Monday Meanderings - 6.22.2015

What? It's Monday again and I haven't been 20 feet from my recliner all this week, let alone do any meandering.


It's all because of the FIFA Women's World Cup. I love me some Women's Soccer, and since the World Cup only happens every 4 years, it's a big deal around our house. Yes, I know that there's also the Men's World Cup, and the Olympics, and the Copa America and... well, the list does go on and on, doesn't it?


By virtue of a lot of late-night tape delay, I have survived seen all or part of each of the Group Matches. This past weekend the elimination play began and there have been some surprises. Brazil is gone, and it looks like Marta will never get her World Cup Championship. She may have one last shot at an Olympic Gold Medal in Rio next year.


For the US, Abby Wambach is in a similar position as far as the World Cup is concerned. This will be her last chance, though she does have two Olympic Gold Medals. The US women take on Columbia tonight. USA! USA!


It's interesting to see how many members of national teams involved play college or professional soccer in the United States. Almost every team has one or two members playing in the US. Canada, for example, has two starters that play collegiate ball for West Virginia University; their captain, Christine Sinclair, the third most prolific scorer in the game, went to school in Portland and plays there professionally now.

I'll bore you with one more soccer story, then I've got to get back to watching TV. World cup starts off with group play - 4 teams in each group and each team plays the other 3 and gets points for wins and draws. The teams with the most points in the group, along with a count of goals scored for or against, advance to the knock-out rounds.


That can make for some interesting scenarios - team A can advance even if they lose to team B if team C loses, or wins, but only by X number of goals, etc., and that could lead to some creative gamesmanship.


In the (Men's) World Cup football match played between West Germany and Austria in Gijón, Spain in 1982,  Algeria and Chile played the day before and with the outcome of that match already decided, a win by a single goal for West Germany would result in both them and Austria qualifying at the expense of Algeria, who had beaten West Germany in the first game.


Though the two teams denied any collusion, a goal for Germany was scored early on, and then for the next 89 minutes, the two teams harmlessly kicked the ball back and forth and never took another shot on either goal. So, from that point forward, the final matches in group play start on the same day at exactly the same time, so that there is no opportunity for any 2 teams to repeat "the Disgrace of Gijón."