World Cup Conclusion - Spain Wins!

The World Cup is finally done. Spain has won. No real surprise there - though they were an odd case in this tournament. They came in as major favorites, along with France and Argentina, but somehow seemed - underwhelming. France and Argentina were flashy and fun, with lots of goals, and superstar players running up their tallies - Spain was held 0-0 by Cape Verde in their first game. In the knockouts, Argentina lived very dangerously - leaving it very late to beat Cape Verde - very late against Egypt (plus dubious referee work) - taking care of business, more or less, against Switzerland, though not dazzling, then leaving it late, again, against England. That was 3 very exciting games, with a good number of goals and drama and all the rest. Spain meanwhile won narrow games late against Portugal and Belgium, and looked exactly the same as they did against Cape Verdi or Saudi Arabia.

Which should have been more of a clue. Argentina could look like a totally different team at the 80 minute mark of a game and the 90 minute mark - Spain looked exactly the same against Cape Verdi and France. The semi-final against France is where all became clear - Spain shut them down as effectively as they shut down everyone else. Great as France could be offensively, Spain was in another world defensively. They smothered everyone - threw a blanket over them and played keep away until they created an opening and hit the shot. They did it against everyone - Cape Verdi to France. They swallowed France's attack the same as everybody else. They did it to Argentina.

The final might have been the second most predictable game in the tournament- second because I would have expected Argentina to at least try to play some football. They did not. They turned into Paraguay - hopelessly outclassed on offense, and thuggish on D. When it was over, they didn't stop, looking around for bystanders to foul, unclaimed red cards to win. It was extra disgraceful because Lionel Messi deserved a lot better - he deserved better behavior from his team, and a better team around him. To be fair, Argentina were better through most of the tournament - this time, they came out playing for penalties. It was telling after the game to see Messi wandering around alone, with the Spanish players all coming up to him to wish him well, while the rest of the Argentina team seemed to be trying to get themselves arrested. 

And so it goes. The final, then, was the second most predictable game of the tournament - the third place game between England and France was the most predictable. Two really good to great offensive teams with nothing to play for but their stat lines and no reason on earth to get in the way of the football - 6-4 was just about right, and as entertaining as it sounds. The announcers carried on as though this were a game with something at stake, other than Owen Hargreaves comparing it to an all star game a couple times - but what was at stake was Mbappe's golden ball and Saka's hat trick. It was an exhibition, and they put on a lovely exhibition. Bt nothing like the exhibition Spain put on, especially against France. Just that you have to look for it.

Anyway. This was a pretty fun tournament. I watched an awful lot of it - and in the end - there was way too much of it. 48 teams is ridiculous. Notably, though, this is not because of the dilution of the talent - there was some dead wood in there, but no worse than most 32 team tournaments, and the knockouts were remarkably competitive, even the round of 32. There's just too much of it. Off the field - I don't know. The stench of money grubbing is truly obnoxious, FIFA can't help looking corrupt and bullying, whether they are or not, and American stadiums are beautiful but soulless places. I don't know. On the other hand, the fans behaved extremely well - traveling fans, North American hosts, everyone was having a good time. There were lots of fun teams, exciting stories, potential upsets (though we ended up with the top 4 teams in the world in the semis - though we did so by the skin of Argentina's teeth.) I confess, it would have been a lot cooler if Egypt had help on against them, or Mexico had managed to take out England - but what we got were some great games. 

It was fun. 

The End of Graham Platner (soon, soon)

I have been posting my butt off this year - sorry it's all sports and Graham Planter though.

Platner, bless his heart, is about to leave the Maine senatorial race. Though apparently he is still putting off the final decision. Good lord.

In the end, it's the sexual abuse that got him, as it should. When the stories started coming out, it was hard not to think this was the beginning of the end - it was hard to get past the last set of allegations. This time, there's no room for hesitation. And this is no surprise - he may not have any track record as a politician, but he had a track record as a scumbag. I hardly expect this to be the end. Hopefully, though, he will be long gone when the next shoe drops.

All right, that's enough. Now the Maine Dems should be able to get someone in there who isn't a scumbag. I thought during the primaries that it was a shame there were as many respectable candidates for governor, and no one but Platner (and poor Janet Mills, who has to take some responsibility for this - why was she running for senate? why didn't anyone in a position to do so tell her she ought to get out of the way? these things have their facets) running for senate? Which of course matters a hell of a lot more than governor. Now - a good chunk of the failed gubernatorial candidates are going for this one - it's encouraging. Jackson has the same lefty endorsements Platner had - Bellows, Shah ran well in the other race - it's encouraging.

