Olympic soccer, the Canadian part of America, and the fact that most inhabitants of this continent are not of Italian descent

I recently quit Facebook. I received two types of responses. First, “I will miss your sports updates!” Second, “Thank God you won’t be sports-posting anymore.”

Anyway, since baseball is no longer an Olympic sport, the only thing you had to fear was soccer. So I would like to extend my congratulations to the Canadian team. I love you all for defeating our former imperial overlords today. And I love you for being the part of America that doesn’t pay taxes to Washington. But you will go down on Monday.

Tancredi is a great player. I have to say that I am proud to have somebody with such a good American name is doing so well for America. Sorry, I mean Canada. You know, that really well-run well-organized beautiful wonderful not-united state up north of the Vermont border. I know, intellectually, that Tancredi is not an American name. But when I moved to California at age 18, I was stunned to discover that Italian-Americans did not make up 30% of the U.S. population. That is true, ask Dev Patnaik, a fellow New Yorker from Poughkeepsie. In late 1988, in California, he gently took aside this downstate boy and explained that most of America was not, in fact, Italian.

While I am here talking about nothing (and posting from a public terminal in an undisclosed location, before returning to the world tomorrow) does anyone know why the American team played in white shorts instead of navy-blue ones?

Comments

[bph]

There are rules about how different the uniforms must look. Since New Zealand was wearing blue shorts, los EE. UU. had to wear a contrasting color.

[Noel Maurer]

Thank you! (N.Z. was wearing black, I think, but the point holds.)

Do you know the rules about home v. away jerseys? In more than a decade of watching international competition, I still haven't figured that out.