Love Comes In Sports

Love comes in spurts, in dangerous flirts
And it murders your heart, they never tell you that part
- Richard Hell, "Love Comes in Spurts"

I spent all Saturday night watching Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Fourth Season and all day Sunday watching sports (specifically soccer and tennis) - for which I just couldn't curb my enthusiasm. Especially when it came to my two new jockette crushes: Brazilian soccer superstar Marta and Chinese tennis star Zi Yan.

Marta is Marta Viera de Silva, a 23-year-old Brazilian beauty and three-time FIFA World Player of the Year who currently plays forward for the Los Angeles Sol of the Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) league. LA, the best team in the WPS all season, lost the championship game this past Sunday to New Jersey's upstart FC Sky Blue (perhaps the most inappropriately named franchise in the WPS - I sure don't think of blue skies when I think of Joisey! It's more a West Coast, "Golden State"-sounding hippy-dippy name) - but not from a lack of effort from gifted goal-scorer Marta who, like all Brazilian soccer stars, goes by a singular sobriquet. But what struck me most about the long-legged Brazilian striker was her bronze-skinned beauty.


Miss Golden Ball: Dear-to-my-hearta Marta

She's a total babe (despite having been named the manly-sounding "Golden Ball" MVP at the FIFA U-19 Women's World Championship), albeit one who can kick you studs-up in your naughty bits if you get on her bad side. Fortunately, Los Angeles Lakers superstar and avid soccer fan Kobe Bryant is on her good side, so good that he's given her free courtside season tickets to Lakers home games (hmmm, I wonder if the roaming-eye hoopster's trying to score some extra added time with her - if so, someone should tell him about the locker room allegations that Marta's secret girlfriend is fellow Sol sister Johanna Frisk, her former teammate at Swedish club Umea IK; in fact, it was even alleged that Marta only signed with LA Sol after they agreed to sign her blondie "best boo" Frisk).


Marta and Frisky: Playing for the "other" team?

Brazilian fans have compared her to all-time soccer great Pele (Edison Arantes do Nascimento), even going so far as to refer to her as "Pele with a skirt" - and she remains the only woman ever to have a cement imprint of her feet immortalized alongside those of the male stars at Brazil's famous national stadium Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro. It's easy to see why: she's a superstar (see highlights reel).


Marta highlights reel

Unfortunately, despite all her many talents and accolades, the WPS Championship Game was an all-too-familiar result for Marta.


Unachieved Goals: Marta's Brazil was only second best

Though she won four consecutive regular season titles with Umea IK in Sweden's domestic women's soccer league from 2005-2008, Marta has yet to hoist any post-season trophies other than Sweden's 2007 Svenska Cup and the 2007 U-20 Pan American Games cup. Playing for her national side at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics, Brazil finished second, while the national side was also the runnerup in the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup.


Marta is the pin-up gal of Nike ads

Though Marta's Brazil lost the Women's World Cup championship game to Germany 2-0, they did beat the US in a game that featured a fantastic Marta goal.


Marta's world-class World Cup goal against the USA

Ah, but there's more to life than futbol and my gal's second favorite sport is none other than tennis...which brings me to Zi Yan.


Yes I Yan! Zi Yan of China

Channel surfing the Tennis Channel, I happened across the doubles final of the LA Women's Tennis Championship, which pitted two Eastern Euro gals - Agnieszka Radwańska of Poland and Maria Kirilenko of Russia - against two Chinese players, Chia-Jung Chuang of Chinese Taipei (otherwise known as Taiwan) and Zi Yan of China.


"Nice Formosa forehand partner!"
Zi Yan (R) compliments Taiwanese partner Chuang


"We've got to stop meeting like this!"
mainlander Yan (L) tells islander Chuang

It was the first ever pairing of the Chinese women, whose partnership accentuated their strengths and offset their weaknesses - namely, Chuang was all serve but no volley and Zi Yan was all volley and no serve (her serve was so bad that she actually double-faulted three times in a love-nothing game in which not a single ball crossed the net!). Their opponents across the net were somewhat similar in their symbiotic relationship, with Kirilenko the steadier server and net player, while baselinner Radwanska had a weak serve (mid-70s mph) but stronger groundstrokes.


We can work it out: Zi Yan and Chia-Jung Chuang
offset each other's weaknesses

Ah, but at the net the tall but slight (5-7, 120 lbs) Zi Yan was a volley monster - pouncing, poaching, and pummeling away anything that came her way with her two-handed forehand and backhand. Despite being shafted when serving for the match at 5-3 by a horrendous umpire's overrule (the umpire thought an unreturnable winning lob on championship point was returnable - even though the Euro babes didn't contest it and had started walking off the court! - and ordered the point replayed), the Chinese duo broke back to take the title 6-0, 6-4, characteristically winning on yet another two-handed passing shot by Yan, who at the net was a veritable Great Wall of China; nothing got past her.


