It's not you, it's me. Okay, I'm lying. It IS you.

I'm sorry, Holland.

It didn't have to be this way.

I wanted to love you. I wanted you to collapse on the field in happy tears, with wild, random, speechless transports of exhausted joy at finally becoming the champion team of the world's soccer nations. I wanted to remember this year as closing the door on the rue and regret of 1974 and 1978, when the exciting beauty of your play was kicked and beaten to death first by German ruthlessness, and then by Argentine duplicity.

I want to be transported with you.

But, instead, it seemed like you were shocked and frightened by the Spanish attack you encountered in the first fifteen minutes of the Cup Final. But, instead, you didn't react by becoming the Netherlands I wanted you to be. You didn't raise your game above the Furia Roja's.

No, you spent a quarter hour playing some of the nastiest, most cynical, most brutal soccer I've seen in an international match. No, all right, I'm lying; the most nasty, cynical, brutal soccer I've seen outside an Italy-Germany match.You thugged the game into inconsequence. You made the beautiful game a thing of grinding ugliness. And with every foul I found my love for you, my hopes for you, falling right alongside the Spanish players.

In regular time you had one lovely chance denied by lucky goalkeeping. But you kept right on fouling your way out of my heart. Into the overtime, your keeper made a terrific save on a Fabregas breakaway. But you kept relentlessly fouling, fouling. It was like you didn't believe in yourselves, or perhaps your coach, van Marwijk, didn't believe that you could play soccer like the Spanish.

And finally you went down to ten men - 90 minutes after you should have - and finally you gave up the goal on a lovely half-volley shot by Andres Inesta that beat your keeper to the far corner and made all your dirty play vain.

I'm sorry, Holland. I wanted you to win. I wanted to love you.

But finally you kicked me right in the heart, too.
And with all my heart I can't be sorry you left the field in tears, and not in tears of joy.

Stunned

They were good.

Frighteningly, comprehensively good. Young good, fast good, creatively good. Good in front, good at the back, seeming to get better with every game they played. Too good to question. So good that the outcome today seemed like an afterthought; the game wouldn't be a contest, but a confirmation that Germany had only one last step to take to win the world's soccer championship for the fourth time in history.

Except someone forgot to tell eleven Spaniards that.I normally love Spanish football. It's fast, flowing, daring, and creative but with the hard edge of good defending that has made them Europe's best side for the past four years.

But this Spanish side had underwhelmed me. Starting with the shocking opening loss to the lowly Swiss, their group games were dour, they seemed to do just barely enough to get by. I had little hope that they would relieve my Oranje the nightmare of being defeated - again - by Germans in the Final.

But hope - from the head of the Spanish defender Puyol - came in the form of a 1-nil defeat for the German side, which must go home feeling hard done by, their offensive genius perhaps crippled by the suspension of the brilliant Thomas Muller.Did I mention that this is a cruel game?

So now there's one more game. Spain will play the Netherlands for the chance to be the first team from their nations to bring the world's cup home. The other nation's team will go home in bitter regret.

I'll be watching.

Oranje boven!

And with Arjen Robben's lovely header, the Oranje are into the World Cup final for the first time since the travesty of 1978.Nothing against the Uruguayans, but after the cynical cheating of Luis Suarez against Ghana, if they had gone through it would have proved beyond doubt that there is no divine, karmic, or infinite Justice in the universe.

My hopes are restored. The Dutch are going to the final.

Good luck to the boys in orange against Germany!

Beautiful game

Now that we're down to the final tour teams I wanted to talk a little about what I've seen at this year's World Cup, along with some footy talk in general. And I need to hurry, because this year's Tour de France has already started!

After a fairly mundane croup stage, I have to give FIFA credit - the Round of 16 and the quarterfinals have produced some wonderful soccer, some terrific drama, and some juicily awful errors to give us something to talk about.

Perhaps my most delightful surprise came yesterday with the Netherlands comeback win over Brazil.

Don't mistake me - I love Brazil, land of the Beautiful Game - I wasn't down on the cariocas. But I've had a tendre' for the Hollanders ever since I fell in love with the Clockwork Orange and their "total football" back in the Seventies. The World Cup finals losses to West Germany in 1974 and Argentina in 1978 seemed unjust to me at 17 and 21; Cruyff, Neeskens, "de Kromme", Jongbloed...they were so good. How could they NOT be the champions of the world?I had big hopes for this year. But when Robinho slipped through the Holland defense to put the Brazilians up 1-0 with more than an hour to play, well...I had a doctor's appointment and turned off the truck radio with some, but not overwhelming, regret.

When I turned the truck over a half hour later I thought I was hearing wrong. Brazil down a goal? Down a player? What the..?

But the Dutch Masters hung on, and now they have a chance to wipe out the Seventies. I'll be there cheering for them Tuesday. Oranje boven!

