for the love of the game part3: a sweet finish for the azzuris; a sweet finish for me.

with 194 teams, 910 games, 1,365+ hours (or 82,000+ min) of playing time, and more than a billion people who watched the games...

the world cup couldnt have ended in a better way. italy won on a shootout; 5-4 against les bleus. the team lifts their 4th world cup trophy. shotstopper gianluigi buffon wins lev yashin award, given to the cup's best goalkeeper. miroslav klose won the golden shoe award, given to the highest scorer of the cup. prince poldi won gillette's best young player. and mockingly the best reason to celebrate? france lost. zidane thrust his head onto materazzi's chest. ribery, henry and the respectable idiot were all out during overtime. and trezeguet missed the shootout, the only one from his team. long live deustcheland. long live ingerland. viva italia. viva azzuris.



right after italy won, as they were celebrating in the field, dancing some lame moves, the camera kept focusing on trezeguet. and i would admit, i loved every moment of it. he must have felt miserable, sorry, and ashamed of his mistake. being the reason that they lost. the reason that all their efforts to inch their way up from a weak and unconvincing group stage performances, all of a sudden, became futile. with one missed kick. his kick. i say, that's the second best moment of the night. of course, the best one was italy winning. and the third? oh my, oh my, i would love to see the red card being flashed right on zidane's face. over and over again. i feel bad that materazzi had to suffer the big blow of zinedine's head. but looking back, i thought he somewhat made a hero out of himself for saying whatever he said to the guy that made him so friggin mad, he had to act in such an uncivil way, thrusting his head onto him. i didnt know who materazzi was until recently seeing his contribution to the team- whether scoring or... getting the opponent mad. hehehe. he scored for the team when they went up against the czechs. and that win caused them to advance to the second stage. and this time he did again, twice. one was the equalizer, the second one from the shootout. he became our hero last night, the most important match for the azzuris.

here's a video of his magnificent saving goal in the first half.



the end of the world cup also means the end of fifa world cup fantasy game for me. i wish i couldve done better. but i think i did fairly well for a starter, especially with my second team, which i set up a halfway through the first stage. my first roster, called gerengtaly [from germany, england, and italy], collected 392.5 points, placing me as 104,089th player. klose was my last captain. (stupid, i wasn't able to assign henry or fabio [cool name] cannavaro as my captain. i wouldve ranked a bit higher.)



and on my starting line up are the good players. at least i had the chance to make some transfers for good players, in exchange of the bad players i had. apparently, having the bad players were due to my inability to understand the game rules at first. i'd rather not explain my stupidity here. anyway, that mistake led to my forming my second team, which ill show in a while. for now, here's my starting lineup. followed by the bench players.




towards the second or third stage, i already had several nonfunctional players. rosicky, barnetta, frei, and al kahtani. frei and barnetta wouldve contributed more, if only ukraine didnt beat them in the round of 16. oh well. so much for a starter. my second team's called, germany's 3 brazilian lions. thinking about it, it shouldve been germany's 3 italian lions. just to be consistent with the first one. i guess i was somehow swayed by the sheer popularity of the brazilians that i attached their team to my team name. this time, i wish i had made the transfers towards the end. shouldve saved them for the semis and the final. next time, i shall do better.

despite being formed at a later date, i still managed to inch my way up. i collected 473.5 points, ranking me as the 70,757th. i thought that from 350,000 and up to 70,000 was already a big feat. as i grew more familiar with the teams and the players after every game, after every stage, i earned more and more points. the largest gain was about 60-70 points, if im not mistaken. at this final stage, i only had two azzuris, toni and captain fabio. again, the furstration holds up in the end, as i found myself with 0 chances for a transfer. goodness, i shouldve transferred at this stage, for the more important players. anyway, whats done is done. the game is over and i played fairly well. not to forget that i had the very good players from the different teams- klose, lahm, schweinsteiger, and prince poldi from germany; lampard and beckham from ingerland; again toni and cannavaro from the azzuris; henry and vieira from les bleus; ronaldo and kaka from brazil (though both didn't give me much); and raul, torres and villa from spain, the underachievers. i had the good players both from the lineup and from the bench. i wish i had this thing for real. and God, i love the World Cup. i love football. (i just had to blurt this out.)





i guess this ends my journey with world cup. i will try to upload the best world cup moments for me. of course, expect the excessive display of biases. pictures of germany, england and italy surely will be there. perhaps a lot of them even. i will miss the world cup. 4 long years of wait is like 4 loong years of college. time goes by fast but 4 years is still 4 years. at least there's the EPL coming up next month and euro2008 in, well, 2008.

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going back to the figures above, remember the 194 teams who played? guess where the philippines is. 191st. we should be ashamed of ourselves for such a humiliating ranking. the moment i realized this, i kept telling myself, i would start loving this country [more] and feeling more proud the time it competes even for a slot in the top 64, whatever you call that qualification match. this is just plain stupid.

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next up, the english premier league. starts on aug.19. and for the record, this is the longest blog entry i have made to date.