Tall and tan and young and lovely
the girl from Chendu, Sichuan goes walking

Yan's lithe frame and weak serve typifies the problems facing Chinese women's tennis: with the possible exceptions of Li Na and Peng Shuai, the Chinese athletes lack the power to compete in singles with the heavy-hitting Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova's in the top echelon of the sport. That's why the Chinese tennis federation has concentrated on developing competitive doubles teams, where finese and volleying moxie are more important than booming serves and heavy baseline groundstrokes. Yan would have trouble making the cut of most singles tournaments on the women's tour, but as a doubles player paired with someone who can hold serve, she could be a legitimate contender for some more silverware, like the LA Women's Tennis Championship (shown below).


We are the champions!

Previously, Yan enjoyed some success partnering with Jie Zheng, with whom she won the 2008 Medibank International in Sydney, Australia (shown below).


Yan and Zheng raising their cups to success in Sydney

Zheng certainly fits the bill as the type of player Yan partners well with, being a consistent server with good groundstrokes (especially her two-handed backhand), famously reaching the 2008 Wimbledon semifinals - making her the first Chinese women's tennis player ever to reach the semifinals of a Grand Slam singles tournament - after beating then-World No. 1 Ana Ivanovic and two other Top 20 WTA players, elevating her to her highest tour ranking of No. 40.

Of course, on a purely aesthetic level, I love to watch the perky Zi Yan receiving serve, bouncing on her heels and stretching those gorgeous breadstick legs of hers (perhaps the best gams on the women's tour) side-to-side; at moments like this, life is good.


Zi Yan's leg show


Yan's glam gams


Pretty pegs pouncing


A 7th inning-worthy stretch

Speaking of doubles, check out Burhard Bilger's excellent article "Perfect Match" in this week's New Yorker magazine about the Bryan brothers (identical twins Bob and Mike) and the future of the doubles game. It's one of the best pieces of sports writing I've read. It makes the point that in the 70s and 80s, more singles players played doubles (e.g., Martina Navaratilova and John McEnroe) both to make money (prize money was laughably low) and to hone their skills as volleyers and that today's singles players are almost exclusively one-dimensional and cookie-cutter: big servers who power groundstrokes from the baseline. Combined with changes in racquet technology, this has all but killed the serve-and-volley game. The article also makes a great point about how John McEnroe's singles career took a nose-dive in the mid-80s when he stopped playing doubles; he may have been more rested, but what Mac (who never liked to practice all that much) gained in time he ultimately lost in maintaining his sharpness at the net. (Not much, mind you - Mac's a great volleyer still, but it made a difference in terms of titles, for sure.)

Related links:
Zi Yan @ Sony Ericcson WTA Tour

Feets Accompli

Baltimore Soccer is a Blast


Rossoneri Ronnie takes on the battlin' Blues

I'm soccered-out after a sports weekend highlighted by all the soccer coverage of the "World Football Challenge" (a six-match round-robin tournament featuring four of the world's elite teams spreading their club "brand name" - as increasingly pompous ESPN commentator Alexi Lalas phrased it - to American audiences) on ESPN. (Not to mention the Gold Cup final between Mexico and the USA's B Team, but the less said about that 5-0 drubbing by our friends south of the border the better!) Chelsea's Blues may have won the overall exhibition competition, but the real star of the event was Baltimore, where 71,200 fans packed M&T Stadium for the match between Chelsea FC of the English Premiere League and A.C. Milan of the Italian Serie A. Detroit may have slipped past us as Murder Capitol USA, but to the international soccer community, Baltimore is #1; we were the only sell-out for the competition (OK, 81,000 people filled the Rose Bowl match between Chelsea and Inter Milan, but the Rose Bowl seats 100,000). Yes, Bawmer the baseball and football (or "throwball," as I call it) town turned out in capacity numbers for a soccer match. And it was a great game, won by Chelsea 2-1 and featuring a scorching goal by my man Didier Drogba! Color me impressed! (You can even color me Blue after seeing The Blues look so dominant.)


Highlights of the Chelsea-AC Milan match at M&T Stadium

Fan Kyle Gustafson took some great photos at the game (he either had great seats or a great telephoto camera lens); check out his blog pix.

The previous record attendance for a soccer match in Baltimore was 24,680, for which you'd have to go back to May 30, 1973 when the Baltimore Bays took on Brazilian superstar Pele (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) and his club team Santos at Memorial Stadium.


