South American Football Myth

The past few days was quite eventful for me...macam macaaaam ada...and this made me not able to enjoy the world cup qualification as much as I like. But still, I was able to watch a few matches, namely England vs Austria, Finland vs Romania, Uzbek vs Bahrain, Czech vs Holland, France vs Cyprus and a few others that I cannot remember. I would not comment on the results coz most probably you guys might have known about it in details from the papers/net anyway.

I also managed to catch a few South American grouping qualification matches (Equador vs Uruguay, Bolivia vs Brazil, Uruguay vs Argentina - thanks for them, I get to do very very late, 'berkat' sahur) , and I tell you, the statements saying that they play the beautiful, entertaining, sexy, skillful football are all myths. Maybe I was unlucky to pick the wrong matches, or maybe my eyes deceived me during the ungodly hours of the morning, but I think, the South Americans are just like the other teams on the globe. They even play in an unorganized, chaotic way that does not look that solid, and to me, sometimes even resembles M-League teams. And I am talking about Brazil with Alex, Adriano, Robinho, Juninho, Julio Baptista, Cicinho and Ronaldinho, and Argentina with Riquelme, Tevez, Crespo, Messi on board. And don't even talk about Equador, Bolivia or Uruguay that seems to be playing like Wimbledon/Liverpool circa GH.

Yes, they may have a group of players more than others that can do some silky tricks other normal beings will not be able (or imagine) to do (ronaldinho comes to mind immediately), but which other team does not? The Dutch got Robben, Cryuff, van Basten, the French got Platini, Zizou, Papin, the Ukrainians got Sheva, the Spanish got Butragueno, and now Joaquin, Italians got Paolo Rossi, Baggio and even the english got skillful players such as Hoddle, Keegan and Crouch (ok, maybe not him).

However, they do play it a bit differently, then others. The unorganized, chaotic style of their football does have a certain 'feel' to it. I am not sure how to put it in words, but it seems like they have this some sort of liberating way of playing football. It might not be beautiful, entertaining or sexy, but it would still be good to watch. And when you watch them play, you do feel that they really enjoy their football. They would also be among the first teams that I saw, that would still play the 'triangles' in their own penalty box as opposed to 'booting-it-anywhere-but-here'. Oh, and if you put them together on the world stage, they will perform like hell. It is like they really enjoy the limelight. That's why, I can't wait to watch them again in Germany next summer.

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Of all the matches this weekend, I did take a special note on Uzbek vs Bahrain. I do pity the Uzbeks this time. And what can I say, except maybe just to shoot the ref. Or maybe the Uzbeks can blame themselves for shooting their own foot. Or shoot Sepp Blatter for running such a stupid organization (any Uzbeks reading this - I doubt it though- please don't take my words literally).