Jogging and Crying

If I had grown up with my father, I might play hockey, but I grew up with my mother, so I play accordion. Not to say that I didn't spend my childhood struggling through little league soccer, handball, basketball and myriad physical activities that were deemed beneficial to my development as a well-rounded individual, but the support in my household was far more for the painting and pottery classes, the theater group and the piano lessons. (A decision that was no-doubt revisited when I dropped out of university twice to join bands.) If my mother was indifferent to the lure of sports, my stepfather was downright hostile. As a chess champion and math PhD student, he dismissed the whole idea as uncivilized. Have you seen The Squid and the Whale? Jeff Daniels' bit about philistines could have been quoted from my childhood.
As such, my entrance to sports fandom came later in life. In Montreal, I dabbled in baseball. The Expos were so unpopular that, despite having a winning season, you could cut coupons out of the newspaper for free tickets to games in a futile attempt to fill the stadium. My friends and I did this a bunch of times, until we realized that what we really liked was hanging out with each other and drinking beer. The rest of the city apparently felt the same way, so the Expos decamped for Washington and became the Nationals. I don't think anybody misses them. Then, while living in New York, I was surrounded by bandmates and roommates who were Jets fans, and resistance proved futile. A football fan was born. I soon found myself spending Sundays in the fall glued to the TV set, jumping up from the sofa and cheering, or more typically cursing the gods and the universe for such an unfair fate. As I said, Jets fans. (A quick side note: this cut both ways. 2 Skinnee J's was initially divided into those who liked football and those who liked sushi, but the hive mind eventually took over and I clearly remember all of us in a hotel room in Blacksburg, Virginia, where everybody was eating tuna rolls and watching the NFL draft.) My love of football has been long lived. To this day, I check the results every Monday morning of the season from the computer at at my desk. My love for the Jets, a team of people I would so clearly despise in person, has finally expired, so I'll need a new horse in the race come September. Any suggestions?
I figured my move to Barcelona would engender a love of soccer. (I'm not calling it football. I don't say lorry either.) While it has given me an appreciation for the sport, I would never call myself a fan. It's a shame because I live in the city with one of the best teams in the world, home to arguably the best player, and can only muster up moderate enthusiasm. There are a couple of reasons. The main one is that cheating and lying is an integral part of the game. How many rules you can get away with breaking is an inherent part of the strategy, sometimes the deciding part. Games are won when the ref isn't paying attention. The hand of God is the most famous case of this. Which leads us to the second problem: all the bitching and moaning. As much as you try to push the other guy around and sneak some dirty shit into your game, it is your duty to be outraged when he does the same to you. Lying on the ground and grabbing whichever body part seems appropriate in a bid for sympathy, or following the referee around like an eight year old tattle tale is a necessary part of play. It can amount to watching a couple dozen men jogging and crying for 90 minutes. It's bullshit, and I call shenanigans.
As for the Eurocup underway now, Barcelona has a funny relationship with it. Being proudly separatist, most fans don't want to support the national team. However, they do want to watch some soccer, so they make excuses like "half the team is from Barcelona anyway" conveniently ignoring that the other half is from the hated Real Madrid. And when Spain win, as they have done in the last Eurocup and World Cup, sports trumps politics and the streets fill with people celebrating.
Last night was the semi-final against Portugal, whose star player is the almost universally reviled Cristiano Ronaldo. He's like the Tom Cruise of soccer: a talented pretty boy who freaks out when he doesn't get his way and who most people agree would probably be greatly improved by a really hard punch in the face, Mad Men style. The game itself was boring. Two hours of ineffectual running around followed by standing there and kicking the ball at each other's nets. When a game reaches penalties, it seems like bullshit to me. It totally invalidates all the time and effort that came before if the champion is simply chosen by what amounts to rock paper scissors. Spain won the roshambo and proceeds to the final against the winner of tonight's Italy-Germany showdown. Germany so far has swept aside Greece and will now face another Mediterranean challenger. It's like sports imitating life.