Pele took on the Baltimore Bays in 1973

I know, because I was there with some other teenaged St. Paul's School soccer chums. Pele scored three goals that night to lead Santos past the Baltimore Bays 6-4 - seeing 10 goals in a game was every bit as exciting as seeing Pele himself! Santos played the Bays again in Baltimore on June 19, 1973, once again beating the Bays, this time by 4-0.



In the early days of the North American Soccer League (1967-68), the Baltimore Bays had a franchise that played home games in Memorial Stadium and the late-great Jim Karvellas was the team's play-by-play announcer. Karvellis later became a co-owner of the Bays when they played in the American Soccer League (1972-73). According to Baltimore's Press Box, "Following the final season with the ASL, Karvellas' Bays played an independent schedule against international competition and hosted the powerful Moscow Dynamos and Santos of Brazil for two exciting nights of big-time soccer that have never been duplicated in this town."

The latter Santos reference has to be the 1973 game I saw on May 30.



I still remember the Baltimore Bays theme song they used to play over the loudspeakers, "It's a Gold & Red World." It was sung by none other than future crappy-lounge-coverband chanteusse Alana Shor (of Tiffany, Shor Patrol - who flirted with national recognition in 1983 with their "Loverboy" single - and countless other forgettable ephemeral ensembles). I still have the 45 (featuring red text on a gold label, natch). I think the jingle was something along the lines of "It's a gold, a gold and red world when the Baltimore Bays come on/A little pass here and little pass there and we score, baby we score!"

The highlight of Bays games was seeing the occasional international side come to town. And, apparently, the World Football Challenge wasn't the first international soccer tournament to hit Baltimore. Thanks to a co-worker at the library, I recently came into possession of the following program for a 1969 Baltimore Bays presentation for something called the "International Cup Soccer Competition" that sounds like it was a precursor to the 2009 World Football Challenge idea. In this case, it featured five top "British Soccer Clubs representing the North American Soccer League Clubs" in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Atlanta played host to Aston Villa, Dallas to Dundee United, KC to Wolverhampton Wanderers, St. Louis to Kilmarnock, and Baltimore to West Ham United. Each team played four home games and four away games for the league title, with West Ham United playing "a fifth game in Memorial Stadium against an opponent to be named at a later date."







By the way, my fellow librarian Paul McCardell at the Baltimore Sun maintains a wonderful "Soccer in Baltimore" blog. According to Paul:

Soccer has been played in Baltimore for more than 100 hundred years, brought to town by its many immigrants. The story goes that large groups of Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and Germans came over to rebuild Baltimore after the great Baltimore Fire in 1904. Some of these men were former professional soccer players. The English organized the Sons of St.George Soccer Club which was based Colgate Creek. Soon more teams followed, organized by the Greeks, Italians and many other ethnic groups.

Baltimore had more than 100 teams in 14 leagues at its peak in the early 1930s. The city would draw international competion on May 15,1946 when the Liverpool Reds played the Baltimore Americans, the champions of the American Soccer League. The game was played at the stadium, where Baltimore lost 9-0. Chelsea played in Baltimore May 21,1954 at Westport Stadium against the Baltimore Rockets of the American Soccer League. Chelsea won 7-1.

The "Soccer in Baltimore" blog also features an interesting soccer photo archive. Here's the newspaper blurb for that 1954 Chelsea game here, once again highlighting a Blues victory.



Seems like the Blues can't lose in Baltimore!

The Beautiful Game

Last-Minute Heroics at Euro 2008


Thanks Giving Day: Turkey wins 3-2

Sky Sports' Andy Gray became my new favorite soccer pundit during the second half of Sunday's Euro 2008 clash between Turkey and the Czech Republic - which the Turks won 3-2 after a miraculous second half comeback from two goals down - when he made the spot-on observation, "This is what makes this game so great. Even if you're a neutral, like us [Gray is Scottish and his fellow broadcaster Adrian Healy is an Englishman - and neither England nor Scotland qualified for this year's European championships], you can't tell me you're not excited by this. You can't tell me you don't find this as entertaining as anything in sports. That's what makes this such a beautiful game. A team can totally dominate another and yet it can come down to the final minute. You really can't afford to miss a single play because it can turn in a second." Or something to that effect.

This was a big all-or-nothing game, as both Turkey and the Czech Republic needed a win to finish second in their group behind Portugal and advance to the Euro 2008 quarter-finals. And, as usual, Gray got it just right. After all, I had been watching the Czech Republic dominate Turkey for the first 75 minutes, going up 2-0 after a controversial Czech counter-attack (the Turks were down a man due to an injury and claimed the referee wouldn't let their man back in the game in time) - and the lead could have been 3-0 if Jan Koller hadn't shanked a breakway strike right before that! The 6-foot 7-inch giant Koller had scored on a powerful header at the 34-minute mark in the first half before Jaroslav Plasil's brilliant one-touch put the Czechs up by two goals at the 62-minute mark.

