Any other Americans tired of foreigners here (not ILX -- in America!) explaining that the world cup is the "most popular sporting event in the world"?

Cultural Napoleon complex is just as annoying in a bar as cultural superiority complex.

I really wish America had a Eurovision-esque contest for all 50 states.

(Wait - are we talking about commercials advertising the Super Bowl, or the commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl?)

1) GERMAN/TURKISH PIZZA PLACE OWNER (TOTAL BRO)
2) MEXICAN HIPSTERS WHO ALSO KEPT ON ASKING ME WHICH GIRLS I THOUGHT WOULD SLEEP WITH THEM

Your contributions please, non-caring Americans!

Is there an iconic Nike ad this year. Joga seems a bit rubbidge.

Best ad so far is for the cross of St George ironing board cover. SUPPORT OUR LADS, WHILE IRONING!

Kingfish OTM
-- Holy makkara, Toivo! (thedanmarti...), June 6th, 2006 10:54 AM. (OutDatWay) (later) (link)

Fucking Michiganders.

You Americans know nought of Pickles

recent super bowls where the commercials actually lived up to the oh-god-the-commercials-are-so-the-reason-to-watch-the-super-bowl hype: zero, because once usa today starts doing articles about that it's all over

number of world cup matches I will watch this year, while drunk, and while seeing comforting americanski-style commercials because all the games are going to be shown on the very exotic channel ESPN: about 20

xpost,

Haikunym, FUCK OFF EUROPHILE.

XPOST
M. White, fuck off to an actual World Cup thread.

xpost Sadly, Michael, I don't think the day America cares about soccer is forthcoming. I don't know what it is but they just can't get a foothold. Think of how great the women's team did, and still no one cared! It's odd.

plus FUCK YOU RIGHT BACK for suggesting I am a Europhile

I really think there should be more sporting-event related music, period.

not for nothing but in the US sports related songs are by and for dorks, retards, and spazzes.

ORLY

Also baseball exists in America and oftentimes does not get into double digits so that's incorrect. I think Americans have just deemed soccer as too euro.

this is not to rub American's faces in it, but because if you're in one of the many World Cup loving countries there is a huge buzz when the World Cup is on (just once every 4 years remember). And if your country is participating well then that buzz (the one you are missing cos of being in America) is ten times bigger.

When Ireland are in the World Cup the city practically shuts down the day they're playing. I assume it's the same in loads of other countries.

This is all pretty obvious.

of the Dud genre. Slightly better than that wrestling album that came out in the 80s. Maybe.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/onceinalifetime/

au contraire:

http://images.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/_photos3/2002-09-04-williams.jpg

i wouldn't want to go to France and tell them how much cooler Nascar (better car commercial logos!) is than their grand prix, but i might want to share my enthusiasm for stuff from my country with foreigners who might nbot get much exposure to it (if i were an extrovert)

The Japan thing is interesting. Bear in mind France actually won the thing on their home turf eight years ago and there was still a bit of international snobbery towards their footballing culture. Like, a general feeling that the French didn't *get* football, that they couldn't really appreciate what it was to have won the World Cup.

We've been accused of being defensively naive but what we essentially play is 4-4-2, sometimes 4-3-3, positive and attacking play due to a lack of sparkling individual skills. Recently, however, we've been sluggish and utterly lacking in finishing though our defending is somewhat better, especially with Oguchi Onyewu in the back. The team mostly consists of Championship (old English First Division) players and MLS players with an odd Premier League player (Howard, O'Brien) and a smattering of players for middling European teams. We have too much of a tendency to play the old English game, kicking long balls upfield and hoping someone can hold them long enough for the team to run on to them. On a good day, Faced with the Italians who, if recent scandals haven't demoralized them too much and the Czechs, we will be doing very well indeed to get out of the groups stage. I'd say to look for Onyewu and Convey to shine if anyone does, though McBride, Donovan, Ching or Reyna might show up too. If anything, our biggest asset is the lack of interest/expectation at home and a sometimes confidence that comes from being underestimated or ignored.

