Friday, June 09, 2006

Chatting futbol

Had another story in today's paper. This was one of those stories that just happens. Was doing some work for the story that ran in yesterday's paper and just happened to run into this former women's national team player working a camp here in Alexandria. Had the chance to chat with her for about 15-20 minutes about the state of the game.

Very interesting. Learned a lot. I always enjoy talking with people who know soccer. For awhile, my only source of information was Binni. I sort of became Binni Jr. Now it's nice to get out and actually pick other people's brains.

The Cup starts today, for those of you who care. There are far too few of us who actually do in this country. In fact, opening kickoff is just about an hour and a half away right now.

I constantly hear people say, "Oh, you like soccer?" Like it's the plague or something. And they don't want to hear my chatter about the game's growing (it's the No. 1 youth sport in this country now). But I have firm proof. It's called TV. Did you know that EVERY game will be on TV this year? And not just like (to steal a line from Dodge Ball) ESPN 8, "The Ocho". I'm talking about ESPN, ESPN2 and even ABC. All 64 first round games will be televised. That's simply amazing and is positive proof that the game is growing here in America.

There will be plenty of good soccer on TV this weekend. Most of you, if you care at all, won't care until 11 a.m. (CST) on Monday -- when the U.S. opens its Cup against No. 2 Czech Republic. But for those of you who might want to check out some of the other top teams in the world, here's a list of some of the top games this weekend:

Friday
Germany vs. Costa Rica (11 a.m., ESPN2)

Saturday
England vs. Paraguay (8 a.m., ABC)
Argentina vs. Ivory Coast (2 p.m., ESPN2)

Sunday
Netherlands vs. Serbia and Montenegro (8 a.m., ESPN2)
Portugal vs. Angola (2 p.m., ESPN2)

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