From The Atlantic. If you can access it, read it. It describes shocking security breaches, callous disregard for human life, reckless emoji use, etc. Also shocking (but not surprising) is the current administration’s hatred of … Europe. Someone should force the Vice President and his cronies to turn off their phones, sit still, and watch some alluring travel videos by Rick Steves. …
This has been the wildest news story of the week.
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I take it back. Wilder, if less consequential, was Ecuador’s decision to start 17-year-old Darwin Guagua against Chile tonight. The boy hadn’t even debuted at the senior level for Independiente del Valle, his club.
The soccer federation appears to be trying to show off young Ecuadorian players so that European clubs will buy them. Federation officials probably are cutting backroom deals with local clubs and then pressuring the national team’s coach to field certain players.
Guagua had been about to enter Friday’s game as a late substitute. But when the Venezuelans scored, our coach, Sebastián Beccacece, left him on the bench. So, tonight, Guagua got to start. (I doubt it was what Beccacece wanted.)
The Chileans ate Guagua alive. We effectively ceded our left flank to them for half of the game.
Apart from that, our performance was … good. Kind of awesome. Unbalanced though we were, we contained the Chileans until halftime and dominated them afterward. The result was a goalless draw. Enner put the ball into the net but was narrowly offside.
We remain in second place. No other team gained ground on us this week, except Argentina.
Incidentally, guagua, in the indigenous languages of the Andes, means baby.
Argentina came within a point of qualifying for the World Cup, defeating Uruguay, who fell in the standings. Ecuador rose to second place. We’d dropped to fifth because Brazil and Paraguay won their games; but then we beat Venezuela, 2–1, in what should have been a cakewalk but became rather fraught when Venezuela scored.
Enner scored twice for Ecuador but missed a penalty kick, as is his way. Other outstanding players were midfielder Pedro Vite and goalkeeper Hernán Galíndez. The latter dislocated his finger; Pervis pulled it back into place.
Five games remain for each team. We’ll play on Tuesday, in Santiago. The Chileans are last.
Karin took Samuel to the emergency room last night because we worried that he had appendicitis. He didn’t, thank goodness. Today we’re all much happier.
More Euros. The Germans look decent … the Spanish look very good but depended on an Italian “own” goal for their second victory … the English look putrid … the Dutch and French played a tedious, scoreless draw … the French have yet to score (they did provoke an Austrian “own” goal; the Euros’ official tally, so far, is five).
Poland’s excellent but perennially luckless goalkeeper, Wojciech Szczesny, committed a penalty-kick foul with his face. He only received a yellow card.
(I first saw him in the opening match of the 2012 Euros; he committed a delicate penalty-kick foul then, too, and was ejected.)
The Copa América has begun. Argentina defeated Canada. Chileans and Peruvians kicked each other all through their scoreless draw; quite a few were incapacitated (their rivalry is known as the Pacific Classic).
Frodo et al. have ventured into Moria.
Samuel watches Scooby-Doo.
He was waitlisted by and then accepted into our preferred preschool. A relief; but I grieve that this summer will be his last before he heads out into the world.
The highlight videos might make you think we’re kinda good. That impression would be false. We’re very good at defending; apart from that, we’re putrid.
The coach has to go. Has to, has to.
Even so, I’m happy that we won and climbed to fifth place. (We were joint-fourth, briefly, but Venezuela reclaimed a point in Lima and moved ahead of us again.)
Brazil lost at home, to Argentina, and sunk to sixth. At least we aren’t Brazil. …
Ten months (ten!) until the next qualifiers. In that time, we could get a lot better. Or worse. Every team’s form could change.
Here’s somewhere you don’t often see on TV: the affluent, beautiful, dismal Los Lagos region of southern Chile. It’s where Netflix’s 42 Days of Darkness is set. I enjoy cloudy weather, or I believed I did; I once thought it’d be nice to live in Puerto Montt. But natural beauty never looked so dreary as in this show.
