June 24, 2006
BAD GAME, GOOD BEER:
Fair trade: A dull sport for a bland beer (Paul Mulshine, June 22, 2006, Newark Star-Ledger)
I turned on the TV to give the World Cup a try. Portugal was playing Mexico. People were falling over a lot and the ball was going everywhere but into the goal. The announcer seemed excited anyway. It turned out that Angola was playing Iran at the same time, he said. "If anything happens in that game, we'll switch over to it," he told us.Well, there you have it: A direct admission from an expert that, during most of the typical soccer game, nothing happens.
Yet that nothing seems tremendously exciting to the fans. Throughout the game, they kept up a din so loud that it must have awakened the scorekeeper from the long naps he takes between goals.
Hence the need for beer. It is impossible to imagine sober people working themselves up into such a lather while nothing is happening on the field. And up till this tournament, European soccer fans had access to great quantities of high- quality stuff. The English have their wonderful ales, the Germans their lagers and so forth.
That all changed this year. It seems that Anheuser-Busch paid $40 million to become the exclusive beer sponsor of the tournament, which is run by a group called FIFA, one of the initials of which stands for "football" even though it's a soccer tournament. [..]
In Europe, Bud sells at premium prices. And the Europeans gladly pay, says Dave Hoffman, who runs the Climax Brewery in Roselle Park.
"When I went to London, I was appalled," said Hoffman. "Half the people at the bar were drinking Bud, Coors or Miller."
So Franklin Foer got that wrong too--not even soccer can resist Americanization. Fortunately, he was quite right that we easily avoid soccerization. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 24, 2006 9:00 PM
Strangely, budweiser had gotten popular in the UK before this world cup. It's something I just don't understand.
Posted by: kevin whited at June 25, 2006 1:51 AMOne of those things I was taken in on was that American beer was universally derided abroad. I've been noticing how this isn't true at all. Reminds me of an Aussie friend who was telling me that Crocodile Dundee was a movie made for Americans and nobody in Australia like it. So I looked up the statistics and found it was one of the highest grossing movies there for ages. They loved it!
Posted by: RC at June 25, 2006 5:27 AM"during most of the typical soccer game, nothing happens..."
Soccer: the sport of Seinfeld's!
Posted by: Rick T. at June 25, 2006 9:08 AM'the initials of which stands for "football" even though it's a soccer tournament'
Soccer: a version of football where everyone on both teams is Garo Ypremian.
Now all they have to do is invent the time-out in soccer so the fans in the stadium can slip out to the concession stands to buy their Budwesier.
Posted by: John at June 25, 2006 1:40 PMI was shocked when, in 1988, I went to Scotland for a year or so of school in Edinburgh, and they had Bud in the bars -- even Rolling Rock!! Granted, most of the indigenous Scottish beer isn't as tasty as the English stuff, but still.
(Whiskey, now -- if you liked it you could wallow in endless drams of wonderful single-malts)
Posted by: Twn at June 25, 2006 2:10 PM