Nothing to it. I’ve got this World Cup stuff down. I just pretend it is a real sport, which it very well may be because it echoes much in our own games.
Championship coaches are unwanted. Star players are coddled. No team gets enough respect. The press is scorned. The real fans can’t get seats. And the officiating is lousy.
You know, just like the NBA Finals.
The big deal going into Sunday’s game between Brazil and France is that nobody in the stands will be cheering the home team.
It seems that although most of the World Cup tickets were saved for the French, they went to sponsors and corporate types who sit on their hands, and what is worse, dare to show up at games in suits and ties.
This lapse into good taste has not gone unnoticed down on the field. So if France loses, it may be the first sports defeat blamed on Yves St. Laurent.
“This is not the theater,” complained Didier Deschamps, the French captain. “Our real public are the laborer and the farmer who are dressed in red, white and blue all day.”
Wasn’t Brett Favre just saying the same thing about there not being enough Cheeseheads at the Super Bowl?
Brazil’s coach, Mario Zagallo, has won world titles as a player and as a coach and yet has been regarded as sort of a caretaker for a team of incredible talent that loses only when it is the coach’s fault.
He does not get along with his management, which keeps sticking him with assistants he does not want, and keeps a stable of replacements handy, although none are from Iowa State, as far as I know.
Zagallo has a dry and ironic wit and is called the Ant, a Zen type of nickname if ever I heard one.
The French coach, Aime Jacquet, has been at war with the French newspapers even as his team moved through the tournament. L’Equipe, the national sports daily, particularly has been hard on Jacquet, considering him something well beyond inadequate.
Grudgingly, the paper finally admitted Jacquet had done better than it had thought he could, the sort of apology, I must point out, that would have been wasted on Terry Bevington.
France’s star defender, Laurent Blanc, will miss the final against Brazil because he was given a red card for punching a Croatian. Replays may show that he did no such thing, that Slaven Pilic had gone over faster than Peter McNeely.
Did he or didn’t he? The incident has been replayed more than all of Dennis Rodman’s kicks, head butts and groin punches put together, all of which Rodman had an explanation or an apology for too.
I say what is good enough for Dennis Rodman certainly is good enough for France. In fact, it is my fondest wish.
The great Pele dissed Brazil, his own country, mindful that this Brazilian team is no match for the one that won the last World Cup and clearly not as good as the ones Pele was on.
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Not just the national papers have been pounding the French team, but even the head of the French association suggested that getting to the quarters was as much as could be expected.
Both teams have just what they need for the big game–substantial opinion insisting they do not deserve to be there.
No team in any sport these days can play from in front. The worst motivation in the world is endorsement.
It might be recalled that even Michael Jordan somewhere got the idea that no one thought the Bulls would win, when, of course, only one or two of us thought that.
Which brings me to another item under dispute. Who is the most popular athlete in the world, Jordan or Brazil’s Ronaldo?
To settle the question in my mind, at least, I conducted a completely unscientific man-on-the street survey, or, rather, a homme-on-the-steps survey.
Around the Paris Opera collects a representative cross-section of locals and internationals, as well as the occasional phantom, of course. At the Cafe de la Paix, it is said that if you sit there long enough, you will see everyone you know, although I have spent too much time already waiting for Albert Belle.
The steps of the opera house are always crowded with folks fleeing those twin terrors of Paris, doggie doo and secondhand smoke. As they rested and went, I asked the simple question, Michael or Ronaldo?
My actual account of 93 responses gives Ronaldo a significant edge, 54-39, but I must point out that there was a big billboard of Ronaldo just across the square, and I can’t be sure how many thought they could be voting for Michael Jackson.
I must work on my accent.