le football (not american)

Ok.. So I'm breaking my no-blog-posts-till-after-lsat rule. The reason? These crazy football (soccer) fans over here. I highly doubt that any of you followers except maybe Emilie is aware, but a fairly major soccer match took place in Paris last night. France played Ireland to decide who will advance toward the World Cup. I watched an hour and a half of it, until I could not keep my eyes open any longer. *Disclaimer: I don't know that much about soccer. But even I could see that Ireland was vastly outplaying France. I went to sleep after France scored its first goal, and the score was tied at 1-1. I hoped that France would win, obviously, but mainly because I did not want to deal with boys/men in bad moods today. When I woke up, I looked online and saw some headline on BBC.com about Ireland's disappointing loss. So I thought to myself, "Great! France won! No bad moods today!" Boy, was I wrongggg. You would have thought Michael Jackson died again. Everyone was depressed and moody. Since I don't understand soccer really, and I definitely don't know French soccer vocab, I didn't understand what the problem was when I heard them moaning about it in the hallways between classes. I just wanted to say "Hey.. France won. It's still headed towards the World Cup. So what if it was only by 1 point, be content." It wasn't until I was standing in line at the grocery and I was reading the headlines on the newspaper (read: Top Story) that I learned the cause for all the solemn moods. Apparently just before scoring the winning goal, one of France's players touched the ball with his hand (which even I knew to be a big no-no). And for some reason or other none of the referees caught it. However, after seeing replays on the news it's pretty obvious that that's what happened. So, ok, that sucks, but none of the refs called it, France won, it was almost 24 hours ago, get over it, call it luck, and move on with life. I can think of several similar instances that I've seen in Ole Miss football over the years but yet we've always moved on.... So fast forward to tonight. I'm watching the news. Another big thing that happened today is that a European Union President was chosen. This is actually a pretty big deal. The EU could become a major world superpower, Turkey could join in the nearer future.. B-I-G deal. Or so you would think. However, they kind of mentioned that it was the Belgian who won, for like 30 seconds. Then, they spent the next 15 minutes talking about the soccer match. Now I, being a devoted, sometimes die-hard, Ole Miss fan, realize that these things are important. But I'm pretty sure that no governor of Mississippi has ever called the governor of Alabama or Louisiana to say "The refs made a bad call in the game last night. We demand a rematch." And that is precisely what the Prime Minister of Ireland did today. THE PRIME MINISTER OF IRELAND CALLED ON FRANCE IN AN OFFICIAL PRESS CONFERENCE TO REPLAY THE MATCH. Really? Does he not have anything more important, like maybe 'affairs of state' to tend to? And the crazier thing? The Prime Minister of France gave a response. As did the Minister of Health...? (Who, I might add, also had ANOTHER press conference (which probably took place after this one) about the growing swine flu crisis in France (16 people have died of it in the last week). Obviously she had INCREDIBLY more important things to do). I'm still trying to figure that one out. I'm just waiting on Sarkozy to get involved. This may be the beginning of an international crisis - the UN may need to send some diplomats or something in order to evade a crisis. Maybe Hillary should abandon Israel vs. Palestine and come deal with this instead... The point is, these people here are CRAZY when it comes to soccer. If you need further evidence, look at the VIOLENT RIOTS INVOLVING BURNING CARS that took place in Marseilles a few days ago over the fact that Egypt beat Algeria in a soccer match. I think these people might all need a little reality check. Either that, or the world should start solving it's problems through soccer matches rather than wars, since people seem to be more willing to lay down their lives for soccer in the same way that they used to be willing to give them for their countries. On second thought, however, it could be just as much if not more violent...