Soccer with an Englishman

 I KNOW A little bit about soccer. I grew up playing it in Canada.I wrote about a lot of soccer games in my 10 years as a sports writer. My daughter played in her younger years and I helped coach her team. Actually I more or less coordinated who brought treats after the games. Who Brought Treats then became a famous Gus Macker team name. But I digress.

Soccer is actually called football in the rest of the world. I know we think the world  revolves around us, but it doesn't. But we are right to call it soccer. Even though it's not the right name.

There are several big soccer, er, football, games on Sunday. One is the finals of the Copa America, which I thought was a Barry Manilow song but is actually a tournament for all the countries on the left side of the world. The bigger tournament is called the Euros and it's in Germany. 

Canada is actually playing for third place in the Copa. Apparently they are playing the Urologists, who got beat the other night in the semifinals. Their players then climbed into the stands and brawled with fans from the other team. Copa! Excitement! I kind of understand it, because I certainly wouldn't want to upset my urologist, especially after the procedure he did on me about a month ago. 

Wait. I'm being told it's Uruguay. Whatever. It still sounds like something connected to the prostate. And if they brawl with fans in the stands, they deserve to be seen by a urologist every day. 

The Euros feature the best teams from, you guessed it, Europe. It is a huge deal over there. I watched a game last weekend and all I could hear was the crowd singing and chanting and banging drums. And it was 0-0, or nil-nil, as my football friends like to say.

England is playing Spain in the Euro finals. I know a guy from England. He works at Blessing's 48th facility. His name is Martin and he's a good guy. He's kind of obsessed with the Euros and his English team being in the finals.

I asked him if he was going to watch the game. Turns out he doesn't have the station that carries the games. 

"Well, we should invite ourselves to Avery's house Sunday. He's a big soccer oops football guy," I said. Avery used to work at 48th and knows the names of all the players on every team.

There was the minor issue of informing Avery's girlfriend Sadie, who also works at 48th and is amazing. I took care of that. "We are coming to your house to watch the game Sunday," I said.

"Oh," she said.

Anyway, we worked it out. Now there might be burgers and beverages involved. See? This soccer ooops football stuff is like the Super Bowl! Only you kick the ball most of the time, not pass it or run with it. And there are no commercials during the actual game. Hmmm. I'm liking this soccer oops football thing more and more.

So we are getting very excited about watching England play Spain and seeing if Martin has a stroke when it goes to penalty kicks. These football fans are really into it, you know.

It could be the greatest afternoon of our lives. If England wins.