who should i cheer for?
confused about who to cheer for in a match where neither is your country or the country next to yours?
or just interested in seeing the world cup from a different point of view?
this is awesome. the world development movement has created a way of comparing the nations competing at the world cup, but this time in terms of who gives the most aid to poor countries, who spends the most on healthcare, or who spends the most on weapons, etc.
posted by rox @ 03:28
6 comments
6 Comments:
hahaha ... this is a great one. According to it Ghana is number one to support and England and the U.S. are 27th and 30th respectively. Interesting idea and a fun way to learn a couple of things. thanks for sharing rox :)
yes thank you rox,i have been dissapointed by my former fave , Japan , and i have abandoned the idea of them, i guess I am a sellout in this respect> I want to support the underdog but I find it very difficult to support the losers. (there is a difference)
but speaking of this : i am also amazed by this idea that for 4 years before a world cup,some players are living and playing in countries that not their own, and really they just go play for the highest bidder,and that is where they are really honing their skills & earning their money.
prime example: the captain of Germanys team , a 29 yr old Ballack , who is signed on to Chelsea for the other 360 days of the year, so I am now wondering :
Can we turn on patriotism on and off like that , so easily? that is also very difficult for me to understand because it is so very fake ?!! don't get me wrong, I love all these soccer players but...do they genuinely love us?
i agree. these national teams rarely play together or for their own country (with the exception of the americans purely because no other league wants them), and so that is why we have been subjected to the monstrosity which is this world cup. basically these players do not know each other as teammates, and are thrown together to compete against teammates of theirs. for example, arsenal alone has 15 players in the world cup, not all of which are playing for england.
ya and you know, i actually never thought of it like that!that the World Cup is all/alot about how well some men can gell together when thrown into their default team and that there is that element of luck in groupings.
I think choosing a team to support is also biased by the other sports they are good at, eg. the USA, they do well in all other sports, and Oz too, if they get anywhere then its like one more thing, one more trophy for the cabinet and one more rung UP.love to hate them.
and so maybe in the favelas of Brazil where some great soccer stars are born and bred > it is like them winning is that much more sweet and deserving.rags to riches type thing. I dont know, then again, they are so skilled /strong and don't need my 'positive vibes'.
SA is not in the games this year but it will be held there in 2010 and then i will be a loyal fan to my country team without a doubt.
but now ,I guess I will leech off the success of somthing else for the moment, by the way somthing unrelated > i dreamt about you the other night ,it involved MSN messenger, very very weird %)
Alastair Campbell (British political operative; former spin doctor for Tony Blair) recently said quite sagely and cogently that women shouldn't talk too much about the World Cup. There's something in that. Lest I be misperceived as some kind of heinously sexist chump, I'll qualify my remarks.
Many of these players play professionally for clubs in countries other than their own; in fact, of the professional players most do not play in their homeland. It doesn't matter; it's a job, it's professional, and obviously one will play for the team where one thinks it would be good to play, and will pay them the most.
The World Cup is the football that truly matters, because it's for a much greater victory than within a league; it's for the honour of being the best in the world. And contrary to this notion that these players don't know each other, of course they do; they train together frequently (and constantly, before the WC) and play together over the course of the four years in between the WC tournament.
And as a final point, many US players find themselves in teams outside the US, including some of the middling British teams.
back to the post...
i think this website is trying to make a very important point at a time when people are "cheering" for certain countries. it is important to look at what countries are doing besides playing good football.
thanks for putting this up, roxanne.
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