Friday, June 25, 2010

World Cup

There is a big game tomorrow - USA v Ghana... and as much as I love my home country, the good ol' US of A ... I'm totally cheering for Ghana. Black Stars, all the way baby!

I realize people might find me a bit unpatriotic here... especially given the fact that the USA team has made it much further than was expected, but I have some very valid reasons for my pick... and here are just a few of them.

1. I have a Ghana jersey.
2. I love the country of Ghana, and my trip there changed my life.
3. Out of the 3 television channels you can get in most of Ghana, 2 are entirely devoted to football (soccer) all day, all the time... not just when the World Cup is happening. Soccer is not a big deal in the USA - you rarely see coverage of it and I'm struggling to watch the World Cup right now without cable!
4. Ghana is the last African team still in, and the host continent is Africa.
5. All of Africa is behind Ghana. In Uganda people living in poverty gather in the streets to watch the games on tiny television sets... and cheers erupted when Ghana won their first game. (Ghana and Uganda are on opposite sides of the continent... but they still support each other... pretty cool... can't picture us supporting Canada like that...)
6. The people of Africa have a pretty rough go of it most of the time. Our lives are much easier than theirs. This is something that is important to them that they are good at... they downright deserve to win.
7. The USA is a world power that tends to dominate in everything. We have a lot of other sports that clearly keep us more entertained the rest of the 4 years... we can afford to lose one.

Don't get me wrong. I am very proud the USA has made it this far. And part of me will be very excited if we move on... But we don't care about the sport enough as a country to win this sucker. When we have a soccer 24/7 channel, and poor kids in our streets are making soccer balls from old plastic bags, and soccer stadiums start getting more packed than OUR football stadiums... then we can talk.

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