Super Bowl: Part 1

Day -492. WorldCup2018

I was reflecting on the Super Bowl today. You know the one that just happened a couple of days ago: "the best ever", "the most incredible comeback ever", "first Super Bowl to go to overtime". And I had a great story in my head as I tried to think of a World Cup match I could compare it to. But today has almost become tomorrow and for the the first time ever I'm going to say: to be continued. Come back tomorrow.

Time. Need time.

Day -493 WorldCup2018

I'm sorry. I know there's many of you out there waiting for my wonderful words, as you do every evening. The day job got in the way. If only this was the day job.

Oh, Jesus.

Day -494. WorldCup2018

Jesus saves! Garbriel Jesus scored twice today for his new team, Manchester City, the second a last minute winner, to save them from another embarrassing result. I only put this in because I had to take advantage of maybe the one opportunity to use that opening line in 1000 days. And expect many more bad Jesus jokes in the weeks to come, hopefully not from me.

Lazio tried their best to emulate Napoli's 7-1 away win yesterday. They went to Pescara and won 6-2. Marco Parolo had scored one goal this season. Today he scored 4. What's happened to the Serie of 1-0 wins? Late result: Juventus beat Inter 1-0 to continue their stroll to the league title yet again.

If Juventus are strolling and Chelsea cantering to the Premier League title, than Celtic are walking with beach towels in hand, stopping at every beach they pass for a swim and a drink on their way to the most boringly predictable league win ever. They are twenty-seven points ahead of second placed Aberdeen and Rangers. 27. They have player 24, won 23, drawn 1. Ross Barkley scored a goal for Everton yesterday and celebrated before he had actually scored. Celtic could start a victory parade this weekend and keep it going until May and nobody could accuse them of being presumptive.

And Cameroon are African champions. This is why I never bet on anything or rarely make predictions. My forecast was a boring 0-0 draw, won by Egypt after penalties with their 44 year old goalkeeper, El Hadary, saving the last penalty. In what was a pretty lively final, El Hadary's role was watching a sublime bit of skill from Vincent Aboubakar to score the winning goal in a 2-1 win. A goal deserving to be the winner in a major final, so the cliche goes, but oh so true in this case.

Cameroon had a few distractions before the start of the tournament with a couple of players refusing to join the team and unhappiness with the discipline imposed by the coach, Hugo Broos. One of those players was Liverpool's Joel Matip. Allow me to borrow a line from Jonathan Wilson's report in The Guardian:

"So, Joel, future generations will ask, what was the atmosphere like for that final in Libreville? “I don’t know: I was in Hull, losing 2-0.”

I went for the Spanish commentary in my pick of highlights. There's a bit more emotion, fitting for a final, than the English version.

Bit of this, bit of that, but a lot

Day -495. WorldCup2018

I may be all over the place today with my thoughts. On weekends, Saturday's especially, I find myself thinking about what I'm going to write all day. With so much going on, I can't seem to decide on one thing. So here goes.

Aston Villa. I'll get this out of the way quickly and it comes with an admission and confession. Their promotion story is turning into another relegation story. After another loss today, the bottom of the Championship standings seem closer than the play-off spots. I can't tell you for sure as I cannot face actually looking at the table. I have so sub-consciously given up that late this evening I came across their result by accident. I was out all day with no opportunity to be online and even though I knew they were playing late today I completely forgot to check their result. This would not have happened prior to this season. It is a shocking state of affairs in my support for them.

In Italy, Napoli beat Bologna 7-1. It was their biggest ever away win in Serie A. Two players, Hamsik and Mertens, scored a hat-trick. The best part for me though was on social media. It really has added a fun, live dimension to football. This was the tweet from Bologna's English twitter account after the sixth goal:

"72' Ok come on now, we've had enough. Hamsik with a screamer for his hat-trick. You can take him off now."

And after the seventh:

"89' Nobody ever scores seven, it's unrealistic but sadly true. Mertens with the goal. Restart the console, TV or whatever."

It's better than actually watching! If you're on twitter look them up (@BolognaFC1909en). They play again on Wednesday.