We've been accused of being defensively naive but what we essentially play is 4-4-2, sometimes 4-3-3, positive and attacking play due to a lack of sparkling individual skills. Recently, however, we've been sluggish and utterly lacking in finishing though our defending is somewhat better, especially with Oguchi Onyewu in the back. The team mostly consists of Championship (old English First Division) players and MLS players with an odd Premier League player (Howard, O'Brien) and a smattering of players for middling European teams. We have too much of a tendency to play the old English game, kicking long balls upfield and hoping someone can hold them long enough for the team to run on to them. Faced with the Italians who, if recent scandals haven't demoralized them too much and the Czechs, we will be doing very well indeed to get out of the groups stage. I'd say to look for Onyewu and Convey to shine if anyone does, though McBride, Donovan, Ching or Reyna might show up too. If anything, our biggest asset is the lack of interest/expectation at home and a sometimes confidence that comes from being underestimated or ignored.

you're just tired of being reminded of it. oops sorry!

"urban myth" = "lie devised by the NFL and propagated by the US government"

http://voanews.com/english/2006-02-03-voa5.cfm

The only way this can be true is if they mean "people watching even a short excerpt on the game on their local news channel."

hey did you guys know the holy roman empire wasn't holy or roman or an empire? i know stuff.

But clearly, it's propaganda by the US govt, not a simply explained mistake that has been grossly overstated by always accurate Wikipedia. Riiiiiiiiiiight.

True, but there's a 100 million of them and 5 million of us AND they get to qualify for every World Cup by dint of never having to play anyone difficult to get there AND they've already, for no apparent reason, hosted TWO World Cups!

But the argument has nothing to do with sports, it's usually pointed out (by furriners and Americans alike) to say something about American feelings of superiority and exceptionalism. It's a less-obvious complaint about American distrust in the UN or something.

Actually, almost everyone who's pointed this out to me (and defended the sacred honor of soccer) has been a liberal, Democrat-voting American who wishes they were European.

This is disappointing to hear. Today's Wash Post front-page story marked him as a paragon of goalkeeping and vaunted his magesterial saves against Brazil in '98. (There was also a front page story in the New York Times story about the possibility of World Cup betting scandals.)

It also appears that three British soccer hooligans have slipped into Germany.

Japan, not surprisingly, seems to play a very cautious, methodical version of soccer. They ploddingly pass the ball back and forth and back and forth and advance at a very slow rate.

One of my co-workers if from Ghana: he is so excited.

I don't think I know a single person who fits that description

Looking at the TV schedule brings to mind another reason the World Cup might not take off here--the matches are on weekday mornings, when most Americans are at work or asleep. Once they can synchronize it to our prime time like the Olympics and make the games at weird hours of the day of and night to fit our schedules, we may give it a chance.

9am Englishes vs Paraguay
Noon Trindads/Tobago vs Sweden

Sunday on ABC
Mexico vs Iran for the undisputed champion of the world

The abandonment of soccer is attributable, in part, to the fact that people of influence in America long believed that soccer was the chosen sport of Communists. When I was 13—this was 1983, long before glasnost, let alone the fall of the wall—I had a gym teacher, who for now we'll call Moron McCheeby, who made a very compelling link between soccer and the architects of the Iron Curtain. I remember once asking him why there were no days of soccer in his gym units. His face darkened. He took me aside. He explained with quivering, barely mastered rage, that he preferred decent, honest American sports where you used your hands. Sports where one's hands were not used, he said, were commie sports played by Russians, Poles, Germans, and other commies. To use one's hands in sports was American, to use one's feet was the purview of the followers of Marx and Lenin. I believe McCheeby went on to lecture widely on the subject.

from http://www.slate.com/id/2142554/

Bad officiating is the lifeblood of American sports.

Not our table manners!

This is the most boring shit I've ever seen passed off as a sporting contest. Jesus.

I said it upthread! Interestingly enough, many of the best American players are goalkeepers.

Reportedly, Sylvester Stallone insisted that his character score the game-winning goal in the film, as he felt he was the biggest star in the film. The non-American crew was finally able to convince him of the absurdity of the goalkeeper scoring the winning goal, and the penalty shot was specifically written to placate his ego.

I haven't seen the movie since I was a kid, but the only part of the game I remember is Pelé's bicycle kick.