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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.

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Filed Under: blame, technology, world cup

10 Comments

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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
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 3:03pm

Re: To be fair...
Hear hear!
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Txknight (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 3:25pm

lol, but the computer simulations said we would win, the other team must have cheated
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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.
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AdamR (profile), 19 Apr 2010 @ 8:49pm

Re: Wow!
TAM(pon)!?
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Dementia (profile), 20 Apr 2010 @ 3:27am

Re:
Might want to re-read the author's name. It wasn't even Mike.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 21 Apr 2010 @ 2:00am

Re:
the tam can't even read the name of the author of this post.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2010 @ 8:10am

Re:
TAM speak with forked tongue !
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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.
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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
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