Becks is still British, right?

After skiing all day Sunday, as I am wont to do pretty much every weekend, DB, Mountain Man and I settled into the Stube with the rest of the crew and managed to get ourselves into a rather interesting discussion about soccer. Mind you, DB being Irish actually gives him quite a bit of expertise on the subject. Mountain Man and I were pretty much listening for most of it, as my “expertise” on the subject consists of attending the 2003 Women’s World Cup and reading “Fever Pitch” by Nick Hornby.

Anyway, I learned quite a bit on the topic, not the least of which was the reasoning behind football riots and what the police in Ireland and England now do about that. It’s fascinating, really. Apparently, most of the new stadia are built into sections that are next to impossible to cross. Each section is enclosed in such a way that if a problem were to erupt in one set of stands, the authorities can close off that section, evacuate the rest of the stadium and the pitch and deal with the problem. This has become quite the irritation for the soccer hooligans who like to cause trouble at games. Apparently at one Ireland-England match, the authorities (whoever they are—not sure if it’s the police or what) scanned the crowd as they came in for hooligans and then once the English hooligans decided to start wreaking havoc, they shut down the section they were occupying, stopped the game, evacuated the stadium and beat the hell out of the hooligans. That’s one way to send a message, I suppose.

I am a little envious of the whole soccer phenomenon over in England/Ireland as DB was telling us these cool stories about how the opposing fans sing all these chants and songs at each other, everyone knows all the words and it’s all very civilized and good fun. We don’t do that over here. All we ever do is yell and chant stupid slogans and do “the wave.” Which incidentally was a lot of fun during one of the intermissions at the Linkin Park concert, but gets old after the sixth time around the stadium at a baseball game. Actually, don’t get me started on baseball. We could be here for days.

So, my actual favorite part of the conversation occurred with Chief Loves-His-Voice decided to start participating. As his name would suggest, he is an information leaf-blower. However, he doesn’t always know what he’s talking about. Never stops him. Anyway, he joins in the conversation with what he knows about English soccer and we all just kind of look at him while he talks. The subject somehow comes around to famous soccer players and then it happens.

Chief Loves-His-Voice declares “Isn’t David Beckham German?” German. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, someone actually didn’t know that David Beckham, the most famous sports figure on the planet, is British. I live in the most soccer-retarded country on the planet and we all still know who he is! DB, Mountain Man and I just shook our heads and tried not to laugh out loud. Unreal.

On that note, it’s time for me to get going. German. Hee!

Quote of the Day: “I’ve still got sand in my shoes/and I can’t shake the thought of you/I should get on/forget you/but why would I want to?/I know we said goodbye/anything else would have been confused/but I want to see you again.” Sand in My Shoes, Dido