DISCLAIMER: None of this means anything.  It's almost 2:00 a.m. in Japan, and nobody believes Floyd Landis's late night e-mails, so why should you believe us?

FIFA WORLD CUP:
That took too bloody long!  USA advance to round two at the top of their group!

Tags: NFTOS, USA, England, Slovenija, Algeria, Group C, World Cup, football, soccer, Hans, Bicicleteiros, Louisiana, FIFA, Mark Cavendish, Heinrich Haussler, Thor Hushovd, Alessandro Petacchi, Mario Cipollini, Guido Bontempi, Djamoladine Abdujaparov, sprint, sprinter, crash, spit, spitting, elbow, handle bar, stem, disallowed, goal, Mali, ref, referee, offside, Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich, little people, BP, oil spill, nature, wildlife, sea, land, earth, air, global warming, climate change, environment

365 days until the 2010 FIFA World Cup!

Posted by Rob.

Tags: NFTOS, football, soccer, World Cup, Japan, Yoshito Okubo, Tulio Tanaka, Uzbekistan, Tashkent

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As I'm re-listening to my chat with Ben Darwin, and editing a few bits here and there, I'm also looking for links on the net. I couldn't find any YouTube clips, so if anyone knows of any video footage of him on the field of play, please let me know!

He does have his own wiki profile page, as well as the sporting heroes profile link above and his journalist profile over on rugbyzone.co.za.

You can read his RugbyZone column, The Art of Japanese Rugby ( Part 1 and Part 2 have been posted so far).

Finally, as it was an injury which forced his retirement from playing the game, he would also probably like you to check out this link on sport and spinal injury.

Posted by Rob.

Tags: NFTOS, Rubby, coaching, zone, union, Ben Darwin, Australia, national team, 2003 World Cup, spinal injury, Chiba, Japan, JRFU

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A farewell party for a Swede leads to revelations and worldwide reconciliation, at least between Americans, English, Japanese and Norwegians, as we rediscover the roots of football, or soccer as it is known in the States.

Oh, and Louis Vuitton sounds like it means something in all Scandinavian languages, does it?  Well, I guess we'll have to wait a little bit longer to find out.

In the meantime, check out fakepilot.com and learn the mysteries of Swedish flash editing.

Posted by Rob.

Well, that was not a pretty ending. And who would've predicted a final without Germany or Brazil? I must say my own predictions took a dive after the first round (usually they hold at a steady 60-80% throughout the tournament). Expect to hear more saucy headlines about weather or not Italy will be allowed to host Euro 2012 (depending on how sordid the gossip is regarding the Italian league's homegrown matchfixing scandal), and will there be anything that resembles professional sport in Spain once "Operación Puerto" runs its course (cyclists, soccer players and others implicated). Meanwhile, over here in Japan, the World Cup long forgotten, Nakata Hidetoshi has announced his retirement from footie, the Japanese "Self-Defense Forces" are withdrawing troops from Iraq and Kim Jong "The Il One" is launching missles into the Sea of Japan (or the East Sea, depending on your geographic sensibilities) for purely peaceful reasons... Think of it as their way of celebrating "4th of July" with expensive fireworks. Much is being made of these missle tests here, but let's face it, if any of them had touched Japanese or American soil, I probably wouldn't be writing this sort of blog entry today now would I? Well, I imagine Alex and I will be podcasting these topics and more soon. Anyone else wanna join us? We can ring you up, or include your mp3 recording in our next podcast. Posted by Rob.

Hans discusses the differences between sand dragons and shadow dragons while watching Sweden vs Germany in the comfort of his Baltimore pad. Posted by Rob.

I wasn't able to see the USA vs Ghana match last night (残念?), because they showed Italy vs Czech Repbublic here instead. I'd just woken up after a very short night of sleep--went to bed at 1:00 and woke up at 4:30, just in time to see a well-executed goal by Japan followed by a very creative goal by the canaries just before the half, at which point I decided to stay awake a little while longer, and ended up staying awake for the rest of the game. My grandfather e-mailed me for my take on the Americans' demise. He writes: "There's a lot of unhappiness here. I just heard a TV sports guy jump all over Donovan--who's home is just a couple of miles east of us. He said that Donovan was sleep-walking thru the whole game!!" Well, I'm sure we're not the only country with "armchair quarterbacks" trying to explain what went wrong at this world cup. What the hell do they know about football? Have they played in a World Cup? Same with Japan. I might not like Zico as a coach, but ultimately Brazil and Japan just don't compare do they? And Australia were much more physical and disciplined. They stayed in the game until the final whistle. I agree with the commentators on the Guardian's podcast who said the US were playing textbook football, and I think that it applies to Japan as well. They play it very well, but it's not very creative--so predictable to defend against. Kind of like running on first down and passing on third down in American football. But then what the hell do I know? Posted by Rob.

Today I downloaded a bunch of different shows on iTunes. Watched a cool video today from Des Grenouilles dans la Vallee about the World Cup as it is being experienced in San Francisco. You can see Mexican fans taking to the streets while celebrating their 3-1 victory vs (Iran?) and fans of a different green-white-red flag watching the U.S. vs Italy game (ouch!) which ended in a 1-1 draw. Another interesting World Cup related podcast is actually a a podcast which teaches you Argentine Slang podcast called Desde el Bano. Sofia's done 3 podcasts dealing specifically with the World Cup and football (soccer) vocabulary in general, and for the third episode she brings in her brother Julio who speaks like a typical Argentine male would about el futbol. Nathan Miller, who lives in Fukuoka, Japan, had another fun show on Bicycle Sidewalk. This was his 159th edition. This man is a prolific podcast producer! Sorry about all the missing accents. My computer only does English and Japanese. To do otherwise requires a bit of technical ingenuity which I don't have. And, finally, Alex and I recorded a bunch of coffee-fueled podcasts today which we weren't able to upload due to some upgrades that Libsyn are in the middle of doing. Posted by Rob.

COME ON ENGLAND !

Here's the severely edited Revver version of World Cup: Reality Check, which, after being posted on Libsyn, You Tube and MySpace, was rejected by Revver via what I assume was an automatic e-mail response, probably well written by their legal team, which makes me wanna don an eyepatch and devote the rest of my life to all out PIRACY. Did they actually watch my video, or did their computers red flag my tag words "WORLD CUP?" I googled the words "Revver," "knee" and "jerk" and came up with some stuff about intellectual property at iCommons which lead me to an article on Alternative Law Forums... Oh no! Could it be I'm developing yet another online interest?