Lopez Family blog

Back in my college days I would spend hours watching sports, it didn’t really matter what sport it was, if it was on TV I would watch it. Now with two young kids I hardly ever find the time to watch TV at all. The exception of course is the world cup.

The biggest football event in the world is something that I cannot pass up on watching. This year the world cup is particulary worth watching because of all the upsets that are playing out. My favorite of course being Mexico beating France by a score of 2-0.

France is a great example of how this tournament can be so unpredictable. My first memories are of the 1986 world cup which took place in Mexico. France had Platini who was just amazing, sadly for him that world cup also featured Diego Maradona, who many argue is a football god. France played well enough to be third, thanks mostly to Platini, there’s a highlights video here, if you’re interested.
The following world cup, Italy 1990, the French didn’t even make the finals, in fact they didn’t make it to the finals again until they hosted it in 1998. And that, of course, was the one time they’ve won the world cup led by my favorite player of all times Zidane, you can see some highlights here.
After the ’98 world cup France’s luck has been up and down, in 2002 without Zidane they went three games without scoring and were out in the group stage. In 2006 they reached the final where I’m sure all saw the infamous headbutt. But for me the best moment was Zidane’s performance against Brazil, a link to the video is here.
That brings us to today and the current world cup in South Africa. The French once again find themselves without a true leader, some argue Ribery could fill that role but I’ve yet to see that level of skill and leadership from him. And much like it was in 2002 they are out of the world cup in three games scoring a single goal.

The French aren’t the only example, there are plenty more. There is England for instance, who’ve won the cup once in 1966 when they hosted the tournament, and have consistently failed to live up to expectations ever since. Holland have never won the cup even though the play some pretty good looking football.

In the end, the reason I love the world cup so much is because of that unpredictability. Even the ‘boring’ matches turn out to be exciting, like New Zealand getting a draw against Italy, or Japan beating Cameroon. And this is just the group stages, knockout rounds should only get better.

Hopefully on July 11th we can have a ‘fresh’ final with teams that have yet to win the cup!

Today was a pretty exciting day for Spain. They won the UEFA Euro 2008 Championship. They had not won a major tournament since 44 years ago when they hosted the Euro Championship and beat the then USSR in the final. Such was the excitement that even our 9 month old daughter Natalia got into a festive mood by lifting her own version of the trophy just like Iker Casillas.