The German team, though, looks terrific; young, energetic, dangerous on the attack and the counterattack. They have looked better with every game; their demolition of the Argentine side was murderous, clinical. I see the Germans as the other potential finalist in the group of four. Spain has been as good as they needed to be, but have lacked anything like the skill they showed in the UEFA championships. Uruguay is just dour; frankly, I'm sorry that Gyan missed the 120th-minute penalty that would have sent them home.An what about the Big Show in general?

Well,

1. The finals have been as entertaining and spectacular as ordered. Play ranging from transcendent to dire. High drama, low comedy, heroes, villians, and Diego Maradona. I don't think anyone, at least any soccer fan, can complain we haven't had our feast of footy. It has been a wonderfully crazy tournament so far.

2. Yes, some of the officiating has been dire. There does need to be a goal-line camera. Referees need to be better evaluated, and the incompetent ones removed. And in some cases the rules themselves should be evaluated.

I'm specifically thinking of the handball committed by Uruguay's Luis Suarez. I've thought about this and although I have some sympathy for the argument that the notion of allowing the referee to "award" goals is a slippery slope, I have to think that the current rule is not severe enough. Here was a clear case of a man committing a foul, preventing a sure goal that would have beaten his team. He was ejected from the game and the Ghanaians given the penalty. But they missed the PK, and the cheater's team won. Even Suarez caught the injustice of the moment; "...the way in which I was sent off," he said, "truth is, it was worth it."

But overall the bad calls have not been sufficient to destroy the flow of the games or the overall competition.

3. There is something very wrong with many of the traditional European soccer powers. Italy was dire in this year's finals. Spain has looked pedestrian, and the once brilliant Portugese barely managed to get out of the group stage. France, not a "traditional" power but one that has done well lately, was beneath awful. All of these national teams need to take a hard look at their domestic leagues and their young players. Or they will not be here again for some time.

Note that I am inclined to be less severe on England for the rather sad reason that I don't see England as a "traditional soccer power" any longer; it is, rather, one of the "other" European sides that occasionally make it to the finals because UEFA has so frigging many places. England has become a Slovenia, a Switzerland, a Greece, or a Denmark. The fact that the British tabloid press and the England supporters haven't realized this is rather pathetic but doesn't change the fact of it.

4. As for the rest of the world, well, it was nice to see both Japan and one of the Koreas go through to the Round of 16. It would be even nicer if another of the Asian sides could get that far next time. We already know that Japan and the ROK have the skill...how about the rest of Asia?

And much as I'd welcome fewer UEFA spaces, can we stop pretending that there is any reason to send one team from "Oceania"? And I would suggest that although the Asian teams are better, the notion that four should get berths in the finals? Please. Oceana and Asia could conceivably get four between them.

Anyway, it's been a great time, and I hope that the next three games will be as good or better...And in case you don't remember, we have our own soccer club here in Portland, and they may not be Germany or Brazil but those of us who consider ourselves part of the Timbers Army love them all the same.Usually I go to Timbers' games with my friends and stand with the Army, to sing and chant and support the club. But this Saturday Brent and Julie were not in town, so I took my son. Big Peeper was as excited as a seven-year-old can be, wrapped in his borrowed scarf and toting his vuvuzela, as we designated his plastic horn. We rode the MAX train in from North, pointing out the other Timbers supporters, and sights along the way. We queued up for hot dogs and sodas and Red Vines before heading up to our seats, close but not too close to the Army for sensitive seven-year-old ears.Normally I am an emotional wreck at the games, exulting over goals, fretting for poor play, all atwitter if the game is close and the visitors are pushing forward.Tonight I had the chance to sit back and enjoy watching my little guy watch the game. He cheered every shot, on or off target. He jeered every Vancouver foul. He ate his junk food, blew his vuvuzela, climbed all over me, and just generally had a terrific time. That we took 25 shots and didn't score, that we ran off the field with a scoreless draw? He could have cared less. The game itself was the best, even better was the chocolately cupcake at saint cupcake afterwards, better still the fireworks we lit off when we got home.He tumbled into bed smiling.

As I had found myself smiling, too, at my son, as he shouted his joy to the sparkles crackling in the night sky.

Vuvuzela khazad! Vuvuzela ai menu!

No deep meaning here. Just frigging hilarious.

Cup runneth over...

It's that quadrennial outburst of national fervor, commercial excess, poor taste, tedious, pedestrian business mixed with the emotional explosions and nearly unmatchable excitement of professionals at the top of their game doing what they do best on the largest stage on the planet.

No!

C'mon, do you take me for a fool?

Of course it's not another damn U.S. federal election!

Who the hell would mistake those idiots for "top professionals"? Professional beggars and prevaricators, perhaps. Top of their fundraising game, maybe. But worth getting emotional about? Puhleese!Nope. It's World Cup time again.

