on watching sports and the world cup.

i'm trying to get into a habit of posting everyday blogs. (everyday, not every day. you follow?) also trying to get out of the habit of not using subjects in my sentences, something i picked up from my boss. i think it's his way of writing a message that sounds personal without actually attaching an "i" or a "we" to it. "wanted to let you know about a show in your city!"

see what i mean? but, who is letting me know this? i don't know.

okay. anyway.

i just wanted to talk for a quick minute about the world cup. because, i am not a sports person, unless it's on a world level. and by that i FOR SURE do not mean the "world series." but the olympics? yes. the world cup? yes. in fact, while i don't actually follow along during regular seasons, soccer is the one sport i can tolerate and actually kind of really love watching. if i have a team. which, isn't really hard because, you just pick one.

the thing about the world cup is that i started watching it in 2010 (which feels like ages ago, thinking back to all the ways my life was so different then) when i went to my friends house and they were watching a game. and i was all like, but wait why am i here? and then they convinced me to stay.

okay, i'll be honest. the thing that got me was the part about the attractive players. (read: cristiano ronaldo.) (but please know he would probably not even be in my top five, if i ever sat down to actually make a top five, most attractive players.) but you can't even really see them or their pretty faces as they play and it turns out i actually kind of liked that part.

i don't know what it is. maybe it's that soccer players are more attractive, or that they have better hair, or that when the cameras show close ups of their faces they're not hidden behind helmets. or maybe it's that even though goals are not often scored, there is always something happening. players are running, kicking, flopping on the ground in "pain." you may be waiting a long time for someone to score, but you're not waiting a long time to see something.

spain became my team because it was my friend's team and before that day i knew nothing about the players or the teams or who was good or which team would be a good one to root for. she liked spain for whatever reason, and i just went with it. i have no idea why usa wasn't even on my radar as a team to follow except for maybe that no one in the US is a fan of soccer? i think when i chose to follow spain, i didn't even realize the US had a soccer team.

it was a great year to start watching the world cup, especially with spain as my team, because they won. because they are awesome. la furia roja.

so, you can imagine the type of heartbreak it was to watch their mess of a performance at the world cup this year. they are WORLD CHAMPIONS who were out of this year's cup in less than a week?

no, but like i feel so irrationally sad about this team losing and i wonder if i'm just being dramatic or if that's what happens when you actually care about sports. like is this what it felt like to be a red sox fan during those years (and year and years) when they couldn't pull it together? except the difference here is that spain actually won the last three consecutive championships, so it's definitely not the same. because they ARE better than the way they played in their (only) two world cup games.

i don't know what happened, but i guess that's what i get for attempting to be a sort of sports fan.

rip la roja.