gingerjon

Enjoying the Netherlands-Japan game. Not thrilling but interesting to see how they’re set up and approaching things.

I believe that is “Major Tom” by Peter Schillig (or Schilling, something like that)

GOAL TO CURACAO

That’s my memory of it

Only caught snatches of the end of it but Australia looked solid. No idea about the Scotland game - I'll have to catch up on that.

The one that fools most non Americans (it seems) is college sports, in a lot of places, counting for a lot more, and have more passionate fans, than professional sports.

Either way, by chosen favourite sport, football is fourth in the States, very marginally behind baseball. Both are miles behind gridiron and basketball - situation which is not going to change any time soon. The difficulty is that MLS doesn’t do great on cut through (but does wash its face with attendances and income these days) and most Americans will be watching the Premier League and (I believe) Mexican League and others. Baseball, which I like, has even worse issues with cost barriers to participation than football. Football, marking its own homework so take with a pinch of salt, claims 14.1 million children and adult regular participants of outdoor games - of which a majority are male. The short version: soccer is doing more than fine in the States and most negative views seem to come from people either expecting a World Cup win, it to overtake NFL, and/or MLS to become a global major league.

What a noise when Canada score. Let no one tell you that North America doesn’t care.

Punching people in the head is fine in the World Cup

Canada will score 0 goals in 270 minutes

That’s going to gut those on the main board who think only RL people count empty seats

Thought Sri Lanka were pretty unimpressive, sadly

Fantastic atmosphere from the Canadians

The Germany game has been pretty well promoted. It appeared, unprompted, in my socials feed the day before yesterday.

This is worth noting for those who don't quite appreciate how ingrained soccer is in the UK: ITV’s coverage of the World Cup’s opening game between Mexico and South Africa received their highest viewing figures of the year, peaking at 7.7million. That's a nothing game, not featuring a home nation, and it was dull. And it is straight away ITV's highest ranking programme of the year.