It's always hard for me to blog about the Cup because it's just so vast, the multifarious tales and intrigues and lies and commonplaces and idiocies - did the Spanish goalkeeper get distracted by his hot squeeze broadcasting on the sidelines!? Ohimigawd!!! - makes trying to tease a single thread or two loose to mull over is like delaminating your skis while you're skiing on them. You can do it, but the effort and risk exhausts you by the time you're finished.So.

Let's just read some givens into the record, OK?

Lots of the games will be as dreary as any other professional sporting event, or much of your and my lives in general, in fact. Is every every workday a treat? Every weekend a funfest? Do you see the stars and the Sun whenever you make love?

The hucksterism will be appalling and incessant. I would remark that that is a feature, not a bug, of our Industrial lives, too. Try it - reach out, right now, as you read this. Can you touch something with a corporate logo on it? I'll bet you can.Our very lives are a marketing study. Why should we expect the World's Game to be any different?

Sigh.

Okay, what else.

There will be pretty women in skimpy outfits with national symbols on them. There will be obese men with similar apparel and larger breasts.

There will be a lot of snide, or offensive, or offended, comments about the breasts.

The breasts will not care, particularly, one way or the other.

There will a hurricane of bloviating about the entire business, and the entire world will seem to be caught up in talking about the games, talking about what others said about the games, or talking about something that happened at the games that had nothing to do with sport or soccer at all - Did you hear that Maradona called Platini a French bee-yotch and Pele' an ancient nobody? Ohmifuckinggawd!!!!

Speaking of breasts, the Brazilian women will, as always, manage to look completely covered while somehow deliciously bare, all the while sporting their national team colors.

Hmmm...

Someone or two will fail, or blunder, spectacularly, and will be very publicly pilloried for it, reviled in a way reserved for ex-wives and homicidal dictators, their repentance and abasement demanded, their blood cried for...only to be forgotten by the time the groundsmen finish clearing off the pitch after the final match.

Everyone but the fans of one country will go home disappointed.

It will be utterly ridiculous, and excessive, and foolish. And we who love it will love it again, for all that we're old enough and wise enough to know better.

Oh, yes.

There will be silly mascots.But in order to feel that I'm earning my blogging keep, a bit of business.

One story I would like to tease out is the rich World Cup tradition of Bitching About The Official Ball.

Adidas, the German sports supplier, has provided an "official" ball as backed by FIFA for the World Cup (to go with the official soft drink, the official post-it note, the official t-shirts and drinking glasses, the goddamn official feminine hygiene products, so far as I know. We talked about the merchandising, remember..?) for 40 years. Every four years, for as long as I can remember, some of the players and the fans bitch, moan and whine about the ball. It flies too far, too fast, it wobbles in the air, it's a nightmare for the goalkeepers, it will produce a bucketful of soft goals.

And the first round of group games usually does, and since Alexi Lalas can't even pronounce "post hoc ergo propter hoc" this year's "Jabulani" ballis being blamed for everything from teen pregnancy to the blowout of Deepwater Horizon.

So far as I can tell the soft goals have been mostly the result of nerves, inexperience with teams and pitches, as well as with the ball. I don't think the new ball has been the cause. But I will say this;

I think this thing must take off like it has a rocket up its ass.

I've never seen so many rising shots, long crosses, and misses over the crossbar. The ball has some sort of textured or grooved surface that the maker says are supposed to make it stable in flight.

Weeellll...I don't know. The Wiki entry for it has a slew of quotes from players who hate it. And my observations do suggest that the ball tends to sail or rise more than the previous versions. Is that a problem. Depends, I imagine. I personally like the Real Madrid and Spain defender Álvaro Arbeloa's attitude to the whole controversy.

"It's round," he says, "like always."For all the publicized moaning about the low scores, the group games have had their delights; unlikely victors - Switzerland over Spain! Like having your seductive auntie leave your dashing uncle for the little brown man who sells loafers at the Payless Shoe Store - and shocked favorites, unhoped for wins and pathetic losses. Heroes, villains, wise men, fools...It's the World Cup, the Big Show, and I'll be there tomorrow at 4:30 a.m., enjoying every blowsy, merchandised, oversold moment.

U.S. 3 - 2 Slovenia

Bad, bad call.Should be reversed by FIFA, as I've discussed. Not to excuse the mistakes that got the U.S. men's team 2-nil down at the half. But this is really inexplicable. If it was supposed to be an offsides, it was just wrong. If it was some sort of push or other contact, well, you couldn't really call it on one side without the other - both teams were fighting for position.

Three games today, two stunning and featuring some very...unusual...refereeing. In the Germany-Serbia match from what I could see much of the Spanish referee's work was within the letter of the Laws of the Game, but not what you typically see in international soccer. The Germans were very slow to accept that he was showing yellow for what would have been ordinary fouls to a different official and paid the price for it.The third, England's goalless draw with Algeria, was just dire.More tonight.