For Club and Country...or not

After the many 2010 World Cup Qualifiers on Wednesday I decided that to comment on them I would have to find a reason I should care. I could root for my home country -- a novel idea -- and I did that, to the result of a win over Honduras to avenge a 3-1 loss to Costa Rica that included a US soccer team whose performance would run into some serious issues against The Big Green. I could root for the players of my favorite club team. Not many from La Liga's Sevilla FC played on Wednesday, but I found solace in centre/left back Ivica Dragutinović and the Serbian National team. They won both their matches in the week to take 18 of a possible 21 points so far and leave them 8 clear of France for the lead in their qualifying group. Former Yugoslav neighbors Montenegro came from two goals down to muster a draw at the mighty Cyprus.

Some fans however, find themselves more confused. A good friend of mine considers himself a soccer fan, though I feel in Europe it would be the same way someone over the pond is a basketball fan: they understand the game to a point, know their country plays it at a far weaker level and merely latches on to the best team they see on TV. Well this individual decides to fall in line with his heritage and root for the Italian National team. I respect the heritage angle, I rooted for Poland in Euro 2008, but he claims that were he to travel to the 2010 World Cup, he would root for Italy over his home US of A. Funny, considering that if his fellow "countrymen" said a word other than Ferrari or spaghetti he would be lost in the conversation. Interesting fact; he also claims to be AT LEAST half Chilean. Maybe I should warn him the Chile's defeat of Bolivia almost assures them of a place in South Africa, time to break out that Colo Colo jersey son.

He doesn't seem too happy about it...

Anyway, with the qualifiers giving the chance to look all around the world for stories three things have caught my eye in the last week:

Real Madrid's Big Signings
Seriously Real? You've spent so much money that the Yankees are jealous. Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo cost the Spanish giant £133 MILLION POUNDS. That is, by current exchange rates, $219 million dollars! For two players! A team tired of the stigma of choking with the most talent (which they did once again this past season) finally became too much so they decided to make it rain on the worlds top talent like Pac Man Jones.

USA Abysmal Defense
When all of America can pick out bad soccer without looking at a scoreline, its not a good thing. Anyone who watched the Costa Rica match could have determined what indeed was piss poor soccer. Alot of it starts in the backline where the left back -- long a problem position -- was manned by Demarcus Beasley, an offensive minded midfielder on many occasions. Sure losses come and so do brilliant goals but it wasn't the unmarked man in the box scoring the second Costa Rica goal that bothered me, it was the three guys waiting if the pass was long who were also unmarked that got to me.

England 6, Andorra 0
England is unblemished having claimed a maximum 21 points and almost assured of a world cup berth. WHOOPIE! Does someone want a cookie for this? Maybe a crumpet will do? This is not a vastly different team than failed to qualify for Euro 08, so don't expect too much. All beating Andorra does is clue a few English school children into the fact that there is in fact a country named Andorra.