Saturday, July 23, 2011

Look what's hanging above my neighborhood this afternoon. After a summer of cold and rain, that's an impressive sight.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

USA! USA! USA!

With credit to ESPN for the photo, I want to commend our USA Women's Soccer team for their triumphant comeback victory over Brazil. The US played a good portion of the game with only 10 players, due to a red card. Despite that, they made it out of regulation with a 1-1 tie, after a horrible call that gave Brazil two tries at a penalty kick... the first try was blocked, but the ref decided to give them a second try inexplicably. The second try went in and equalized the game at 1-1.

In overtime, Brazil quickly went up 2-1 over our shorthanded ladies. With about a minute left in OT, one of the Brazilians went down in an apparent injury. She wasted about 4 minutes of the game, then the stretchers came out and began carrying her off the field. Then as soon as she was off the field, she jumped off the stretcher and ran back in, and the ref only gave her a yellow card for wasting the time, instead of letting the US women punch her in the gut a few times. Finally, they announced that there'd be only 3 minutes of injury "extra" time added to the game. In the final minute of injury time, the US scored!!! (Tying the match at 2-2).

Next up, penalty kick phase. Our goalie blocked Brazil's third PK attempt, and we scored on all five of ours, winning the game.

Best. Comeback. Ever.

p.s. - in case you're wondering how this relates to Germany, the World Cup is being hosted here. The game was in Dresden.