More precisely, the setting is Puerto Varas, on Lago Llanquihue. A housewife disappears from a gated community. Has she been kidnapped, as her husband claims? Has she been murdered? Has she simply abandoned her family? The police investigate at a snail’s pace. Brisker progress is made by a hustling lawyer and his associates, who are moved as much by the compulsion to snoop as by the prospect of helping the family (and receiving payment). The story is modeled after a true one – I don’t know how closely. Stories of missing persons are the most wrenching to watch. I dread putting each episode on; and then I quickly get carried along, buoyed by the energy of the desperate, shabby lawyer as he struggles against the complacency of other lawyers and the police. It’s as if Ramón Valdés from El Chavo del Ocho set out to solve a crime.
FIFA has judged in favor of Ecuador and Byron Castillo, and against Chile.
These are the reasons: (1) FIFA doesn’t oppose nations’ citizenship rulings, and Castillo had obtained the relevant documents from the Ecuadorian government; (2) Ecuador had previously consulted FIFA about including Castillo in its roster; and (3) Castillo had played for Ecuador’s youth teams, affiliating himself with Ecuador in FIFA tournaments.
I take it that each of these reasons establishes a strong presumption in Ecuador’s favor. (1) or (2) might even be regarded as conclusive.
Case closed.
Well, not quite. Chile could ask FIFA’s board of appeals to review the case. Or Chile could appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, more commonly known by its French initialism, TAS. It was the TAS that ruled for Chile and against Bolivia during the 2018 World Cup qualification cycle.
But it seems likely that Ecuador, not Chile, will play in this year’s World Cup.
As will Iran.
(Stephen shared most of these links and memes with me.)
It’s time to discuss the lawsuit that Chile has brought against Ecuador and our starting right-back, Byron Castillo. This suit jeopardizes our participation in the World Cup.
Castillo is accused of having lied about his nationality. Ecuador is accused of having fielded him ineligibly in eight World Cup qualification games.
What if Castillo and Ecuador are judged to be at fault?
Ecuador would forfeit all the points earned in those eight games, or else would be disqualified outright. And perhaps banned in the future. Which would be the worst outcome of all.
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Who would benefit, then?
Here are two possibilities.
(1) The most obvious one is this. The Chileans, having been awarded the five points that they failed to earn in two games against Ecuador, would ascend to fourth place and qualify for the World Cup. Ecuador, points-poor, would have its qualification rescinded.
The precedent for this outcome was set during the qualification cycle of the 2018 World Cup. Chile and Peru were awarded points deducted from the Bolivians, who had fielded an ineligible player.
(Peru, not Chile, ultimately qualified.)
(2) Other nations with more clout than Chile also covet Ecuador’s place. One possible scenario involves Ecuador being disqualified outright and Italy qualifying for the World Cup.
But isn’t Italy in a different confederation?
Yes.
Wasn’t Italy eliminated by North Macedonia, even before the last European playoff round?
Yes.
Then why Italy?
Because the Italians are the world’s best-ranked eliminated team. By this criterion, they’re the most deserving eliminated team. More deserving than North Macedonia, the team that beat them.
It wouldn’t be the first time FIFA’s (highly dubious) rankings played such an important role.
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All right, so much for the possible consequences. What merit have the charges?
They have been described elsewhere. Their gist is this. Castillo is alleged to have been born in Colombia, not Ecuador. There is an Ecuadorian birth certificate for Byron Castillo Segura; but, also, there is a prior Colombian birth certificate for Byron Castillo Segura.
I have seen this accounted for. The explanation is not described in the linked article, though perhaps it is alluded to in the title (“Could Ecuador Really Be Thrown Out of the World Cup Over ‘Ghost’ Castillo’s Identity Scandal?”). Castillo’s brother was born in Colombia and died young. A few years later, Castillo was born in Ecuador and given the same first name, but not the same middle name, as his brother.
Ecuadorian officials have long been uncertain about Castillo’s earliest documents. They investigated the matter for several years. Finally, in 2021, they cleared him to play for Ecuador.
What’s beyond dispute is that Castillo has lived in Ecuador, as an Ecuadorian, since he was very young; that he has had up-to-date citizenship documents for some years; and that the government recognizes him as a citizen.
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This is the fourth time the Chileans have sought a judicial ruling that would usher them into a World Cup.
