Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Say what you will about soccer (love it or hate it), but one thing has become undeniably clear, the World Cup is the greatest sporting event ever created.

I one time heard Jerry Seinfeld say in one of his stand-up bits that he "likes any sport where nations are involved", and I totally agree. The Super Bowl is great, the World Series is great, but lets be honest, we're a self-involved country. We don't involve other countries in these events. I'm sure there are some sumo wrestlers who would be capable of filling out an offensive line. But other countries just aren't involved to make that the best event ever. The baseball classic(you probably haven't heard of it either) is pretty cool where each nation plays each other but none of these events touch the scale of the World Cup. The Olympics are a close second, but I have a problem with all the irrelevant sports being involved. The World Cup has everything the Olympics has without the irrelevance.

Here are my thoughts:

Almost every country capable to be involved makes an effort to compete. There were 204 teams entered into the qualifying rounds. What we're seeing now is the remaining 32 teams competing in one location for the title. Ironically there are only 195 countries in the world. That's because places like "Puerto Rico" and "Greenland" don't count as official countries but still have teams. There were actually only 4 eligible teams in the world (Bhutan, Brunei, Laos, and the Philippines) that did not enter the competition. What were they thinking?

Every country has an opportunity. The qualification process is lengthy, detailed, and fair. The USA started qualifying rounds in June 2008 and played almost 25 or 30 games before being admitted to the tournament.

Is there any doubt these are the best players in the world? My problem with the Olympics is that I just don't buy that these athletes are the best in the world. I give bobsled as the best example, is this guy really the best we have to offer? He looks like he just woke up and decided he wanted to do it one day. Funny side note, he was a computer science major, maybe I could be a bobsledder? If you are a world class soccer player, you are absolutely going to be a part of the World Cup. If you are a world class bobsledder, you may not even know it.

The excitement of the World Cup cannot be matched by any sport. The first game of the tournament was South Africa against Mexico. If you didn't get goosebumps when the South African forward ripped the ball into the upper corner to take a 1-0 lead and have 94,000 people go nuts, you might be dead inside.

Every game is once in a lifetime to the players. After the Ghana and Slovenia games ended, a few players from those teams fell to their knees in tears. When's the last time you saw that in any other sport. They hadn't even done anything! They just won the first game in their 4 team round robin group stage. That emotion never happens in the wild card round of the NFL playoffs or the first round of the NBA playoffs. Just to win 1 teeny tiny little game in the World Cup is more than they could have ever asked for in their life. That's the kind of passion I want to watch in a sport.

I think the last point is just that I love watching soccer so much. There is nothing more exciting than seeing a player score a goal on another country. The World Cup just incorporates everything you'd want from a sporting event, international inclusion, player passion, and elite competition.

"Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion."