WORLD CUP USA ‘94: QUARTERFINALS : The Game Has Tied Him Over

I never thought I’d live to say this, but I’ve grown to love World Cup soccer.

It’s as deliciously wacky as a Keystone Kops movie. The Marx Brothers have a ball. Everything but the pie in the face. What they used to call in Carole Lombard’s day screwball comedy.

You watch the World Cup and you figure the guy got the idea for it from “Alice in Wonderland.”

Get a load of these guys! I ask you, was Chaplin ever funnier?

First of all, did you see in the papers the other day where a referee apologized to the world for making a bad call? And not just any old bad call, a call that cost a country, Belgium, its place in the tournament!

I ask you, did you ever hear of a zebra in the NFL or an umpire in a World Series who admitted he ever made a bad call, never mind apologize for it? This poor guy will never again officiate a World Cup game. My guess is, he’ll be standing outside a Russian restaurant in Paris in a fur hat, opening limo doors for guys in tuxes and ladies in evening gowns. I mean, I don’t have to tell you they don’t forgive boo-boos very easily.

And how can you top a headline that says, “Bulgaria Beats Mexico, 1-1?” Like, you want to say “How’s that again? You want to run through that for me one more time?”

How do you beat somebody, 1-1? Well, in the World Cup, it’s easy. Seems they decide games nowadays by penalty kicks after regulation and overtime end tied. Kind of like showdown poker where you cut cards for the pot after all-night dealing hasn’t run anybody out.

But it’s such a wimpy way to decide a world championship that the governing body in soccer, FIFA, chooses to ignore it. It recognizes the lunacy of spending two hours to run up two goals--and then scoring them in bunches in about 29 seconds.

See what I mean? Should these guys go around in Napoleon hats or what? There’s a part for Jack Nicholson in this farce. I love it!

And I love the way they ignore injured parties. They step right over them as if they weren’t there. The clock keeps moving. The guy’s on his own. He might be dead or dying, but that doesn’t matter. If he gets in the way, presumably they’ll kick him. The show must go on. Carmen was announced, Carmen will be sung. Get that stiff off the field before I red-card him. Don’t you love the way they gravely give you cards for misbehavior? Much more ominous than the way umpires give the old heave-ho, just throwing their arm in the air and abusing you verbally. Their way is almost like a Frenchman handing you his card as a challenge to a duel. Very polite and civilized. None of this, “Yer outta here, busher!”

In this sport, the ref doesn’t always have to red-card you. Your team will do it for him. Take the case of the star player for Germany who, walking off the field, gives the finger to the crowd in Chicago.

And his own coach not only kicks him out of the game, he kicks him out of the tournament! Match that around New York! Imagine the Philadelphia Phillie manager kicking his own player out of a game for flipping off the crowd. I seem to remember Ted Williams spitting at the fans once. Vince Coleman threw a small explosive at them. I don’t even want to remember the things John McEnroe used to do to a crowd. With impunity. What this guy did wouldn’t even make the 11 o’clock news after a Super Bowl.

I also love the fact that you have no idea how much time there’s left in a game. It’s a kind of important statistic and, in a 90-minute game, there is some time to be added to make up for injury time.

The only trouble is, they don’t tell you. Only the referee knows. It’s his secret. It’s for sure he doesn’t let the crowd in on it. It reminds me of the scene in “Guys and Dolls” in which Big Julie holds a crap game in his hat. You throw the dice and only he can see them. “You lose,” he tells you. All the shooter can do is say, “Tell me, was they five-and-twos or four-and-threes er what?”

“Time’s up,” says the World Cup referee. Oh?

Is this a great game or what? I ask you!

And, get a load of the “injuries.” These guys should get Oscars. One minute, they’re writhing on the ground, clutching their legs or arms or heads in terminal pain. They get carried off the field still as death. Until their opponent gets a red card. Then they jump off the stretcher like Lazarus, run out on the field and pick up where they left off.

Red cards mean you’re through for the rest of the game, all of the next one and maybe the rest of the tournament. If our baseball had them, think you’d find all those guys charging the mound? I love red cards.

What I think I like best is the way these guys run up and down the field all day and nothing happens. They never score. It’s almost as if they have a pact not to score. As if the sport would die of embarrassment if it had a 10-9 game, or 11-11.

The reason they don’t score is, they never try to! I mean, they have this big yawning net and it’s like putting a ball in the Grand Canyon. The damn thing is eight yards wide, for cryin’ out loud! And eight feet high. How tough could it be to get a spheroid the size of a beach ball in there? But when they get down in front of it, they stop, get the ball between their insteps and start looking around for someone to pass the ball to. You want to scream, “Kick the damn ball! Net it!”

They don’t. They act as if they have to have a letter from God. Most games, the goalkeeper has an easier job than a guard at a railroad crossing with two trains a week.

But I don’t want to quibble. Who needs scoring when you’ve got this lovely bunch of eccentrics? Still, the goalkeeper should bring a book.

It’s the international aspect of this thing that adds its spice. Playing for one’s country is a bigger responsibility than playing for Green Bay. Of course, you look at the Swedish team, for example, and you can tell right away some of them aren’t Swedish. But so what? The Irish national team had a Protestant for a coach. And the star player on the Italian team is a Buddhist.

Did I tell you this sport was fun? You think I’m making this up?

And the press? None of this “journalistic objectivity” for these guys.

Listen to this--by a writer named Pete Davies in his book, “Twenty-Two Foreigners in Funny Shorts”:

“He was Diego Armando Maradona; he was 25, he was 5 feet 6 inches of jet-propelled muscle, and he was the greatest player the world had seen since Pele. He was also, unfortunately, an arrogant little twerp whose career would feature petulant farce and peerless genius in equal parts.”

There! Anything else you wanted to know? I wish we could get this guy over here. There’s a few guys in our sports I’d like to turn him loose on.

Well, I don’t know about you but I’ll miss these arrogant little twerps. It’s too bad the Brits didn’t qualify. They would have brought another dimension--hooliganism. This seems to mean an excess of rooting that leads to raucous, dangerous, aggressive advocacy. Ruffian behavior. Root for their team or they break your kneecaps. They should have come anyway. They could have gone to Raider games.

I love the way they spotted the games. I mean, putting a game in Orlando in July is an idea worthy of the Marquis de Sade. But then, you have to remember this is a sport that put one of the qualifying games in La Paz, Bolivia. Bolivia beat Brazil, 2-0, in what was billed as a wild upset. I don’t think so. La Paz is 12,000 feet high. Eagles walk at that altitude.

They shouldn’t give these guys a Cup. First prize should be a cuckoo clock.