I said, "Hey, why not? If it's boring, I'll delete it. But it may be a good game." SO I HAD THE ENDING OF THE ARSENAL FA CUP GAME RECORDED BECAUSE I'M A FREAK!
I brought up that program and watched Arsenal do a whole lot of nothing in the first Extra Time period. Then Freddie Ljunberg, who came into the game as a substitution because he's just coming back from a bad injury and who clearly DOESN'T suck, scored the beautiful winning goal. To add insult to exhaustion, Adebayor scored on another gorgeous no-defenders-in-sight break to make the final score Bolton 1, Arsenal 3. (I have completely erased it from my mind that Julio Baptista "who sucks" helped Adebayor score that final goal.)
If anyone's interested, Arsenal advance to the 5th round, playing Blackburn on Saturday. Hopefully that game will end after the standard 90 minutes.
But this game reminded me of why I began watching soccer in the first place. It's unbelievably exciting.
During the day, my mind would occasionally wander thinking, "Ooh, I get to watch Arsenal play tonight. Yippee." And when I finally arrived home, I settled down to what I hoped would be an enjoyable evening of winning (for us) football. I was very happy that Fox Soccer Channel showed a little more of the mundane-ish pre-game stuff like the coin toss and the players jumping around on the field to warm up. This is silly stuff, but it makes me feel a little more like I'm there. FSC usually edits this stuff out to only show the meat of the game in their rebroadcast. That's how they keep games to a tidy 2 hour time block. Anyway, it was a fun change.
Then the game was so stinking exciting. Arsenal have gone behind in something like their last 13 games only to either eek out a tie (yes, soccer allows ties in regular season play) or to barely win the game at the last minute (or second). But this game got off to a great start when we scored the first goal in the 13th minute (a game officially has 90 minutes, but it's always a little more than that). What was even more nail-biting is that Arsenal didn't bring their best players to this game either because the manager decided to give them a much needed rest or because they were out on injury or suspension (Henry, Fabregas - resting; Van Percy, Gallas - injured; Senderos - suspended; Lehman - resting AND suspended). So while we still fielded a good team, it wasn't the squad we would have put up against say, Manchester United.
But none of that seemed to matter because the Arsenal side looked fabulous the first half of the game. All except for one player. Julio Baptista (who sucks). "Who sucks" is now my tagline for this guy. Every time they said his name on TV, I added "who sucks." I'll concede that he didn't suck when he scored 4 goals in one game last month (that's REALLY impressive for you non-soccer people). But he just was "off" for the entire game last night. What is so frustrating for me is that no one in the Press seems to have noticed. He really really really sucked. He should have been pulled after the first half, but Wenger let him stay in. (And it turned out to be a good thing that Wenger didn't burn one of our three subs that early in the game.) There were other frustrating mistakes made by important players during the second half. Notably, Gilberto missed a penalty kick and Adebayor missed a one-on-one shot that even the 50-something year old announcer claims he could have made. But Baptista "who sucks" went on to miss a penalty kick as well as all the crappy missed crosses and bad shots he made during regular play. At least those other two mistakes were basically the only mistakes Gilberto and Adebayor made during the whole game.
(I know none of you care about any of this, so I really appreciate you reading anyway.)
The bad news finally came in stoppage time (they don't ever stop the clock during a football game so at the end of a half, the refs tack on a couple of minutes to account for any delays that happened like penalty kicks or injured players laying on the ground or refs having to talk to players about fouls they committed) when Bolton finally tied the game. A normal game would have ended there, but this was a playoff game. We had to have a clear winner to advance to the next round of play. So for the first time since the World Cup, I watched a game with Extra Time. They play an additional 15 minutes (with stoppage time added on if it is needed). If the game is still tied, they play another 15 minutes of Extra Time (with stoppage time tacked on). If it is still tied, they go to a penalty kick shoot out.
Just as the announcer was saying, "We'll have to go to Extra Time," my recording ended. I literally screamed at the TV. Fox Soccer Channel had used up the 2 hours they'd allotted to this game. I knew they would have continued to broadcast the game, but it would have rolled into the program name of whatever was to follow. So the only way I was going to see the end of this game is if I had recorded whatever was supposed to be shown next. Did I?
Find out next week...
Just kidding. Of course, I did. See, the title of this post is that I'm addicted to Soccer, not just Arsenal. When I was choosing which games to record, I noticed that the game coming on after Arsenal's was some championship for some league I'd never heard of. I said, "Hey, why not? If it's boring, I'll delete it. But it may be a good game." SO I HAD THE ENDING OF THE ARSENAL FA CUP GAME RECORDED BECAUSE I'M A FREAK!
I brought up that program and watched Arsenal do a whole lot of nothing in the first Extra Time period. Then Freddie Ljunberg, who came into the game as a substitution because he's just coming back from a bad injury and who clearly DOESN'T suck, scored the beautiful winning goal. To add insult to exhaustion, Adebayor scored on another gorgeous no-defenders-in-sight break to make the final score Bolton 1, Arsenal 3. (I have completely erased it from my mind that Julio Baptista "who sucks" helped Adebayor score that final goal.)
If anyone's interested, Arsenal advance to the 5th round, playing Blackburn on Saturday. Hopefully that game will end after the standard 90 minutes.
But this game reminded me of why I began watching soccer in the first place. It's unbelievably exciting.
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3 Comments:
I don't think you really want help at all....
Just wanted to let you know I read it. I have no idea what to say...
you're allowed your addiction. just don't shave your head!
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