el futbol

Sabres lose, Tigers win, Pistons....well, we'll just wait and see.
But in other sports news, the World Cup is just around the corner.
Why do I love soccer? Here's a few reasons:

1. The boys are, on average, cuter than in any other sport, except perhaps baseball.
2. It's like hockey on grass; slower, maybe, but only because the field is huge.
3. When I was catsitting with my sister, we used to watch the 1994 World Cup on cable when we visited, since we didn't have it. We actually timed our visits to watch big US games. This was the first big year when there was a lot of fuss over the US team, and it was on US turf. I remember the People magazine article about it, with pictures of men like John Harkes, who is one of the most handsome men in the world. I had a crush on Claudio Reyna at the time. Ah, the 90s.
4. When I was in Italy, I went to a Fiorentina game with my friend Jelena, since a relative of hers, Pedja Mijatovic, was playing with the club at the time. Pedja had been a crazy-huge star in Spain and was still with the Yugoslavian team at the time also. I have one of his jerseys. The game was intensely crazy, even I started yelling "Vai! VAI!" (Go! GO!) and even though Fiorentina lost, it was hella fun to watch the players getting stripped by a mob of fans after the game. Those Italians love their pallone.

The only thing that no longer appeals to me so much about soccer is that the US team has a whole cadre of players who are younger than I am (10) or about my age (6). I've reached that point, friends, where pro athletes are younger than I am and, if they're my age, they better start looking over their shoulders.