This is an Adidas commercial showcasing female Chinese soccer talent. I think there is a ton of CGI, but I’m not sure. It is a sight, nonetheless..

Soccer is perhaps, the most popular sport in the world. The several billion people tuning in to watch the World Cup is a testament to it’s popularity, and worldwide appeal. I would watch soccer over American football any day. Soccer is a constantly flowing game, with occasional stoppages due to fouls, injuries and substitutions. It usually takes at most 105 minutes to finish a 90-min game versus 2-3 hours staccato game of American football.

Most of you know about this sport, so I won’t try to explain it. I wonder if the World Cup is being shown on any of the free sports channels in the US. I am watching it live on a dedicated channel in Nigeria. Nigeria is a serious soccer crazy nation with a good team, which unfortunately didn’t qualify for the World Cup. However, 5 African nations did qualify with a lot of new nations, but they haven’t won a single game. I don’t think any of them are going to cross Round 1. I’m surprised that some of the previous teams from Africa who did well in prior World Cups didn’t make the cut. I mean, teams like Cameroon, and Nigeria.

The games so far, have been decent with a few fast-paced ones. The opening game between Germany and Costa Rica was very exciting. Goals in the first 5 minutes set the pace for the rest of the game. Another one of Germany’s games versus Poland was a nail biter because Germany scored during the last 2 minutes of play. I felt so bad for Poland, having held off the German attack for 90 minutes, faltered at the very end. Actually, Germany had several goal scoring opportunities which should have resulted in goals at this level of the game, but I guess I would attribute that to bad luck. Their shots kept ricocheting off the top or side bars. I saw a few other games where teams with first goals got beat in the second half, by an invigorated attack by the opposing team. There haven’t been very many high scoring games except for one game that was 3-0 in favor of Ecuador that decimated the Spanish team.

One of the reasons that the World Cup is in public cynosure is due to the soccer ball. This innovation in sport technology makes the current ball much lighter than the previous balls, and most players and goal keepers dislike it for it’s erratic movements in the air. There would have been more goals, and goals saved since the old ball afforded more control. The new ball is more aerodynamic and rounder, with fewer panels making up the ball. Here is a LiveScience article about this very issue.

I must say that the soccer stadiums are simply amazing! The architecture, and design is breathtaking and elegant. I wish I could have watched the games like in those stadium with the giant displays, and lush green turfs..

A personal gripe I have about this game is the annoying show put on by the players. They make this sport look like it’s played by a bunch of pansies. They keep diving, and feigning pain and injury to get fouls, free kicks, and penalties. They dive, and then clutch some part of their leg while rolling around on the turf. After receiving or not receiving the foul, they get back up like nothing happened. They have gotten tough on play acting by penalizing those players by yellow cards. That’s the one aspect of the game that I, and I bet a lot of other soccer fans dislike.

Here is the flickr search results for “world cup” +germany. There are a lot of cool images from the World Cup event!

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Technorati Tags: Sports, World Cup, Soccer

Nike commercial

Banned for suggestiveness (umbro)

Pepsi sumo soccer

This is a game of cricket between arch rivals India and Pakistan. It’s on Google Video, so you should be able to watch it by streaming. Enjoy.

This is just 30 mins long. It’s highlights of the game.