FIFA Still Sucks

They came from all the corners of the globe. Kind of tough to have square things like corners in a round thing like the globe, but I think you get the point. They, the 24 best women’s soccer teams on the planet, showed up in Vancouver Canada for the Women’s World Cup, and put on one hell of a good show.

The tournament, which just ended yesterday, was supposed to be a nice, tidy athletic event that organizers, aka FIFA, was probably hoping would be a mild diversion from the corrupt, sleazy affairs that had turned up in the last few months that caused the resignation and dismissal of several of their highest ranking officers. Thanks to the efforts of many of the world’s best athletes (soccer players are REALLY good athletes), the tournament turned out to be a splendid example of those things that represent the very best of world class sport.

Usually, the World Cup, and soccer games in general, play out like some form of defensive chess match, where both teams play tight, defensive games where there is little action, even less scoring where the final score often ends up being 1 to 0, or, when things get really out of control, they explode into a 2 to 1 game.

The tournament played out with a lot of close, competitive games, where teams would do whatever it could do to advance to the medal rounds. An own goal late in the semi-final match put defending champion Japan into the finals, while a stout United States team defensive effort against Germany put the U.S. into the finals against Japan.

And THAT is when the U.S. women raised their game up to a level that heretofore had never been seen in women’s soccer. They played a game of SOCCER that had them scoring four goals in the first 16 minutes. In that same time span, U.S. forward Carli Lloyd got a HAT TRICK (three goals), meaning that in a game that usually does not see more than a goal or two total per contest, one player scored three in the span of 16 minutes.

The final score of 5 to 2 featured several extraordinary plays by the U.S. team. On one goal, a U.S. corner kick threaded perfectly through the maize of defenders to hit Lloyd on the run where she re-directed the perfect pass with a perfect foot to the ball. On another, U.S. forward Lauren Holiday came racing towards a ball that had been deflected high in the air and caught it perfectly in mid-air at about waist level height with a volley kick that thundered into the back of the net. A beautiful goal.

The third great goal was by Lloyd again, where she stole a pass somewhere around mid-field, and, instead of making a run towards the goalie fifty yards away, she saw the goalie had wandered out from her goal a bit too far. Lloyd launched a long fifty yard shot OVER the head of the Japanese goalie (from mid-field, mind you) for a goal that was about as amazing as anything ever scored in the World Cup, by either a man or a woman.

And that’s the point. These were plays that were every bit as skillful as those made in the men’s game. The women’s game had NEVER been considered as being at as high of a level as the men’s game. But this team had plays that rose to that level. The game was watched by a national TV audience of OVER 25 million people.

There are some people who are getting carried away with the women’s team and saying they could beat the men’s World Cup team. That might be taking this winning the World Cup euphoria a bit too far, but the point that should have been made was that the women’s final game was probably more ENTERTAINING than the games that the American men have played.

The American women won their championship, and then celebrated the greatest moment of their collective lives with a joy and exhilaration that spread to an entire American TV audience that had adopted this national team as theirs. They may have done something even more amazing than “winning the World Cup” and bringing home victory for all of those soccer moms and bandwagon U.S. sports fans.

They made an event put on by FIFA end up looking good.

And we all know one thing that is still a certainty in life. And that is – that FIFA still sucks.