Day 29 WorldCup2018
Today was an empty day. Really. No football, not much to look forward to. At least that's what I thought as I woke to the day after what could have been for England. But as I drove to work and listened to the comically mundane words-to-fill-airtime coming out of the sports radio hosts, something made me look forward to Sunday. This is still the World Cup that I looked forward to since the day after the last one ended, and more specifically for 1000 days. France against Croatia is going to be the culmination of a month of incredible football. So bring on Sunday!
Back to the radio this morning and I said to myself that I wasn't going to this. But I can't resist sharing what I listened to just because I wanted to hear some sort of England post-morterm. It's TSN radio, a show hosted by one of the top dudes of the many Canadian TV and radio sports dudes, Michael Landsberg and his co-host, former Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player Carlo Colaiacovo. For the first 10-15 minutes they were talking about the tradition of who picks the music for the hockey locker room. Seriously. I thought it was joke at first but Colaiacova shared his personal experience and described the ritual and tradition. It's hard for me to convey how serious the conversation was about something so ridiculous. (Producer: "there's another 15 minutes eaten up. Good job boys.")
Then the conversation moved to football. After Landsberg stopped himself (mid-word) from saying Britain again (everyday, does nobody tell him?) they went through the fairly predictable discussion about how sad it is for England and how ecstatic the Croatians were. Admittedly, it was good to hear talk of it, healing in a way. Then Colaiacova went off on a tangent about how he heard that the 50th country on Fifa's rankings is some funny/weird country. To which Landsberg replied, in the polite way you do when somebody in a room with you has said something that can embarrass himself, "what constitutes a weird country in your head?"
The producer/assistant/somebody found out that the country is Burkina Faso and Colaiacovo howled and howled with laughter. "That's it! That's it! Have you ever heard of that! Is that a country? No way!" Yes, replied everybody else, by now even more exasperated by how their superstar hockey player was embarrassing himself. And with that I got to work, turned the radio off and thought I never have to listen to that tripe again.
Just as not to sound like I'm in anyway stereotyping hockey players I have met current and former players and they have all struck me as level headed, pretty intelligent guys.
Anyway, there's my story of distraction for today. What will tomorrow bring? On Saturday the 3rd/4th place match may be the distraction, but I'd need to be pretty desperately in the need for my mind to be somewhere else if I would watch the losers' match that even the losers don't want to play. Is it even possible for Belgium and England to play with more second string players that in their final match of the group stages?
Today was an empty day. Really. No football, not much to look forward to. At least that's what I thought as I woke to the day after what could have been for England. But as I drove to work and listened to the comically mundane words-to-fill-airtime coming out of the sports radio hosts, something made me look forward to Sunday. This is still the World Cup that I looked forward to since the day after the last one ended, and more specifically for 1000 days. France against Croatia is going to be the culmination of a month of incredible football. So bring on Sunday!
Back to the radio this morning and I said to myself that I wasn't going to this. But I can't resist sharing what I listened to just because I wanted to hear some sort of England post-morterm. It's TSN radio, a show hosted by one of the top dudes of the many Canadian TV and radio sports dudes, Michael Landsberg and his co-host, former Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player Carlo Colaiacovo. For the first 10-15 minutes they were talking about the tradition of who picks the music for the hockey locker room. Seriously. I thought it was joke at first but Colaiacova shared his personal experience and described the ritual and tradition. It's hard for me to convey how serious the conversation was about something so ridiculous. (Producer: "there's another 15 minutes eaten up. Good job boys.")
Then the conversation moved to football. After Landsberg stopped himself (mid-word) from saying Britain again (everyday, does nobody tell him?) they went through the fairly predictable discussion about how sad it is for England and how ecstatic the Croatians were. Admittedly, it was good to hear talk of it, healing in a way. Then Colaiacova went off on a tangent about how he heard that the 50th country on Fifa's rankings is some funny/weird country. To which Landsberg replied, in the polite way you do when somebody in a room with you has said something that can embarrass himself, "what constitutes a weird country in your head?"
The producer/assistant/somebody found out that the country is Burkina Faso and Colaiacovo howled and howled with laughter. "That's it! That's it! Have you ever heard of that! Is that a country? No way!" Yes, replied everybody else, by now even more exasperated by how their superstar hockey player was embarrassing himself. And with that I got to work, turned the radio off and thought I never have to listen to that tripe again.
Just as not to sound like I'm in anyway stereotyping hockey players I have met current and former players and they have all struck me as level headed, pretty intelligent guys.
Anyway, there's my story of distraction for today. What will tomorrow bring? On Saturday the 3rd/4th place match may be the distraction, but I'd need to be pretty desperately in the need for my mind to be somewhere else if I would watch the losers' match that even the losers don't want to play. Is it even possible for Belgium and England to play with more second string players that in their final match of the group stages?
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