But now, confession time: I have been known to watch soccer from time to time. As the American football offseason waxes on, I get more and more desperate for a surrogate sport to watch, as I don't really care for baseball, basketball, hockey, etc. so, during the summers of recent years, I have succumbed to watching, and enjoying, international-level tournament soccer. This year, it's the Euro 2012 tournament:
The Euros are pretty much like the World Cup, except that non-European teams are shunned like peasants. What's that, Uruguay? You're #2 in the world and want to give it a go? Sorry, this is the Euros. The narrative in this tournament seems to be whether defending European and World champions Spain (ranked #1 in the world) will retain their title, or whether it will be usurped by contenders like Germany (#3) or...a much less likely candidate.
Right now we're two games into Group Stage play - four groups of four teams each, top two teams in each group advance to the quarterfinals - with the third and final set of games kicking off today. So far two teams have been eliminated (Ireland and Sweden, both 0-2), with no teams quite managing to secure a guarantee of qualification, so all 14 remaining eligible teams have work left to do over the next four days.
As for why I suddenly find soccer not-boring at this time of the year, I can only offer two answers: firstly, I find it fun and easy to get into the 'narrative' of certain sports, enhancing my enjoyment, and secondly, desperation.
Group Stage play continues today at 2:45pm EST, with Russia v. Greece and Poland v. Czech Republic in Group A.
For the world rankings I referenced, consult: the FIFA world ranking table.
The ESPN page on Euro 2012.
Euro 2012 on Wikipedia.
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