This is your Day 2 comments post. We’ve got some sweet games on tap. South Korea – Greece, Argentina – Nigeria, and USA! USA! USA! vs England. May the wonderful football rain down on us today!

Welcome to the first of what should be many liveblogs throughout the World Cup. Today it’s France (Henry, Abidal) vs Uruguay (Caceres, Suarez). Yay, a battle of people we own and people we used to own and could own. Yay. Also, Monsieur Kxevin is a big Les Bleus fan, so maybe he’ll grace us with his presence and freak us all out with his passion.

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It is time. It is now. South Africa – Mexico. The beginning of the best month of the the year, the beginning of the first World Cup in Africa. I’m headed to Puma City for the opener, which will be a blast, so put aside your soapboxes for a moment, folks, and let’s hear a hearty cheer for the Beautiful Game. I’m sporting El Tri’s jersey and rooting for South Africa. That is what the World Cup is all about.

Hip-hip-HOORAY!

Previously I covered the three of the candidates for Barça president (here and here) and now it is down to the final candidate. As Kevin pointed out in the comments, we socis have received our official invitations to vote on Sunday along with our table assignments. It is with great sadness that I have to announce that I will be unable to attend and vote in what otherwise would have been my first Barça election. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth going on in my household today.

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The news today from Barça is that Xavi has extended his contract from 2014 until 2016, meaning he’ll almost definitely retire at FCB. He’s currently 30 and so by June 30, 2016, he’ll be 36. That’s a ripe old age for such a workhorse like Xavi. Hopefully he can pull it off, but I expect him to make his departure amicably from the club right around 2014 anyway, probably through a deal that earns the club a bit of cash and sends him somewhere fun.

If he continues at his current pace, by 2016, Xavi will have appeared in (44 games per year) 790 games in all competitions, making him both the longest-serving player (18 years) and also give him the most appearances by more than 100 (Migueli had 664). HOORAY.

Yesterday we reviewed the candidacy of Agustí­ Benedito; today we’ll be tackling Jaume Ferrer and Marc Ingla, leaving Sandro Rosell to his own post tomorrow. So, to just go ahead and jump right in:

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Ah, Spain … land of sunshine, serrano ham and guilt-free smoking … as well as Felliniesque personal interactions, Kafkaesque bureaucracies and   Spielbergian cucarachas. At first, you fill your digital camera with images of wedding-cake cathedrals and futuristic Calatrava bridges; later, you seethe as yet another technicolor-haired widow elbows her way in front of you in line; and finally, you, too, are packing in a four-course meal at 2 p.m. and telling (and being told by) total strangers ‘vete a la mierda’ without a second thought.

So it’s Silly Season again (or at least until next week or so). Over the next few posts I’ll bring some Spanish Silliness to BFB. No in-depth coverage, no gotcha! interviews, no perceptive insights. Promise. Just few lighthearted observations from my recent travels to Batville And Back.

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I am a firm believer that nothing takes place in this world within a vacuum and football is obviously no exception. This fact means that our beloved sport, whose fascination starts on the pitch, is deeply involved in the most unfortunate of things: politics. Because of the cultural and social meaning of the game, it has attracted not just the lovers of the sport, but also the sinister evil of politicians. And yet it’s still fascinating, still alluring, and still important. So we have to cover the politics here on this blog once every couple of years–what a terrible life I lead, no?

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The US Game

My father is a man of many colloquialisms. Many of them a somewhat deranged collection of quaint Southern phrases attempting to convey greater philosophical meaning. Well if his goal in all that was to see such things memorialized in a blog, he should be very proud.

Many American football (soccer, whatever) fans are usually wont to become expatriates to other nations, occasionally for legitimate reasons, but mostly because the American brand is so bland and ugly and the team is almost wholly ignored by the American media excepting the lead-up to the World Cup and matches against Mexico. Honestly, these are probably legitimate reasons too, but for some reason I cannot seem to quit the red, white, and blue.
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Apparently, according to Sport, the semi-official mouthpiece of the club when the sporting journal isn’t being insufferably stupid, we’ve been making contact with folks about some other folks, such as:

Angel DiMaria

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