In the cycle of 1971–1974, this tactic worked, but in those of 1987–1990 and 2015–2018, it backfired spectacularly.
“Chile: Entering through the Window?” – a YouTube video that expains this history. (Spanish only, I’m afraid.)
From what I’ve seen, the world isn’t favorably impressed with Chile.
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What really bothers me is this. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Castillo was born in Colombia, that his documents weren’t in order, and that Ecuador is complicit in covering this up. Not good. Procedure ought to be respected, and the truth ought not to be kept hidden. But … here are all these rich European countries, fielding players born in their former colonies, excelling in and even winning tournaments with these players, and no one brings a legal challenge; no one says, it’s grossly unjust that England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, etc. continue to gain advantage from their history of colonialism. But when a family moves from one poor country to another, and the second country takes in that family as a matter of compassion, conscientiousness, or neighborliness, as it habitually has done and continues to do … then, to preserve their advantage, richer countries pounce, saying, Aha! your paperwork is not in order, as if what a government deemed acceptable for the day-to-day purposes of citizenship weren’t good enough for this citizen to represent his country in the World Cup.
Fortunately, the Chileans failed to defeat Brazil (they came up five goals short), and Uruguay defeated Peru (somewhat controversially). These results guaranteed our qualification for this year’s World Cup, with a game to spare.
Uruguay qualified, too.
The really shocking result was in Europe: North Macedonia eliminated Italy, the continental champions.
As of this writing, we are the qualified nation with the second-least World Cup experience. This will be our fourth World Cup. For Qatar, the host nation, it will be the first.
It was warm enough yesterday for me to push Samuel around the block. Today, though, it’s “the snowy and the blowy” – times ten thousand.
Karin went to her job. Her office stayed open until 1:00, and then she was sent home. Her car got stuck in our driveway; I had to push it back into the street. Then I used the “snow blaster” to clear away most of the snow. And now the driveway is all covered again.
Along our street, people have been shoveling all day, and I feel like a slacker because I’ve only gone out twice to clear away snow.
I doubt the groundhog will make any sort of appearance.
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I’ll tell you who will appear, Lord willing: our new son. Or he might wait a couple of weeks. Last night, Karin & I took Samuel to my parents’ house so we could shop and he could practice receiving care from those abuelos (as he will when Karin & I go to the hospital). His conduct, reportedly, was very good; already he knows to clean up his act for certain audiences. Then this morning, as usual, he wrestled with and mugged me, and when I innocently stood up to give myself a rest, he tried to pull off one of my shoes.
I pray every day that both of our sons will be good and pious people. For now, Samuel seems not to have been spared the normal regimen of hard learning.
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Last night’s World Cup qualifier was productive but unsatisfying. Ecuador scored in the third minute and controlled everything until the middle of the second half. Then we failed to deal with a loose ball in the penalty area, and the Peruvians scored.
That’s two games in a row in which we’ve given up a goal in this manner.
So, we haven’t qualified for the World Cup – at least, not with mathematical certainty. But it’s extremely likely that we’ll qualify.
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Now the pedantic bit. (Feel free to stop reading. Or look at this article, which delineates most of the relevant facts and possibilities. Because Colombia recently lost, “Option 5,” near the bottom, is the pertinent one.)
Each team must play two more games, on March 24 and 29.
Only three rivals – Chile, Peru, and Uruguay – can overtake Ecuador; and if not more than one does, we’ll qualify.
Ecuador will finish with at least 25 points.
Chile can’t earn more than 25 points.
If Peru earns more than 25 points, Uruguay can’t do so.
If Uruguay earns more than 25 points, Peru can’t do so.
What if these teams match but don’t surpass Ecuador’s point total? Ecuador’s goal differential – the first tiebreaker – currently surpasses Chile’s, Peru’s, and Uruguay’s by eleven goals or more. Ecuador also leads all three rivals by a significant number of goals scored; this is the second tiebreaker. What is more, Ecuador outperformed Uruguay and Chile – though not Peru – in head-to-head encounters, which constitute the third tiebreaker.