The Platner die hards will weep about "corporate candidates" - whatever man. These are people who have shown no judgment of character, who ran a shitty campaign against Susan Collins, of all people, who seem to be fighting the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries tp this fucking day. They are not people anyone should listen to. I am all for progressive policies and grassroots campaigns, but come on people - can't you find candidates without Nazi tattoos? who don't abuse their girlfriends? cheat on their wives? write racist and sexist shit on line? Can't you find people who aren't scumbags? Can't you see when someone is a scumbag and behave appropriately?

They do it in other places - from Bernie Sanders to Mamdani to AOC to Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to Ayanna Pressley - they all have the politics, and none of them are scumbags. So - it can be done.

And finally, kicking this piece of shit while he is down - one thing I see around is remarks about Platner's "authenticity" - authenticity? This is a guy who was made by a committee if anyone was - the rugged manliness married to left wing populist politics, but nothing all that serious, just the same talking points all the Bernie clones come up with. If it were possible to create an actual human being with AI, Platner is what you would come yup with. (Though if you were entering prompts, you would hope you'd tell it screen out the racists and rapists and Totenkopf lovers.) And this is so obvious to me - he is so obviously fake - how do people miss it?

Anyway. Hopefully he's soon to be gone and we can move on. Find someone to beat Collins and get on with it.

World Cup Quarterfinals

Here we are - almost a month of soccer, and we have reached the quarterfinals. There are no big surprises:

France v Morocco

Spain v Belgium

Argentina v Switzerland

Norway v England

Okay, that last one is a bit of a surprise, especially since Norway beat Brazil. But not a big surprise - Norway was widely pegged as one of the dark horses, what with Erling Haaland up there scoring a couple goals a game (7 in 4 games in this tourney), and Brazil was widely pegged as most likely to disappoint. Switzerland might be a surprise, though they are always a good tournament team, and had a pretty easy run in. I wish Columbia had beaten them - but they aren't bad. A week ago the thought of Belgium beating the US - was plausible, but not something I would expect, not the way those two teams were playing. 

Thank you Donald Trump! He's always trying to turn back time, and he seems to have succeeded - though only to 2018 and only to the Belgian (and maybe American) national team. He called up FIFA and asked them to review Balogan's red card - they did, suspending the suspension, and pissing off Belgium, UEFA, most of the world's fans and commentators - pissed off Belgium whipped our sorry asses. We slunk off meekly. 

I don't know if that will help the Belgians against Spain, but who knows. They were supposed to bet a pretty good team - they showed up for a couple games, and about 10 minutes against Senegal, and looked it - but the rest has been stodgy and dull. Still - if they stay focused, they might do something.

Can I pick the winners? I would like to see Morocco win, they are one of the most exciting teams in the tourney, but France is a tall order. France has now shown weaknesses. They even mostly held their tempers against the grotesque buffoonery of Paraguay, and for the French, not being baited might end up being the greatest feat of all. I do expect Spain to deal with Belgium. Then? well this has been a front runners cup for the most part - France vs Spain - should mean France, but Spain is the real deal, even if they are less showy about it.

On the other side - Argentina has no business losing to Switzerland, though they didn't have a lot of business going 120 minutes to beat Cape Verde or 93 or whatever it was to beat Egypt (with the ref's help - the Egyptian goal that was brought back looked to me like the worst call of the tournament.) Switzerland knows their way around a World Cup match. Meanwhile, England vs Norway has the makings of a heck of a game - England has shown grit and determination, winning in the face of severe adversity, but Norway has Erling Haaland! No one else has contained him. It sure would be fun. And whoever wins that - has more than a fighter's chance against Argentina, who have shown plenty of grit and determination as well - but against teams that were all grit and determination. What happens then they have to face Bellingham and Kane? or Haaland? 

Still - the most likely outcome is France and Argentina, the most boring imaginable match up - except the last time they met, they produced the most exhilarating World Cup game I have ever seen. Probably not an accident: put the best two teams on the field and you have a good chance of getting an all timer game. But man it would be fun to see Norway vs Morocco!

Anyway, there you are. It's been a cool tournament - it has mostly followed the form sheets, but there have been some fantastic stories and fantastic games. Cape Verde vs Argentina? Egypt and Argentina? England and Mexico? even Portugal and Croatia? Fantastic stuff. And mostly fair play - mostly very solid officiating, though VAR becomes a pain in the ass after all. All those microscopic offsides feel - wrong. And going back the whole length of the field to find a foul the ref missed to take a goal away - that pisses me off. The way Argentina finished that game, that call probably didn't matter that much - but it is still a shame.

Finally? the old timers - Messi has as brilliant as ever. Mo Salah, starting on the downslope, was still full of life. Lukaku has three goals. Modric looked like a corpse in their first game, but kept getting better. Granit Xhaka is still a force to be reckoned with. Ancient goalies like Vozinha were scintillating. On the other hand, where would Portugal be is Roberto Martinez used Ronaldo the way Belgium used Lukaku? bring him in late to soak the team or see games out, give him a start or two to see what he can do, if the matchups require? They did not use him that way - and home they go, quite meekly in the end.

