Enjoyable Soccer That I Did Not Watch

On the whole it seemed like a fairly good weekend for Spurs and United, which meant, of course, that a perfect storm of outside forces and channel choice keep me from watching either. Setanta and Direct Kick continue to be my mortal enemies. On the other hand, I had a good day watching the Final Four and the goalless part of NY-Columbus and Chivas-RSL, the latter being mostly good for annoying other people at the bar who wanted to turn to "a real sport." The real sport turned out to be arena football, and the irony was lost on many.

I did manage to see the highlights of DC United's apparently deceptive 4-1 ass-kicking of Toronto. All of them were essentially garbage goals, which is a little worrisome when viewed out of context. But then again there were four of them, and every one featured a whole lot of black running around the six yard box, so that's progress of a kind. But the general tenor of post-game commentary was not terribly positive, and the MLS highlight package included more quality chances from a lousy 10-man team than you'd think permissible. I remain unconvinced, and I guess we'll see whether or not the progress is real come Wednesday.

As for Spurs, I saw not even highlights, but a 1-1 draw on the road against a good team seems to be about as much as you could ask for these days. Even over the Spurs BigSoccer boards, the apathy was fairly widely-acknowledged and the first "Rate the Season" threads have already sprung up. It's post-mortem time, and no lousy actual games can get in the way of uninformed speculation about next season

Can I Admit the Following?

1. I just didn't care about last night's DC game. That is, of course, much easier to say the day before rather than the day of, when you still find yourself going to ridiculous lengths to watch the game and then fuming over score updates when you fail at the former. Such is the force of habit. But really, I care about CONCACAF right now, not our tradition season-opening loss. We will, however, leave last night's implications for said important game alone for now. There's only so much you can take in one weekend. And speaking of which...

2. I am having heretical thoughts about Juande Ramos. Already. Like, has he really done anything for the winning mentality of the players, who put up a very nice Potemkin village of resistance today? Or, has he been some lucky swings away from an Avram Grant-like substitution record instead of a tactical genius? I can't tell. Certainly he didn't put out the first team today, and it showed in spades (Michael Dawson, that will be quite enough, thanks). But it's now been two awful, embarassing home defeats since the Carling Cup, and it makes you wonder if he has in fact done those Jose-like magic tricks with the mental toughness and heart of the team. It didn't look like it today.

The Joys of Live Text Update

Manic mouse clicking is possibly the worst way to "watch" a game of soccer, but let it never be said that the Live Text Updates page doesn't have a weirdly satisfying drama about it. Click refresh, wait anxiously for the page to cycle while holding your breath, and then live or die with the boring one-line summary of the latest play. No build up or sense of flow, just repeated dice-rolling and mild anxiety.

And even when it looks bad, you still have the devoid-of-any-negative-knowledge chance that your next click might read: "GOAL!! Tottenham 4 - 4 Chelsea."

Well done, boys.

One Man's Trash...

In this summer's north London garage sale, PSV will apparently be the overzealous, "bargain" hunting old lady who shells out for damaged knick-knacks:

PSV Eindhoven are interested in taking Tottenham full-back Lee Young-Pyo back to the Dutch club, according to technical director Stan Valckx.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And yes, Juande does have a bag for that, dear.