soccer

You are currently browsing articles tagged soccer.

The World Cup & Summer of Soccer

June 7, 2010 in Sports by Tom Langston (calaggie) | No comments

The quadrennial World Cup tournament begins this Friday, meaning much of my attention will be focused on that over the next month. Since I’ll be in a soccer state of mind, I figured that this summer would be a good time to focus on writing about anime/manga such as Aoki Densetsu Shoot and Inazuma Eleven in a segment tentatively called “Summer of Soccer”.

Also: an illustrator named BliSS has been counting down the days over the past month through drawings of country representatives or of football clubs like Chelsea. You can look at her work on the blog I linked above or in her Pixiv gallery.

Oh, and I haven’t forgotten my pessimistic prediction that Japan’s squad won’t make it into the knockout stage.

Tags: , ,

Obligatory World Cup Post

June 13, 2006 in Japan, Sports by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 2 comments

vlcsnap-1138800.jpg

Many people have been talking about Japan in this year’s World Cup after their performance in 2002. I saw recaps of the Japan-Australia game and Japan’s goal against Australia probably shouldn’t have counted. The officials didn’t call it and don’t have instant replay like the NFL; instant replay would be impractical anyway in soccer because the clock would keep running while they were checking something. (Reportedly, one of the referees was overheard admitting to the Aussie keeper that it was a mistake.) I was a soccer referee for 3 years and I think that I would have made the same mistake; I would have to have seen the offending player’s momentum to make a definite call. Anyway, Australia scored three goals and beat them so hopefully people will move on to the other two matches. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , ,