Futball Nation

So like everybody else, I am starting to get pretty wrapped up into the FIFA World Cup and wonder if moving it to every 2 years would add to or take away from it as an event. Those horns does make you feel like you are standing inside of a beehive but that's all part of the South African experience.
Just today I watched the USA team make a furious comeback to play Slovenia to a 2-2 draw which in soccer circles is a good thing. The funny thing is as I was traveling, I was only able to listen to it on the radio which for somebody who doesn't know the game that well and couldn't pick the players and their positions out if my life depended on it, makes for an interesting experience. Baseball is a great radio game, basketball is rough unless you have a top announcing team which basically means exit Walt Clyde and enter Dr Jack, I can't ever say I've listed to the NHL but I have to imagine that it would be near impossible, (American) Football is decent but only because of the constant stoppages so they can add color commentary but Futball on the radio is tough.
First of all you got some Scottish announcer whose pretty good but you kind of get lost in his accent and forget where you are so 10 minutes past and you can't remember anything that happened. Then you have the whole big-field and not being able to see plays develop thing so the untrained radio listener has no idea where the ball is and even the trained radio listener doesn't know where the other players are positioned. These goal-scoring games are all about positioning away from the ball but the futball play-by-play guy doesn't have enough time to explain it in real-time. There are just too many players on too big a field and the only thing you wind up doing is listening to the excitement in the guys voice and the roar of the crowd.


Then you add to that the fact the ESPN radio guy kept calling Slovenia- Slovakia but honestly nobody can blame him for that.

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