Semiquincentennial

As of yesterday, the United States of America, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, is 250 years old. It has been some kind of a ride - what is there to say at this juncture? We have made it this far, we might stick around a while - though what we will be, if we last, is up for debate.

It is strange how much of an afterthought this anniversary is. I remember 1976 - you were constantly reminded that this was the bicentennial. You were reminded for a year or so coming up to it. There were all kinds of knick knacks to commemorate it, there were movies made, from 1776 to Nashville, movies that in some way pointed to the date. This time around, is there anything like that? There's a new movie about George Washington, apparently, but that's about the French and India War, so does that really count? I went to the 4th of July parade yesterday and saw - did I see anything about the 250th anniversary? There might have been a couple comments from the announcers, maybe someone had a banner or something on some of the floats - I don't remember. My brother had his 250th anniversary hat he picked up at Fort Ticonderoga last year - does that count? 

It's been no big deal. Is that Donald Trump's fault? Obviously, yes - he has poisoned the well of the country, poisoned any celebrations of this date. I can't say he has poisoned the idea of patriotism - he has inspired a lot of patriotism for what the country really is, and should be - but he's made overt, unqualified celebration of the country, especially in abstract, symbolic terms, much more difficult. And he has done such a job of pissing on the symbols of the country, from his destruction of part of the White House to dirtying up the reflecting pool to his stupid MMA fight a couple weeks ago to his comically inept "state fair" business, that it's hard to find much you can hang on to.

There is, in fact, plenty to hang on to. They just aren't the flag waving kinds of things - their ideas, the actual words of the Constitution and Declaration, it's history and so on. There are moments of triumph - Mamdani's election in New York, and what has come from that. Or the World Cup, which whatever you can say against it (and there are always a million things to hate about FIFA, and the government has behaved disgracefully at many turns - ask the Irani team, particularly), has shown the country at its best. The people who made it here have had fun. They've gotten on well with actual Americans, and with each other, more than you would expect from a soccer tournament. 

It helps of course that almost every team in the cup can draw on a massive contingent of Americans descended from that country. I don't live in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville anymore, but it's not far removed. Watching Cape Verde, I couldn't help think, in Massachusetts that's not far from a home team - I had friends in New Bedford, and that place was full of Cape Verdeans, including a couple of those friends. Fall River, Gloucester, the other sea going towns in Southern Mass, Rhode Island and Connecticut, all heavily Cape Verdean. Where I lived, Cambridge had massive Brazilian communities, restaurants and stores up and down Cambridge street; Somerville too, along with a notable Portuguese community. As well as large Hispanic communities all through the Boston area; a significant number of Haitians - and so on.

Which is, of course, the best thing you can say about the USA. We're made up of everyone. (So's Canada, for that matter - whose heritage I'm happy to claim as well.) If you want the best symbol of the United States, it probably is the Statue of Liberty. That is who we are. We came from somewhere else, and we became Americans. Not that the people already here were ready to accept it of course - but the weight of history will tell. 

It is true that we have 3 or 4 supreme court justices who are willing to throw out one do the clearest sentences in the constitution - "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside." - to negate this unambiguous positive. But they are fools, evil, cruel, corrupt people, who can't be allowed to continue unchecked forever. And they are wrong about the country - and it seems likely that whatever harm they do, the country will wash them away, sooner or later. And that they can't really break what the country is - which is a country of immigrants who find ways who live together, when they are given the chance.

There's some optimism for you. I do think, of course, that 1776 is not really the date we should be celebrating. Maybe July 9, 1868, the date of the ratification of the 14th amendment, is a better date - that is when the Constitution ceased to be a contract with hell and became what the Declaration of Independence implied and the Constitution was supposed to be - a document devoted to freedom and democracy. While we are at it, we should change the national anthem from the Star Spangled Banner to the much more deriving Battle Hymn of the Republic - that's something worth celebrating!

That's enough of that. But it is a reminder that Donald Trump and his goblins do not define what this country is, they don't know what it is, and they don't care. I can't sugar coat the beginnings of the country - the fact that it was founded by white surpemecists who would be horrified by what it is now. But we should also not ignore that the country in turn was remade, by very large numbers of immigrants (Irish and Germans especially) in the Civil War; and then literally built, railroads and th rest, afterwards, by more immigrants, Irish and Chinese and all the rest; that we were remade, for the better, int he late 19th early 20th century by more immigrants from almost everywhere. We can't forget or pretend not the care how much of the country's power wand wealth was built on slave labor. We shouldn't pretend for some reason that the last 50 or 60 years have been the first really sustained stretch where we made a serious effort to live up to the ideals of the Declaration, all men created equal and such. We should celebrate what's good and fight against all efforts to undo those good things. 

So I guess, yeah - we have done a few things right, to last 250 years.