You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
watching a soccer game in Spanish.
I can’t understand a damn thing.
The accent is fast and furious with consenants and vowels spinning out of control like a rinse cycle in a Maytag washer.
With your eyes shut it sounds like a Mexican Soap opera with out so many “Dios Mios” and sappy music.
DATELINE: Estados Unidos
Paraguay is playing a friendly soccer match at LP Field in Nashville Tennessee.
I’m a soccer dad and I should be at the game, but I have a life to live and a bank account that cries like a hungry baby with no mommy. So I am at home where the seat is free and the crowd less decorated with face paint.
But I want to support my boys from the US of A so I start looking in all the usual places.
ESPN. FOX. Oprah TV.
Nothing.
Is a soccer game between our boys in the red white and blue not good enough to be broadcast on a real network?
I guess not.
I see bowling and billiards and mallard hunting, but no international soccer.
So I start flying around the dial.
Channel 702: Lugnut nation.
Channel 475: The many faces of ice cream.
Channel 453: Nose rings on a budget.
Then I find a little something called futbol. Not soccer. Futbol.
The NFL is on strike I think to myself.
No not that futbol.
SOCCER – FUTBOL.
So I go to some cable channel with cobwebs on it like 823. I think it’s Univision but who really knows. The announcers are screaming in Spanish and all the graphics including the word Univision are in Spanish. What the hell is Univision. I think that’s the kind of eye care I have at work, but I am not sure.
The announcer is screaming like a Japanese bullet train. It sounds like verbal bongos being banged by a drummer chewing on cocoa beans.
From frenzied screaming he begins hollering.
It is a sub sonic blast of Spanish that suddenly stops and the words: LANDON DONOVAN blare through the speakers, spoken in the King’s English.
There’s a shot on goal and then the announcer begins rolling his r’s and blowing adrenalized verbage through his microphone. He’s in a press box at LP Field, but it sounds like he could be on a mountain road beside a broken down bus somewhere in Honduras.
The ball goes out of bounds and he begins reading a promo for a movie coming up soon on Univision your home of futbol and great eye care.
I see Sandra Bullock on a boat and Willem Dafoe. I think it’s Speed 2, and the promo says something about Velocidad Dos. Again it’s a blur of Spanish exceept for the words: SANDRA BULLOCK, in a totally English dialect.
Makes me want to watch.
Back to the game. The crowd is sparse in the gigantic LP field which seats 68,000 people for Titans games. But the crowd is announced as 29,000 which is the most to ever see a soccer game in Tennessee.
The contest is fun to watch, and also easy to lose track of since what is happening is not exactly clear without the announcer to guide you along the way. Eventually Paraguay wins on a blast in front of the goal. Landon Donovan blows a late game opportunity and the game ends 1-0.
The announcers blather on and on and then I hear Buenos Noches and the begining of Velocidad II begins.
Futbol on Univision..
And that is crazy™