Laptop Spy Scandal Administrator Just "Loved" Violating Students' Fourth Amendment Rights

Get Your Country's Technology-Related Excuses For Not Winning The World Cup In Now

from the there's-always-next-year dept

Mon, Apr 19th 2010 2:56pm — Carlo Longino

The next World Cup (wait, can we say that?) soccer tournament begins in less than two months, and it looks like some folks are already lining up the excuses for when their team underperforms on the pitch. The latest one: blaming the use of iPods and video games for preventing teams from building a "collective spirit." An English coach started the riff by saying, "I'm not a big fan of these big earphones on the way to games," and that "my thing with the iPod generation is that when they leave the ground and go away to their closeted little lives they shouldn't forget what's got them where they are and what impact they can have." It should be added that his team currently lies near the bottom of the top English league, and their problems likely run much, much deeper than their players' headphones. But hey, just like when your nation fails at the World Cup, it's a lot easier to blame technology than anything legitimate, like at the last tournament, when Brazil's poor performance was blamed on Ronaldinho's interest in scoring on his PS2 (and his girlfriend) rather than for his team. This pining for the good ol' days also ignores the idea that technology can deliver some benefits to players and their teams as well, and that the current generation of players might be more effective at bonding over some video games than beers, cards or whatever else their forerunners got up to.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: blame, technology, world cup

10 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Dark Helmet (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 2:58pm

To be fair...
"Brazil's poor performance was blamed on Ronaldinho's interest in scoring on his PS2 (and his girlfriend)"

I'm fairly certain we're all interested in scoring with Ronaldinho's girlfriend....

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS304&q=ronaldinho's+girl friend&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=0dHMS8SoLIH98Abo1fyDBQ&sa=X&oi=image_res ult_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBEQsAQwAA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- :Lobo Santo (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 3:03pm
  
  Re: To be fair...
  Hear hear!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Txknight (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 3:25pm

lol, but the computer simulations said we would win, the other team must have cheated
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 19 Apr 2010 @ 8:15pm

the masnick converted the football market to free now all the players dont spend time on the field practicing they just sell lotttttsssss of t-shirts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- AdamR (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 8:49pm
  
  Re: Wow!
  TAM(pon)!?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Dementia (profile), 20 Apr 2010 @ 3:27am
  
  Re:
  Might want to re-read the author's name. It wasn't even Mike.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- The Groove Tiger (profile), 21 Apr 2010 @ 2:00am
  
  Re:
  the tam can't even read the name of the author of this post.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2010 @ 8:10am
  
  Re:
  TAM speak with forked tongue !
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Marcus Carab (profile), 21 Apr 2010 @ 5:53pm

I must admit, I don't love the social trend of everyone wearing headphones all the time, though I'm guilty of it fairly often.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sofia, 16 Jun 2010 @ 9:32pm

HEADPHONES
Does anyone know what brand are those headphones all the players are wearing?!? I think the have a B on the side???
PLEASE HELP
[ link to this | view in chronology ]