Finally, Ecuador would guarantee qualification by avoiding defeat in at least one game. And neither Paraguay nor Argentina would benefit by defeating us. So, that works in our favor, too.
Big, big victory for Ecuador in Santiago, in the stadium of Club Deportivo Universidad Católica. We dominated in the early minutes and were rewarded with a well-taken goal by Pervis Estupiñán. Then Chile’s Arturo Vidal committed the red-card foul of his life. To the Chileans’ credit, they rallied hard and played with courage. But Ecuador created the better scoring chances – many of them squandered by Michael Estrada. It wasn’t until stoppage time that Moisés Caicedo struck the coup de grâce.
The Brazilians have qualified for the World Cup. The Argentinians have qualified. We are third, with a six-point cushion over the fourth- and fifth-placed teams, and seven points above the best teams in the disqualification zone. There’s a decent chance we’d scrape through even with four concluding defeats.
Tonight I was running my many laps, in the cold and wind and snow, and it was bleak, and I thought of quitting; but I remembered the pibes – the lads – and was inspired to push on ahead.
With just five matches to play, we’re dragging ourselves over the finish line. Last month, in Colombia, we did some heroic time-wasting to earn a 0–0 draw. Kudos to our savvy goalkeeper, Alexander Domínguez, for wasting ten or fifteen minutes during his goal kicks; and to the VAR officials for annulling Colombia’s last-minute goal.
Then, a few days ago, we eked out a 1–0 home victory against cellar-dwellers Venezuela. We were so poor, the result was downright inspiring.
(In fairness, many of our regular players weren’t available.)
Tomorrow night, we’ll play in Chile. The Chileans also have been poor. Even so, they’re on a three-game winning streak and have climbed to fourth place, four points behind us.
If we so much as draw this game, our position will be very strong.
Colombia and Uruguay, the other nearest contenders, also have been struggling.
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The Troggs (on Spotify): “Wild thing, I think I love you.”
Samuel: “I love you.”
He doesn’t say it to his parents; he only repeats what he hears from the TV. When he first said “I love you,” he was repeating a sign-language lesson from Baby Einstein.
Tonight he said, “Love Benidorm.” He really does love Benidorm, the little weirdo.
I think he can read or at least recognize words he’s seen in his books. Today, he recognized the word “summer” when it appeared on the TV; and, yesterday, when the word “Texas” appeared on the TV, he said “taxi.” He’s been doing this for several months.
We had the Chileans on the ropes, and then one of our players was ejected for an unlucky foul.
Next qualifier: Thursday, in Montevideo – in Peñarol’s stadium, not in the famed Estadio Centenario.
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Today I mowed one of the lawns and pushed Samuel in his stroller for an hour, which didn’t put him to sleep. He’s been napping less and less. The good news is, he is very interested in numbers. He calls out the numbers he sees in books … and on billboards, keyboards, athletes’ uniforms, etc. He also has been saying color and animal names.
I can’t take credit for this. What has inspired him is Baby Einstein. Let no one disparage that show.
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Today, also, Karin & I cleaned house. Not the house we just bought, but the one we’re living in, my parents’ house.
In Ecuador, my parents loaded their belongings onto a truck and bought plane tickets to the United States. They’ll come to Mishawaka on Sunday. They’ll stay at Mary’s & Martin’s house until their things arrive.
Hardly a comfortable victory: the goals arrived in minute 88 and in stoppage time. Paraguay defended well but posed little offensive threat. We were devoid of ideas and sharpness until the last quarter of the game; the substitutions helped.
So, due to a couple of goals in less than ten minutes, our streak of winless games – seven, counting the two previous World Cup qualifiers and five games at the Copa América – was ended. Perhaps this will make us bolder.
Yesterday’s other results allowed us to increase our lead over the teams beneath us in the standings.
Our next game, on Sunday against Chile, also will be at home; then we’ll travel to Uruguay for this month’s curtain-closer.
I finished reading Tana French’s In the Woods, which had lain forlornly on my shelf for several years. I didn’t expect it to be such a downer.
Now can we watch The Dublin Murders?, asks Karin.
Well, no. The Dublin Murders relates the stories of In the Woods and The Likeness simultaneously. So, first, I have to read The Likeness.
