Three Bets

In 1930, Uruguay won the very first world cup of soccer, here, in Montevideo.  They won again in 1950.  To say that fútbol is popular here would be a ridiculous understatement.  The entire country with a population less than the city of Los Angeles (approximately 3.3 million) has two Olympic and two world cup titles in fútbol.  In a sport in which two of the last four world titles have been decided by a shootout, practice at this skill is infinitely valuable for future successes.  Based on what we see at the beach day after day, and in particular today,

their soccer future looks good!  What we saw (we doubt anything like this happens anywhere in America) was a stadium full of a couple hundred people watching a dozen or so teams of 8-12 year olds in a beach fútbol shootout tournament- no regulation game or overtime, JUST the shootout.  The event had an announcer, Ronald McDonald, music, soccer moms and dads, and dominated the entire Sunday.  We didn't stay long enough to find out who won but, if by some miracle, the U.S. ever play Uruguay to a draw at the end of regulation soccer game, we have no doubt that the kids who have done this their entire lives are all but guaranteed to win the shootout.

There are, however, some downsides to it. The way that anyone in America who has shot a basket emulates Michael Jordan by wearing Nikes or drinking Gatorade, anyone who has ever kicked a spherical object in Uruguay seems compelled to sport a mullet. The mullet knows no age, ethnic, or socio-economic boundaries.  Here are some examples from our beach day- today alone:

We have reason to believe that the genesis of the problem is the popularity of Argentinean soccer legend Diego Maradona (See Diego below). Todd is certain that a large part of the blame for this mullet craze lies squarely on his heavily pelted neck (unless Aukai is secretly as popular here as he is on the North Shore).

One of the other downsides of fútbol being the first, second, and third most popular activity here is that we feel it may be creating a continent full of T-Rex’s.  There is an incredible lack of manual dexterity that becomes painfully obvious in any athletic endeavor not involving feet.  Allow us to explain:  While sitting on the beach watching a game of pickup fútbol, we noticed that the goalies would continually fling their bodies and arms in the air to attempt to prevent the ball from being a goal.  We, as Americans, couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just CATCH the ball.  After all, the thing is round, and goalies are allowed to use their hands- we even have opposable thumbs on our hands.  Todd is convinced that the highest level of soccer teams could benefit from recruiting athletes who have never played soccer to be goalies because they have absolutely no inclination to kick, flail at, head-butt or shoulder a spherical object, much less punch at it with two fists!  The very same athletes we watched gracefully bend a corner kick, take a ball out of mid-air with a bicycle kick, or volley a ball with an incredibly precise header, appeared to have oven mitts any time they handled the round problem with their hands.  (This incredibly obvious lack of manual dexterity has even left us at least a little dubious of the Latin lover reputation.) 

As for what this means...don’t go betting on Uruguay to be at the forefront of hairstyle or fashion trends, upsetting the U.S. in basketball, or losing to the U.S. in fútbol.