I started watching the World Cup today. I know nothing about soccer so I’m just starting to learn about the teams. Team USA plays on monday, but I caught two games today. England and Paraguay, and Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago.
I saw the end of the England/Paraguay game. Paraguay apparently earlier knocked the ball into their own goal off of a David Beckham corner kick. So Englad won the match. I got to watch the full Trinidad game and their goalie, who played for Howard University, put on an amazing display of blocking. They managed to get a draw against the heavily favored Swedish team.
I’m watching the Ivory Coast/Argentina game on ESPN 2 right now. I’m having a tough time with the announcers. They keep trying to make parallels between World Cup soccer and American sports. They just don’t match up and they should stop doing that. It’s annoying!
I still don’t know exactly how the World Cup is scored. Apparently a win gives you 3 points, a tie gives you 1 and they keep track of the goal differential to break ties in the scoring. That’s what I gathered from listening to the matches. I’ll have to keep reading on it.