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. Why? Because it takes place on a Sunday. I'm not an NFL fan, mostly because I don't like the ratio of idleness to actual play and because it all seems so planned. The coaches, all 15 or 20 of them, are constantly drawing sketches of where their players should be and calling time-outs to let the players know that their right foot wasn't pointing in the right direction. I jest, you know, all you NFL lovers. It's not my thing but I know it is the best sporting day in the year for a lot of people.

The NFL draws massive crowds. So does the World Cup. But they are not the biggest crowd-pullers. They are both behind Rugby's Six Nations tournament which had an average attendance of 72,000 last year. Football is restricted by smaller stadiums but NFL's massive American stadiums attract less fans than rugby. Surprising, I think.

Burkina Faso beat Ghana 1-0 in the Afcon 3rd place play-off match today. It's the match that nobody ever wants to play and few care about but I knew this result before Aston Villa's. A sign of my disillusionment. Tomorrow Egypt play Cameroon in the final. My symbolic money is on the 44 year old hero. El Hadary.

I mentioned yesterday that television coverage of football in Canada is erratic and it depends on competing sporting events as to how much we get to see. Today was not a blanket football day across the two networks that show English football. One of them had curling all day on four of it's channels. Curling. All day. I do not complain. It's all to do with demand and where the money comes from. I know what country I'm in and I'm sure there were many who enjoyed a day of curling as much as I enjoy a day of football.

I've had hockey on in the background as I was writing this. Toronto vs Boston. From 4-1 to Toronto to 4-4, has now turned into 6-5 to Toronto with a minute left. I can only imagine how much fun the administrator of the Bologna twitter account would be having with this.

What time is the football on?

Day -496. WorldCup2018

There were days, that don't seem that long ago, when I would know exactly what time every football match was on television. It's not the same now. I just had to look up, before going to bed, what might be on when I get up tomorrow morning. I blame it on the time difference, the incredible amount of football broadcast and the myriad of channels that it is on. It has nothing to do with my memory, or my easily distracted mind having other things to try to focus on.

In Canada we have two networks that show English football. But those two networks each have a number of channels: some you get with your almost basic cable package, others you pay a little more for and others you get if you make a decision to give something else up for the month for which you are paying the subscription. And every weekend is different for the football coverage. One Saturday we may get 4 or 5 matches on at the 10am kick-off time. The following week there may be a conflict with curling, or the pre show of the pre show of the pre college football match (the American kind) and our kind of football gets relegated (or promoted?) to the more exclusive channels.

I will be waking up soon for Chelsea-Arsenal, to see if Arsenal can get ahead in the race for second place this season. But the big match this weekend is the Afcon final on Sunday. I am very tempted to place my first bet ever on a football match: Cameroon-Egypt 0-0 (Egypt win 5-4 after penalties), El Hadary saves the last penalty.

Happy football weekend, whatever you may be watching.

Cameroon, with a little help

Day -497 WorldCup2018

Cameroon will play Egypt in the Afcon final on Sunday after beating Ghana 2-0 today. And I'm sorry to disappoint but that's all I've got today. And this: a couple of excited commentators, an example of terribly comical defending (what was he trying to do?), some dejected looking Ghanaian substitutes thinking "what was he trying to do?", more excited commentary, a coach doing some sort of Belgian victory jig and an ecstatic Cameroon team. See you Sunday.

El Hadary!

Day -498. WorldCup2018

Essam El Hadary. If you haven't read my many mentions of that name over the last couple of weeks remember it now. The Egyptian goalkeeper is 44 years old, was his country's third choice goalkeeper, came into Egypt's first match after the Number 1 suffered an injury and Number 2 didn't recover from a pre-tournament injury and didn't concede a goal in that first match, or the second and third and not in the quarterfinal either. He was beaten today in the semifinal against Burkina Faso but was the hero in the penalty shoot out which Egypt won to make it through to Sunday's final.

El Hadary could win his fifth Afcon and Egypt their eighth title, the most by any country. He saved two penalties today and that would make any goalkeeper a hero let alone the 44 year old on a fairytale run. To make the today's story even more interesting, maybe even comical, is that the first penalty El Hadary saved was Burkina Faso's fourth taken by their twenty year old goalkeeper. Just imagine that. How often does a goalkeeper take a penalty? And here was the kid thinking he could get one over the veteran and, boom! Saved. Watch the video. It wasn't a badly hit penalty.

You can not see Egypt not winning the whole thing now.