In any World Cup, I would be rooting for nuestros vecinos in the first round. This time around, that means Panama and Costa Rica and Mexico, plus Colombia, which is not in our federation, but surely part of our world. Mexico had a memorable opening match on Sunday, scoring early and holding on for a 1-0 victory over Germany, the defending champions. On the television, I saw a throng of green-shirted fans, from the large comfortable class of that complicated North American nation, rooting for the spirited, well-coached Mexican squad to round out the upset. The knockout rounds will take care of themselves. The old champs are always with us, or usually. I have a strong feeling for the players from the Americas who resemble guys who live and work in my suburb outside New York, whose sons and daughters are going to school with my grandkids – plus, I think about my late doctor, Ken Ewing, former defender and captain of Guatemala back in the day. Mis vecinos. Plus, these are not normal circumstances. Not since I witnessed the President of the United States rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of building a wall, and holding children hostage to his scheme. Not since I witnessed the garden-gnome of an attorney general quoting the Bible to justify ripping infants away from the breast of their mothers, to teach those people a lesson. I am rooting for my neighbors because I am ashamed of the way the current rulers of my country are using them as instruments of prejudice and retribution. The squads from Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean do not normally need extra motivation against the U.S. They come to every match with jaws out, eyes glaring, as if they were making up for the cruelty of the major fruit companies, or the invasions in the Mexican-American war, or Landon Donovan urinating on a bush during a practice session. Mexico keeps qualifying for the World Cup – FIFA has a generous quota for qualifiers from the region – but does not fare well in the knockout rounds. The Yanks humbled El Tri, dos a cero, in the round of 16 in 2002 and Mexico has never quite regained its swagger in that rivalry. For this World Cup, the U.S. has backslid right out of the field. Panama will play Belgium (my long-range hope to win it all) on Monday -- a tug of rival loyalties. On Sunday Costa Rica lost to Serbia, and later Mexico held steady against a Germany team that seemed to regard the match as a tuneup. What a sight in the end: the mobile keeper, Manuel Neuer, roaming upfield to join the desperate scrum for one extra head or foot on a stray ball, which never happened. The success by El Tri in far-off Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow will not affect the hardened heart of the cruel pharaoh. Little brown children remain separated from their parents. Not that it helps, but until further notice I am rooting for mis vecinos to keep going. * * * (Enjoy the great Andres Cantor calling the goal by Hirving Lozano. Watch how Lozano evades Mesut Ozil at the end of a stunning counter-attack. Golllllllll!)
Hansen Alexander
6/17/2018 06:33:45 pm
A delightful piece about a delightful Mexican win. With the US and Italy not qualifying, I happened on Mexico, because like FDR and Jack Kennedy, I am a good neighbor!
pak152
6/17/2018 09:54:35 pm
how about leaving the Trump Derangement Syndrome nonsense out of your soccer postings. Want to rant about the current administration then do a politics blog
George Vecsey
6/17/2018 09:56:32 pm
my blog, dude
bruce
6/18/2018 04:23:14 pm
pak152
Brian Savin
6/18/2018 07:37:50 am
Is the World Cup about sport or politics? It certainly has a healthy dose of corruption, which seems to infect both. This latest entry makes me uncomfortable. Very. It fuels my concerns that the tribal passions enflamed by ersatz “nationality-based” teams may not be best for the sport, or its fans. It also pretty much erases a lot of kindly thoughts I’ve recently been encouraged to have concerning the current structure of FIFA competition.
George Vecsey
6/18/2018 09:42:56 am
Brian, thanks for the entry. I gave a perhaps too-terse response to the previous comment, but should have used you as a reference as somebody who comes back at me with a different point of view. That's what it's for....
Brian Savin
6/18/2018 08:31:38 pm
George, you've always got a good point, and do now. But let me press a bit. A sport that is politically organized (here along country lines) is inviting, and naturally going to encourage, political commentary, as your initiating blog here. That makes the sport subservient to the political. I don't see that as good for the sport, or the fans. It may work in a sport of limited self-selected participating countries,, such as rugby. There you have truly nation-built teams that play international competition among themselves. But in a world wide sport, it's a different kettle of fish. The have nots have little chance of competing with the haves if the team recruitment is limited. That is why Masayoshi Son's concept of professional team competition on the world stage superimposed over so-called "national" competition makes loads of sense to me. It also avoids the ugliness of using the sport as a weapon in political dialogue. I could go on a long time on this, but enough.
Michael
6/18/2018 08:13:54 am
My heart is with Mexico!! Thanks for all of your coverage! 6/18/2018 11:35:20 am
I have been a fan of Mexicans since Sandi and I honeymooned there for three weeks in 1961. I learned from the guide book on the plane down that they are always willing to help and never want to disappoint anyone. Comments are closed.
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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