ZoneFlood

From MSNBC:

We can all keep pretending soccer remains ‘the beautiful game.’ Or, instead, take some steps to try and make it that again.

But the 2006 World Cup has drummed home one painful truth: in the end, I am fundamentally New World when it comes to soccer, impatient with the idiocies of the FIFA establishment for foisting a spoiled game upon us in this, the sport’s greatest showcase. Under the guise of tradition, they perpetuate a fraud. Unable to police the game with old methods, disdainful of new technologies, they have assured that the beautiful game is myth; the reality is a succession of dives, flops and other divalike performances that no one man—certainly no referee I’ve seen work this tournament—can sort out with any accuracy.

At the beginning of this tournament, we received so many comments from readers complaining about the ESPN and ABC announcers that we had to ask you to stop sending them in.

…[ESPN's Dave] O’Brien in particular has come under a heavy barrage of criticism for his lack of feel for soccer, which is down to his being a baseball announcer who didn’t follow soccer until a few months ago. Some American soccer fans were upset with ESPN’s choice of O’Brien even before the tournament started, with one starting a petition to remove him in favor of a career soccer announcer, and certainly once the tournament got under way, the reaction has been consistently negative from fans in general, as anyone reading the comments sections to this blog’s live game reports can tell.

NYT World Cup ‘06 blog

It’s a small, and rapidly shrinking, world this summer, at least if you’re a soccer fan with Internet access. If catastrophes such as the Sept. 11 attacks and the Indian Ocean tsunami showed the Web’s potential to link humanity in times of tragedy, this summer’s showcase of the “beautiful game” highlights that same ability in times of global carousing.

Full article at the Los Angeles Times.

The round of 16 is starting to take shape, with the US out of the tournament after a lackluster campaign which resulted in only 2 goals, one of them an own-goal against Italy. Ghana is so far the underdog of the next round, and will likely face defending champs and tournament favorites Brazil.

The new World Cup rule: take off your trousers, they’re offending our sponsor.

The technical adviser to Australia’s World Cup team explains how a computer is helping his squad win games.

[BBC News | June 18, 2006]

America is the worst nation in the world in which to watch the World Cup. Except for all the others.

[Newsweek | June 16, 2006]

The BBC Sport website is the most popular online source for World Cup news in the UK, according to a study.

More than 1.3 million football fans visited the site in the first week of the tournament.

The study, by internet research firm Nielsen/NetRatings, showed more than half of the number of people visiting sports websites chose the BBC.

The BBC attracted nearly four times as many visitors as its nearest rival Sky Sports, the study showed.

[BBC News | June 13, 2006]

The BBC’s World Cup page is excellent. It’s probably your best bet for when you can’t be seen actually watching a match, say at work. Their acerbic and oddly poetic live text updates are about as thrilling as following moving text can be.

Not sure how expert they are, but a nice looking chart of group predictions. I doubt outside of the US, you’d see so many picks for the US team to make it out of the group, but that’s to be expected.

SI.com 2006 World Cup Predictions