Would you just lose already, Morocco? You're making me look bad. Still, I never imagined the coach of Portugal wouldn't let Ronaldo play until the 51st minute of the game, by which point it was already too late and Portugal was behind. I was expecting one of the greatest players in the world, who happens to play for Portugal, to be used to beat Morocco, not thrown away like a dishrag. Obviously if the coach of Portugal is intent on Portugal losing, there's a good chance Morocco will win. Or any team, for that matter.
Portugal was clearly the better team once Ronaldo was substituted in. They created more chances, and were even playing a man up for the last few minutes. One of their shots went off the crossbar. It was just bad luck that the game ended before the tying goal was scored. But the overall picture still doesn't change. The World Cup semifinals are as white as the round of 16 was -- 75%.
Croatia fields an all white team of players and beat the tan-skinned looking fellows from Brazil. Argentina fields an all white team of players and beat the Dutch who used black players. France and England both use black players but come from a white majority country and white culture, so France winning instead of England doesn't change much about how white the semifinals are. So when you look at it that way -- two pure white countries are in the semifinals, the Moroccans who look whiter than most of the European teams are in the semifinals, and France, who has about a half black, half white team is in the semifinals.
France will beat Morocco easily and that will be the end of it. Whether Argentina or Croatia win the other semifinal match there will be at least one pure white team in the finals. I'm hoping it's Argentina because I think they have a better chance against France and I want Messi to win a World Cup before he retires. I suspect France is too strong though and they'll win it all, just like 4 years ago.
All England could do against France was beg the referee for penalties (and then miss their penalty kick chances once they got them.) France scored both their goals in the run of play, with beautiful placement.
Croatia's Modric was fantastic against Brazil. Every time he got the ball he would pass it in some damaging way and create scoring opportunities when before there were none. Any other pass by any other Croatian player was always pointless, never penetrating, but every pass by Modric got Croatia closer to a goal. He also scored his penalty kick.
Lionel Messi had a perfect game against the Netherlands. The first Argentine goal was set up by his laser pass which threaded an insanely thin needle right to the shooter who had an easy time putting it in from there. Argentina's second goal was Messi hitting a penalty kick. And then when it went to the penalty kick shootout Messi hit another penalty kick. It's hard to trick the goalie twice in the same day but Messi did no problem. He's the GOAT, there's no way around it.
I wonder if Morocco is benefiting from a home crowd advantage, given that they're Muslim and the World Cup is being hosted for the first time in a Muslim country. Maybe they feel inspired and are trying harder, or the crowd is the wind beneath their wings or something. Or maybe Spain and Portugal, the two European countries they beat, are so close to Morocco geographically that there really isn't as much of a racial gap between them as you'd expect. After all, it's not like Morocco beat a northern European team. :P.
No, Portugal really was a strong team, they beat Switzerland, a very Nordic land, 6-1. I don't know what happened. To go from 6-1 a few days ago to totally incapable of scoring a single goal on Morocco, it's a complete disaster. Portugal and Spain are soccer superpowers. This is a complete aberration. A one in a million upset. If you play enough games of soccer things like this will happen, but there's no way they'll luck out and beat France too. France is the best in the world right now, and Morocco's fairy tale ends here. But if Morocco does happen to beat France I'm not sure if that's a victory for nonwhites, given Morocco is on average whiter than France. Honestly, I wouldn't mind Morocco winning at all, given that then they'd lose to one of the pure white teams, Argentina or Croatia, in the final. Morocco beating France ends the myth of black physical superiority as well as Croatia doing it, so heck, I'll cheer for Morocco next time too.
I read somewhere that Qatar spent $220 billion dollars on this World Cup. A Muslim team winning some games is a small repayment for the huge favor they did the world, spending all that money to entertain us for free. I don't mind that so much.
Meanwhile I'm listening to my 1-star instrumental songs and re-labeling them vocals if they have a vocalist in the foreground or the background. A lot of these voices are synth-vocals and not actual human singers, more like keyboard notes. It's a subjective judgment call in these instances. Basically if the synth voices sound realistic enough it's a vocal, and if they don't it's still an instrumental. I don't know any better way to categorize these edge cases. It's very frustrating, I wish people would stick to real voices or no voices at all. It would certainly make my job easier.
I said before that if there was any bad music in my hall of fame, it could only be in the 1-star tier. Well, the 1-star tier has plenty of bad music, hundreds of songs that aren't really fit to be in a music hall of fame, even though they did pass the 100 listening test (I was clearly too lax on them and listened to them far more often than I should have.) But I can only ax them once I come across a better replacement, in order to keep all the hall of fame tiers evenly populated. So in the years to come all I can do is steadily but surely cut the bad songs one by one as new, better songs trickle in. I cut at least 70 songs this year so it's entirely possible to fix this eventually.
It's good to know that the new songs I introduce to my music hall of fame are not only good in and of themselves, but also good as assassins of old bad songs I wish to be rid of. Two birds with one stone. Eventually the music hall of fame will be perfect.
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