Argentina On Top

The Argentine men's team won the World Cup soccer tournament this past week, becoming world champions for the first time in 36 years.  And their star player Lionel Messi - now widely celebrated as the greatest soccer player ever - is only 35 years old.

Messi plans to retire soon, so now he can go out on a high having finally won a World Cup in his career.  The final was pretty intense - Argentina led France by 2-0 for a good deal of the game, then France tied it within ten minutes.  Argentina scored a third goal late in the second half only for France to tie it again.  It finally came down to a penalty-kick shootout, and Argentina pulled out a victory thanks to Messi's prowess.

It was a thrilling game and an entering tournament, The United States played well enough to actually raise hopes for improvement by 2026 when the U.S., Canada and Mexico host the World Cup.   Croatia and Morocco turned out to be  tough teams to be reckoned with.  And the Netherlands, having played in Cup finals but having never having won - they're the Buffalo Bills of international soccer - didn't even make the semifinals this year.  But who cares about the Dutch?  I've said it before on this blog, and I'll say it again: Apart from founding New York City, giving the world Rembrandt and Van Gogh, cultivating tulips, building levees and dikes that don't collapse, perfecting wind energy, and reclaiming land from the sea, what have the Dutch really done for Western civilization? 😃

Blow It Like Beckham

England fell in the World Cup round of sixteen early today, losing to Germany, which has made it to every World Cup quarterfinal beginning in 1954, which, as any who saw The Marriage of Maria Braun knows, was their first tournament victory.

As for England . . . hmmph. Being an English soccer fan is the equivalent of being a baseball fan who roots for the Mets. You always hope for your team to repeat a miracle victory that happened decades ago, but you know in your heart of hearts that it's not . . . gonna . . . happen. Actually, that's an unfair comparison. The Mets at least won the World Series twice.

England scored a goal in the game that replays showed was clearly over the goal line and would have tied the game at two apiece but the German goalkeeper grabbed it and threw it back, and the goal was never counted as a point. The English protested, but the result stood. It was an ironic reversal of a German score in the 1966 championship game that gave England the victory.

In other news, Argentina eliminated Mexico three to one. Not exactly the most elegant game. Gee whiz, the Mexican players were hurling themselves into their own net while unsuccessfully trying to stop the Argentines from doing the same with the ball.

Germany and Argentina now meet each other on Saturday.

He Wines and Dines With Argentines

I can't keep up with this story.

Not only was South Carolina Mark Sanford in Argentina instead of hiking in the Appalachians, he was having an affair with a woman in Buenos Aires.

He even wrote steamy love letters to his mistress with the kind of European-style erotic prose normally unassociated with politicians from the American South. He may even know how to tango.

Trouble is, he might have traveled there on the taxpayers' expense.

And he was away on Father's Day, despite the fact that he has four sons.

Wonder how this all looks to Richard Shindell, the American folk singer-songwriter who moved to Argentina in part to escape people like Mark Sanford?

A once-promising political career has ended because Sanford chose to wine and dine with an Argentine.

No Kuwaitis. That's not his style. ;-)

Mark His Words

The latest from South Carolina: Mark Sanford did not hike the Appalachian Trail after all, though he'd considered it. He spent his absence doing something less explicable: He went to Argentina.

Alas, he was not considering political exile.

Maybe he was hunting for Nazi war criminals! :-D

All Sanford said was that he wanted to go someplace exotic after a long legislative session, so he went to Argentina and took a drive along a coastal highway.

I hope he didn't rent a convertible, because it only gets up to fifty degrees or so in Argentina at this time of year - it's winter down there!

Wonder if he knew that?