From: Hildegaard Beauregard [ljlife@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2002 5:56 PM
Subject: Japan makes good; Moscow riot; best match

Japan defeated Russia 1-0.

Here's a link to a story about the riot in Moscow:

http://sports.yahoo.com/m/wcs/news/ap/20020609/ap-wcup-rowdyfans.html

Perhaps the Center for Economic Research can tell us
what the monetary value is of the lost output and
productivity there in Russia.

That bit of news may turn you off the world's most
popular sport even more, but I think it's easier to
see with this sort of thing how we must resist the
causality of it. It's not even so much a matter of the
sport being separate or distinct from this, as that it
must not be conceded that the sport IS this. Whatever
else can be -- and has been -- said about the causes
of nationalism, the profile of goons and hooligans,
desperation, etc., there's always the pathetic
dependence upon these equations, and the simultaneous
acceptance and refusal of causal logic, a modus tolens
trap:  If a particular group of Russian men score more
goals in a soccer match than a particular group of men
of another nation or ethnicity it is because Russia
and Russians are superior, therefore if they don't win
-- but, no!, Russians are superior! The same logic, by
the way, which the Nazis evidenced in the famous
Dynamo Kiev incident. The unfortunate thing, the
problem, the matter, is that this which is so obvious
as to be pedantic to you and me, and should be to the
whole world after the holocaust, is still too fine a
point for so much of the world.

So, as not accepting the causality of that reaction,
nor ignoring or dismissing it in relation, I turn to
this:

The best match of the tournament so far was the one
right before Japan-Russia: the match between Costa
Rica and Turkey. It was surprising or unlikely,
inasmuch as one of the historically exciting teams
wasn't involved, or simply in a roulette manner of not
knowing exactly which match and teams would produce
the most thrilling contest.

Turkey and Costa Rica played a flowing game for almost
90 minutes. It wasn't always goal-to-goal fast break,
but it was an amazing active game by all parts of both
sides, defenders as well as attackers keeping it
going, getting the ball off quickly on the rebound,
and moving it along quickly in possession. The crowd
in Incheon was into it, too, so that you couldn't tell
who they were rooting for -- the action was so
continuous and the crowd reaction with it, it was as
if the whole stadium were simply cheering the action
in general, rather than either side -- and they may
have been. The pace was so great in the first half, I
wondered how it could be kept up through the second.
The 0-0 halftime score seemed as fitting a result of
the pace, the responsiveness of both teams, so it
created a tremendous suspense about whether, how and
when either team would score.

The second half picked up the same pace right from the
kickoff. Then, in the 56th minute, a goal finally
came, and it was a cascade of reactions of this same
pace. A Turkish pass into the Costa Rican box was met
quickly by attackers and defenders, deflected back a
little, and Turkey's Emre Belozoglu spun around to the
outside of the line of defenders and rolled the ball
off in the same motion, slotting it just inside the
bar past the Costa Rican keeper. The goal was
thrilling, the pace had created the suspense for a
goal, but the result also felt like a lapse in the
drama of the game. It was climactic and anticlimactic
at once, because the game had been such a great chain
reaction player by player from one team to the other.

Down a goal, of course Costa Rica became more urgent
to score, and though it would be hard to say they
increased the pace, they certainly kept it going and
now there was the drama of whether they could respond
or Turkey would prevail. The Costa Rican coach added
two more strikers with substitutions, putting his
marbles in the attack, and of course two fresh hotdogs
only meant more of the ecstatic pace.

About the 80th minute, the teams began to slow, as you
kept expecting, but only as they were tiring and not
because of their tactics. Neither team adopted
stalling measures, and the crowd would not let up,
either. As the end was approaching, I felt that it was
a shame for either team to lose this match. It was,
like a basketball game between two teams that like to
run, as if they players had all gotten into the sheer
exuberance of the pace, of playing, even though of
course they were intent on the goal.

Costa Rica put on the pressure at the Turkish goal,
then in the 86th minute, came the equalizer, and it
was as dramatic and poetic symmetry, too. It was
another thrilling billiards chain of actions, a header
that went away from goal but to another Costa Rican,
Medford, who scooted the ball across the box through
the clump of players, which included the Turkish
keeper who had followed the header. The ball trickled
away by itself in front of the goal, as if in a
suspended instant taunting everybody -- but there was
Costa Rican Winston Parks upon it, and he put it in
the net.

There was more suspense in the minutes after, the last
of regulation time and the additional minutes of
injury time, with Costa Rica closing on the attack
again, but the match ended in a draw, and although
it's unfortunate neither team who played so well got a
win for it, it would've been a shame for either to
have lost. There was satisfaction in this draw, and
aesthetically. It was a wonderful example of how this
possibility in the sport, neither win nor loss, is
also another sense of *sport*.