Palestinian soccer and lemonade

I love soccer enough to be watching my third live game today; to understand why Messi is considered, by some, to be the best; and, to recognize a few of the hunks featured in the June 2010 Vanity Fair. And being a 40-something American-born female, I ususally have no reason to root for any particular team besides loyalty to our U.S. teams, of men/boys and women/girls, when they compete internationally as I watch everything from local youth recreational soccer to televised matches from any corner or the world. I get why this football is huge everywhere else. So, it's not hard to imagine that the only soccer fate worse than being a rising world class U.S. player -- male or female -- is being Palestinian and wanting to represent your home country.

The nature of that predicament was brought home to me, a while back, when I saw the documentary Goal Dreams which details the logistical nightmare of fielding a diaspora team without a country, a field or sometimes permission to leave or enter a country.

Go read: a GlobalPost story that shares how Middle Eastern soccer enthusiasts are doing their best to make lemonade out of their lemon-y lot with the Gaza World Cup.

Futsal? Indoor soccer w/outside smarts

Who knew that a soccer-related game about which I've never heard is slated to become an Olympic sport in 2008. Furthermore, it seems like it'd be good for skill building during the winter months for adults and children. I write that having finally understood the physicality of hockey once I'd played indoor soccer a few years back.

Wikipedia is kind enough to explain that the portmanteau word, or blend, futsal simultaneously signifies

the Portuguese "futebol de salão" or the Spanish "fútbol sala", both of which mean "indoor soccer".

Holistic Futsal breaks it down for the uninitiated especially as it relates strategically to outdoor play which boils down to it's a good match for those who want indoor skill-building that transfer to regular outside play. Furthermore, you learn that futsal is the official five-a-side indoor soccer game and the only indoor soccer recognized by FIFA.

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revised again @ 8:10 PM

As if we didn't know...from watching US 'pro' athletes: it's ugly out there!

And as if there's not enough to fill a third grader's parents minds, I can start to anticipate all that I want to avoid as it relates to sports...in high school.

The report, “What Are Your Children Learning? The Impact of High School Sports on the Values and Ethics of High School Athletes,” summarizes the responses of 5,275 high school athletes to a written survey administered in 2005 and 2006.

See Youth Athletes Survey - The Josephson Institute's Report Card for all the gorey details.

I suppose I should attach a caveat to my title about it being obvious as it relates to US mainstream "pro" sports such as hockey, basketball, football and baseball. I only reference them because I hear about their shenaningans, or see the replays.  Who knows maybe it's just as bad where I never look -- curling, field hockey, wrestling, etc.

But I guess the outlook's not all bad; it just ain't all benign. (And, here I hear the internalized voice of the child scolding me; he just doesn't get using poor grammar for effect and just sees it as wrong -- when I do it!)

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