The weather in Indiana is turning autumnal, which is good for jogging.
Ecuador has been playing in its second World Cup of this year: the U-17 World Cup. We made it through the group stage with one defeat, against Nigeria, and two victories, against Australia and Hungary. On Thursday, we’ll play our first knockout game, against the Italians; should we progress, our next opponents will be either the Chileans or the Brazilians (the hosts).
This tournament is hardly the most prestigious or the most predictive of long-term success. Still, it matters. It generates some lovely “human interest” stories, such as this one about a man who walked many miles, over mountains, so his son could play.
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Karin will continue staying at home with Samuel all through November. I’ve been learning to care for the boy. Often, when I hold him, he doesn’t cry. He listens when I talk – and sometimes smiles.
Karin has been leaving him with me for short periods. Today she went shopping and then to the zoo to see South Bend’s new rhinoceros. The rhino stayed out of view. At home, I watched Lina Wertmüller’s World War II movie, Seven Beauties; Samuel slept.
It’s been reported that the iconic Chilean cartoon strip, Condorito, begun in 1949, will no longer be printed.
This is big news. Condorito is the Peanuts of Latin America.
I could single out many great jokes from this comic, but I’ll recount just one: “Diploma.”
A traveler drives through Andean farm country. He stops his car and gets out to stretch his legs.
He asks a farmer for a drink of water. (The farmer is Condorito.)
A little boy is helping the farmer out in the field. The farmer tells him, “Diploma, fetch this traveler a glass of water.” The little boy goes. Presently, he returns with some water.
The farmer says, “Thank you, Diploma.”
The traveler slowly drinks his cold water. Then he turns to the farmer and makes conversation: “I couldn’t help but notice that the little boy is called ‘Diploma.’ A curious name! What is the reason for it?”
The farmer ruffles the boy’s hair. “Several years ago,” he says, “his mother went off to the city to attend the university. She told everyone that she wouldn’t return until she had a diploma. And here he is.”
The traveler goes ¡Plop!
When I was very little, I used to go around telling people this joke, not really understanding it. They would give me funny looks.
But it seems to me that this joke has somehow become one of the great themes of my life.
There’s a tradition in U.S. soccer journalism of importing awful British pundits. Several of these donkeys have worked for Yahoo! Sports.
When I first moved to this country, I was delighted with Yahoo! for re-publishing other news agencies’ reports from all over the world. Every day, I’d read of the domestic leagues in Botswana or Thailand or wherever. Coverage of South America was especially good.
All of that fine reporting is long gone. Now, Yahoo!’s content is much narrower in scope, and the site employs its own journalists. These pundits have tended to sing the praises of (a) the English Premier League, (b) the U.S. men’s team, (c) the English men’s team, (d) Cristiano Ronaldo, (e) the other powerful European leagues and teams (France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s, and Spain’s), and (f) U.S. Major League Soccer – more or less in that order. Presumably, these are the topics that U.S. readers care about.
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For years, the especial jackass at Yahoo! was one Martin Rogers, who’s moved on to USA Today. How I loathed that “bloke.” … But now, I wonder if Ryan Bailey, the “wanker” du jour, is even worse.
First, Bailey doesn’t write. He makes videos. (Rogers would at least write his columns.)
Second, the videos are obnoxious, due to Bailey’s relentless cheerfulness.
Third, Bailey doesn’t just wish to preserve the status quo; he favors giving dramatically more power to the most mercenary entities.
(1) International soccer sometimes conflicts with the Premier League.
(2) And the Premier League is obviously what everyone wants to view.
(3) Besides, we don’t have to scrap international soccer completely. If we were to keep soccer as an Olympic event, that would be good enough.
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This cannot be a serious argument. No one who isn’t already on Bailey’s side would be convinced. Bailey must be trolling.
But if Bailey is serious, he obviously hasn’t watched the South American World Cup qualifiers. If his idea of a good game is Brighton vs. Newcastle or Arsenal vs. Chelsea, he should try watching Uruguay vs. Chile, or Chile vs. Paraguay, or, least glamorous of all, Paraguay vs. Venezuela. (In the 2018 World Cup cycle, each of those South American fixtures turned out to be a matter of life and death.)
