Soccer

In this holiday season, let me once again share the best Christmas song ever - my boy Elton's, Step into Christmas. As an added bonus it has a bunch of Disney characters, undoubtedly violating all kinds of copyright law. Sorry, Walt. The audio is a little sub par, but still adorable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nwAt4btn6c

Oh boy, I just found another one. This is even more adorable, a better sound, and no copyright violations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpXo3NKNeb8

I play this song over and over at Christmas time.

On to soccer. I watched my first televised soccer game Sunday. The Portland Timbers were playing in the MLS championship. Soccer seems like it should be a simple game, but I don't get all the rules. Some things were called fouls that seemed pretty ticky-tack. And there were some outright muggings that apparently were fine. And can we get together on the timing thing? It ended at something like the 91 minutes, 16 seconds mark. I guess they add some time for the out-of-bounds, but can't they just stop the clock during those times? You can't pay one guy to run the clock?

I didn't know exactly how to root. All I can think of is "kick it" and "don't use your hands". That's all I got.

Just a couple weeks ago I had thought I should see the Timbers play sometime. Judging by the sports stores in Portland, their a pretty big deal. They seem to have as much stuff as the Blazers. Now that they're champions they'll probably jack their prices way up. I might have missed my window.

This kind of took me back to times I coached youth soccer. I really didn't know what I was doing, but I think for that level I was fine. My only helpful strategies were probably "kick it" and "don't use your hands", but I think that is probably all they could have handled.