Turkey looked to be booking early passage back to Istanbul at this point, yet the Turks never gave up, keeping the ball in the Czech half on the field for the remainder of the game as they continued to attack the Czech's right-side defense for shot after shot. Even before right back Hamit Altintop (Bayern Munich) fed 20-year-old Galatasaray star Arda Turan (the winning goal-scoring hero of Turkey's 2-1 come-from-behind victory over Switzerland) to close the gap to 2-1 after 75 minutes, Andy Gray was complimenting the Turks on their relentless attacking football. "That's what you have to do at this point," he said. "You push everyone up and you go for it and ask who wants to be a hero."

Though it looked like Turkey's run was done when defender Senturk missed a wide-open header, the Turks kept coming. Finally, the world's best goalkeeper, Chelsea's Peter Cech was to blame for Turkey's second goal when, in the 87th minute, he spilled another Altintop cross right unto the alert foot of Turk striker Nihat Kahveci (Villareal), who made it 2-2. Admittedly it was raining and Cech didn't get a good grip on the ball but the world's best keeper is supposed to get those! Which only reenforces Gray's point about how "anything can happen" right up until the referee's final whistle.

Surely at this point it looked like the game was heading to penalty kicks to decide who would advance in this winner-take-all contest. But a scant two minutes later, Nihat beat the Czech's offside trap to receive yet another ball from Altintop (who had three assists on the day) and sent a brilliant right-foot curler in off the underside of the crossbar. 3-2 Turkey. Three goals in 15 minutes to accomplish The Great Escape. A comeback the likes of which I hadn't seen since Liverpool's 2006 Champion's League Final comeback against A.C. Milan - in Istanbul of all places!

Turkey even survived injury-time with Middlesbrough forward Tuncay Sanli in goal after goalkeeper Volkan Demirel was sent-off for foolishly pushing Koller to the ground in a Zinedine Zidane moment of stupidity (he'll now miss Turkey's quarter-final match against Croatia).

This was Turkey's second straight come-from-behind victory, but it easily eclipsed their last-minute 2-1 win over Switzerland given the competition and the win-or-go-home significance of the game.

Sweden and the Pain in Spain


Viva Villa!

Just two days earlier on June 14, Sweden felt just liked the dejected Czechs when David Villa capitalized on a defensive mix-up to score in added time, giving Spain a 2-1 win over Sweden that earned it a place in the quarter-finals of the European Championship. It was another game that looked like it was going to end in a well-deserved 1-1 draw on goals by Spain's Fernando "El Nino" Torres (Liverpool) and Sweden's Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Inter Milan), but like Andy Gray observed, it's not over until it's over and all it takes is one long ball in the 93rd minute, a missed tackle and the efficient finishing of Valencia star striker David Villa (Euro 2008's leading goal scorer with four after just two games) to give Spain a last-minute win and a perfect six points earned out of six possible. Ole!

Brew-haha

Austria Sobers Up After Tying One On


Ivica's Fan-Vastic Goal: "It's Miller Time!"

After Austria's Ivica Vastic converted a stoppage-time penalty to tie a stunned Polish side 1-1, he kept his host nation's hopes alive at EURO 2008. But the 38-year-old midfielder (the oldest player at Euro 2008) also should have been allowed to keep the promised bonus prize offered by a Vienna-based brewing company, Ottakringer. Before the competition, Ottakringer had promised a lifetime supply of free beer to the first Austrian player to score a goal at Euro 2008 (Austria was shut out 1-0 in its opening round loss to Croatia).

But now comes word that the Austrian Football Association (AFA) has nixed Ottakringer's offer by saying that the national team, ranked 92nd in the world, doesn't need "such type of motivation." Yeah, right: we're talking about football players here! (Mental note: The US Army would be well-advised to consider the "free beer for life" idea as a breakthrough recruiting incentive for service in Iraq.)

According to AOL's Fanhouse website, what the AFA didn't mention is that they have a sponsorship deal with Stiegl brewery - and they might lose that sponsorship if they let a player take free beer from a competitor.

Still, as Fanhouse writer David J. Warner comments, "the least Stiegl could do is step in and offer Vastic some free beer. Vastic only did what any regular joe in a Bud Light ad would do."

Needless to say, it remains a very spirited debate.

Related Links:
A lifetime's free beer to first Austrain player
Austria denies Vastic His Free Brewskis