As for moving soccer’s main event to the Olympics: either the Olympics would have to be greatly expanded to accommodate a soccer tourney with the magnitude of the World Cup, or else the world’s main soccer tourney would have to be shrunk. The first option would leave in place all of what Bailey dislikes about the current system (including, I presume, the massive qualification phase). And the second option would fail to placate those who like having a big tourney and its attendant qualification games.
One suspects that the real motive for incorporating the world’s main soccer tourney into the Olympics would be to allow U.S. fans to feel better about themselves, since their country would likely excel in many other events. (“We didn’t reach the podium in soccer? Well, at least we earned the gold in beach volleyball.”)
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Bailey also states that players prefer to focus on their clubs and not their national teams.
To which every South American replies: You must be from England.
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Even so, I probably am more disillusioned with international soccer than I ever have been. This latest World Cup left me especially discouraged. I worry that international soccer will always be unjust – and not only contingently so; I worry that people’s valuation of it is conceptually confused.
I may discuss these issues further during the next several months.
Well, Paraguay lost to Venezuela, 1 to 0. So much for Paraguay.
Argentina defeated Ecuador, leaped over several teams, and qualified for the World Cup. Ecuador didn’t field any of the players who defeated Argentina in the first game of the tourney. That, perhaps, is the most surprising fact of Ecuador’s World Cup cycle.
In Lima, Peru and Colombia each scored one goal. Peru’s was a golazo by its talisman, the excellent Paolo Guerrero. He scored with an indirect free kick that was touched by the Colombian goalkeeper. Now, to reach the World Cup, Peru must defeat New Zealand in a two-game playoff. Colombia finished above Peru and reached the World Cup directly.
The Uruguayans scored twice against themselves but still defeated Bolivia, 4 to 2. They also qualified for the World Cup.
These results helped to eliminate the Chileans, whom the group-winning Brazilians defeated, 3 to 0.
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Ironically, the Chileans would’ve qualified for the playoff at Peru’s expense had they not won an earlier judgment in court. Due to Bolivian impropriety, Chile and Peru had sued against that nation. Chile’s 0–0 draw against Bolivia was converted into a 3–0 Chilean victory, and a 2–0 victory for Bolivia became a 3–0 victory for the Peruvians. On the whole, then, the judgment benefited Peru more than Chile. The difference was enough to switch these nations’ respective, final positions (click to enlarge):
(The chart on the left gives the official, post-judgment standings. The chart on the right shows what would’ve resulted without the court judgment.)
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All of this was dramatic enough. But it paled in comparison to what happened in North America.
The Hondurans, obliged to defeat Mexico, narrowly managed to do so. One of their goals came from a shot that hit the crossbar and bounced off the Mexican goalkeeper’s head.
The Panamanians were similarly obliged to defeat Costa Rica. Their winning goal came at the end of the game. I celebrated it with great passion. Their earlier goal was even more dramatic. It was un gol fantasma: the ball never crossed the goal line. But the shooter, Blas Pérez – my old Panamanian favorite – was fouled and should’ve been awarded a penalty kick.
Here’s a video that shows all of this in clear detail. It also shows the Hondurans’ lucky goal.
Why do I care about these North American games? Because they made possible the elimination of the United States, that hollow team, which lost against Trinidad and Tobago. And so one of my dreams, that the U.S. should fail to qualify for a World Cup, has finally come true.
Though the Ecuadorians played hard, they lost, two goals to one, relinquishing their last chance of qualifying for next year’s World Cup.
They almost didn’t lose. The Chileans scored their winning goal because an Ecuadorian substitute, having just ventured onto the infirm playing surface, slipped. But the night’s other results would have sunk the Ecuadorians even if they’d drawn.
A draw also would have pretty well sunk the Chileans. Instead, momentarily, they’re vaulted into third place. I say “momentarily” because they must play their concluding game in Brazil. Whether they qualify may well depend on how few goals the Brazilians decide to score against them. The Brazilians may end up KO’ing Chile for the third consecutive World Cup cycle.
