I'm off to a soccer game! Woohoo!

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Brazilian here loves soccer. I can't play to save my life, mind you, as in Brazil, at least when I was growing up, only the "macho" girls played soccer -- no such thing as a women's team in school, so the "macho" girls would play with the boys (to be fair, there was only one in my school, but she could have totally beaten any of the boys up). The rest of us girls? We'd be watching the boys playing at lunch time ("this goal is for you, baby!").

I don't have cable at home (I'm cheap, what can I say?), but during the World Cup? Totally put digital cable in, so I had access to all the sports channels, did not miss one Brazilian game, even hosted a World Cup party, and would randomly watch whatever game was on TV (that awful game between the Portuguese and the Dutch with the record number of yellow and red cards? Yep, saw that).

I'm also known for constantly yelling at the TV (in Portuguese), wearing my Brazilian jersey for good luck during every game (god forbid we lose because I'm not wearing my jersey!!), staring at the TV with intense concentration, not missing one play.

And "offside," the rule so many Americans seem baffled by? One of those things you never need to learn, you just always know what it is (which also leads to a lot of yelling "OFFSIDE!!!" to the referee, through the TV, because OF COURSE he can hear me).

Don't even get me started in Ronaldo's performance at the last WC (check out wikipedia's pronunciation of his name, WTF?) when he just acted as if he was taking leisurely strolls through the garden, instead of, you know "it's the freaking World Cup you idiot, you're supposed to go after the ball, and you know, SCORE" -- but I digress, to be fair, he did break a few records, despite his awful performance. (And yes, our soccer players are all known by their first names, we are not formal enough to use last names, even in business settings. But again, I'm off on a tangent here...)

Now surprisingly, despite attending more baseball games that I can count, going to a few basketball games, catching the Rangers a few times, going to the US Open games as well, I have only seen one live professional soccer game... 6 years ago, while visiting Rio with my college boyfriend, we got to see Brazil vs Uruguay at the Maracanã Stadium, where Brazil, at the point still under a curse, lost to Uruguay (after Brazil's defeat to Uruguay, at home during the 1950 World Cup final, we were never able to beat them again at our home Stadium -- I think in these last 6 years we finally broke the curse though).

But to get to the point of this post, nothing like DC United planning a singles tailgating party to get a bunch of my non-soccer loving friends ready for soccer! So tomorrow, I'll be sporting my green wristband (single, thankyouverymuch), drinking beer, and having a not your average kind of happy hour with friends, until the DC United game kicks off (and yes, the singles will sit on a separate section of the Stadium, aren't we just special?).

True, true, watching a bunch of Americans running after a soccer ball is not nearly as exciting as seeing the Brazilians dance with the ball before scoring. Said that, bad soccer is still good soccer. And a live game? Even when it's bad it's good. So that's a win-win as far as I can see. And yep, the Brazilian jersey will be going out for a spin, because, you know, I have to show where my loyalties really are...

And if you care... Brazil is the only country who has won the World Cup 5 times. Behind Brazil comes Italy, with 4 titles, the last won in '06. Brazil got its 4th title in 94, after about 30 years without a win and kept the record of the only country that has won 4 titles for 12 years (we were also the first to win 3 times, by the way, so we took the trophy home, which was later stolen and melted... only Brazilians would do such a thing...).

Ah, yes, and let's not forget that when we won the 94 World Cup final, Monday was declared a federal holiday by the Brazilian president. When we won again in 2002, we did not get Monday off, which pissed Brazilians to no end.

Back to the original point of this post -- I'm really really really excited about going to the soccer game tomorrow!!!! We're going with a group of about 35 of us. Now is that a good time or what?