What's freakin' Qatar got that we ain't got?

By now I guess you've heard that some place called Qatar and not the mighty U.S. of A., was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup. Frankly, when I heard the news, my first concern was whether there was enough room in a country smaller than Connecticut to fit all the people who will be flocking there for the games.

I can see all kinds of reasons Qatar got the bid. First and foremost, its Aspire Tower (pictured here) is way cooler looking than our Reunion Tower. And even though the emirate has, according to the International Monetary Fund, the high Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world (whatever that means), its government is not considering extending tax breaks for its wealthiest citizens.

How neat is this: Qataris (that's what the locals are called) don't even have to pay for water or electricity. The downside is that has resulted in beaucoups of energy consumption and Qatar has the highest per-capita carbon dioxide emissions of any country in the world. It should also be mentioned that Qatar doesn't have a good track record when it comes to dealing with immigrant labor.

And finally there's this: Texas A&M has a campus in Qatar. Not only that, its basketball team hasn't lost a game since March of 2008. That's 31 victories in a row. I don't know, however, if the students there are known as Qataggies.

Wish I had written this

I am not familiar with Stinson Carter who is identified on The Huffington Post as a "journalist, novelist, screenwriter and playwright." I do not know what novels, screenplays or plays he has written, but he did compose a fine journalist piece this morning on the aforementioned Huffington blog concerning yesterday's Algeria-U.S.A. World Cup contest, the last three paragraphs of which were:

Perhaps the very fact that soccer has not been widely embraced by America until now has preserved it as one of the least tainted of American sports; maybe its purity lies in its obscurity. These men on our National Team mean so much more to us now because they meant nothing to us a month ago. They are not celebrities, they are not multi-millionaires, and we don't read about their lives in grocery store checkout lines. So, when we see them out on the field, we don't see our vain ambitions in them. We see ourselves in them. And what we saw yesterday filled us with pride and self-respect at a time when we really need it.  

We are in perhaps one of the most challenging eras of American history. With a Gulf Coast in peril, an overseas war with no end in sight, and an economy still in the grip of an historic financial slump, it's hard to face our realities. But yesterday, the young men of our National soccer team showed us something that affirmed the inner greatness of a troubled people. They showed us why we must always continue to believe that great things can happen to those who work hard and refuse to give up.

However far we go in this World Cup, we have already won a glimpse of the strength at our core. Perhaps soccer will become huge in America one day. But let's remember it as it is now, while what makes it big is that it is still small. While one little tap of a ball into a net by a young man a few thousand miles away has the power to make us see the greatness in soccer and remind us of the greatness in ourselves. So of all the things that happened yesterday, let's remember it as the day when the sport that didn't matter showed us what matters most.

Very well said.

What's needed to love the game of soccer

I was on the edge of my seat this morning watching the World Cup contest between the U.S.A. and Algeria. And when Landon Donovan scored that goal in the 91st minute, I screamed, lept from my chair and danced gleefully around the room. (The fact that I was home alone at the time made the spectacle far less embarrassing than it could have been.)

I was giddy. The American team had gone from the brink of World Up elimination to winning its group with one deft kick of a rebounded ball.

It was only later, after I had a chance to digest my emotions, to review my history with the sport, to recall conversations with other sports enthusiasts who find soccer boring beyond belief and to remember a lot of the things I had read and heard about soccer in the U.S.A. that I realized what it really takes to enjoy the sport: A passionate involvement with a team. Not just a passing fancy, or an admiration, but the kind of passion people usually reserve their college sports teams -- that kind of fanaticism that expresses itself in people wearing pigs on their heads to collegiate events.

There's a lot of talk about how so many kids around here play soccer and then lose all interest in it when they get older. That's because, while their parents are desperately and passionately rooting for their childrens' teams, after this experience is over they really don't have any other teams to root for. Let's face it, Major League Soccer still isn't cutting it, not the way the English Premier League does or the French, Italian, Spanish, German, Mexican or South American leagues do.

As for me, my nationalistic pride has me passionately rooting for the U.S.A. in these World Cup games. Realistically, I know they don't have a chance to win it all, But that degree of passion invested while watching a soccer game - especially one tied 0-0 when just the slightest event, lightning quick, can turn the entire game around -- makes soccer, to me, among the most exciting sports played on this planet.

But, if you don't have a team, you don't have a prayer and you're never going to understand why the rest of the world loves this game above all others. Not until every hamlet in America starts its own soccer team and gets its citizens invested in its success, will Americans really understand what makes this game so breathtakingly exciting.

Go U.S.A.!!!