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Argentina and Peru stalemated in Buenos Aires. Their fates depend upon their respective final matches.
Sitting pretty are the Brazilians (already qualified); the Uruguayans (assured of a playoff, at least; virtually assured of direct qualification); and, amazingly, the Paraguayans. GET THIS. Right now, the Paraguayans are in seventh place, i.e., three places from direct qualification, with a goal differential of minus-five. But if they defeat Venezuela at home, they’ll at least reach the playoff (they’d overtake either Colombia or Peru) and they might even qualify directly, overtaking Chile or Argentina (or both). This good placement is due to their superb comeback victory in Barranquilla. They scored in minutes 89 and 92, defeating the Colombians, 2–1. The Paraguayans are South America’s “cardiac” team.
Then again, I wouldn’t put it past them to fail to defeat the last-placed Venezuelans.
To recapitulate, this is the table (click to enlarge):
And these are the concluding fixtures:
Argentina at Ecuador
Bolivia at Uruguay
Chile at Brazil
Colombia at Peru
Venezuela at Paraguay
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The best result of the day was Kazuo Ishiguro’s selection as the Nobel literary laureate. When it was announced, it made me so pleased, I almost wasn’t bothered about the World Cup. Ishiguro is a fine writer, and The Remains of the Day, his most famous novel, displays the sublimest English and Japanese virtues.
For her birthday, I went with Karin to a stir-fry restaurant at the mall. I also bought her this spiffy coloring book:
Its pages, colored, should look like this:
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Tomorrow is the do-or-die game in Chile. I’d say, “Please pray for Ecuador to win.” But does Ecuador deserve to qualify for this World Cup?
Arguably, no.
However, the Chileans certainly don’t deserve to qualify for this World Cup.
Please pray for Ecuador to win.
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It’s job-listing season for philosophy departments. Despite my hard work this year, it again looks as though my dissertation won’t have progressed far enough for me to be a viable candidate.
Were I to finish the current draft by the end of this month, job-wise it’d still be too late.
I can dream, though.
One job is at a Wesleyan liberal arts college in lovely, rural, upstate New York. It involves helping to “build a program” with one or two other professors. Translation: I could teach in several different subfields outside of my own area of specialization. That’s something I’d very much like to do.
Several other jobs look good because of the nearby mountain scenery. (Actually, there are very few such jobs.)
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This year, even more than usual, political philosophers and moralists are in high demand. This trend is to my advantage.
In especial demand are philosophers who moralize about race. I believe that race is a very important topic. But this recent philosophical emphasis on race leaves me uneasy: it has a whiff of fashionableness about it. In other words, I doubt that the attention now bestowed upon race is a manifestation of good faith.
Still, if I do think of anything worthwhile to say about race, I’ll try to write it in a paper.
My Facebook feed gives me all the minutest updates about the Ecuadorian national soccer team. As it should. … What’s remarkable is how these updates are titled. I’m reminded of the headlines of El Extra.
For example, Gabriel Achilier recently earned a red card in the Mexican league. The headline:
#LoÚltimo ¡¡QUÉ IMPRUDENCIA!!
¡¡PATADA CRIMINAL DE ACHILIER A UN RIVAL!! LO MANDARON A LAS DUCHAS … PERO QUÉ PATAZO …
Of course, these days, most of the updates are concerned with the preparations for Ecuador’s last two World Cup qualifiers. (More precisely: these will be our last two qualifiers if we don’t finish in fifth place in South America; should we finish fifth, there would follow a two-game series against New Zealand.) Gustavo Quinteros, our manager, has been sacked. His replacement, Jorge Célico, has abandoned several regular players (e.g., Christian Noboa) and seen others abruptly retire (e.g., Felipe Caicedo). In their stead, he’s convoking rookies. I’m not necessarily in favor of dropping Noboa, but I welcome the influx of new talent. The old team had gotten far too predictable. The new players won’t have been scouted very thoroughly by our opponents.
Our next game, away to Chile, is on October 5 – Karin’s birthday. Karin isn’t very eager about this. I’ve tended to be sad on game days, lately.
UPDATE: Karin’s birthday is October 3, not October 5.
