This is just funny. In case you don't remember, in this year's World Cup finals, French star Zinedine Zidane, who was playing in his last World Cup game, headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in extra time. He was promptly red carded, and thus removed from the game. There was a lot of speculation about what Materazzi might have said to Zidane to make him do such a foolish thing, so Materazzi has written a book about it. From the article:
In a book titled "What I actually told Zidane," Materazzi lists 249 possible phrases he could have uttered, including his real words, the ANSA news agency reported Sunday.
The sentences range from "Zidane, what are you doing? You haven't lost yet and already you've ripped your hair out," to "Since Foucault died, French philosophy has sucked."
This, I think, indicates why the U.S. does so poorly in international soccer. We don't read our opponents' philosophers. Trash talk like "Egon Bondy's history of philosophy is nothing but a piece of Marxist propaganda" might have led us to victory in group play.
I predict that Zidane will retaliate with his book titled "249 ways I could have attacked Materazzi".
Btw, the US doesn't do "poorly" internationally if you remember 2002 at all.
If college football players read this post, we'll see penalty flags flying!
I remember 2002, but I also remember 1994, 1998, and 2006.