Nationalism Gets Its Kicks
Myself, I was rooting for Spain in the finals: The Spanish economy is in the doldrums at the moment, and I thought a win might cheer up the Spaniards -- which it did, judging by Sunday's post-victory all-night street party. My son, however, was rooting for Germany: This, paradoxically, is because he is half-Polish, and two of the German players are actually Poles, born in Poland, who speak Polish to one another on the field. One of them -- Lukas Podolski -- scored both of the goals during the Poland-Germany game three weeks ago. Germany won that game, 2-0.
But then, that was fairly typical of this year's European championships in the sport that Americans call soccer and the rest of the world calls football (or futbol, or futebol, or pilka nozna, and so on).… Seguir leyendo »