Timing, it is said, is everything, and this current mess is no exception. While Tesco and JD shops are being looted by BlackBerry toting miscreants in hoodies and sweat pants (seriously, can’t we have some moderately fashionable riot wear?), the rest of England and a good chunk of the world is gearing up for the start of the English Premier League this coming weekend. Now, with a nation in turmoil, the next big news is whether or not the season will actually start on time. The friendly match between England and Holland that was slated to take place at Wembley as well as a couple of Carling Cup matches have been cancelled, and the Football League and the Premier League are frantically trying to figure out what to do in light of current safety concerns.

Here’s the thing, though: angry footballers could be a more formidable concern than the current looters.

Something tells me that we have the potential to see some of the worst nastiness surrounding hooliganism that hasn’t been seen since the 1980′s. This has the potential to get very very ugly, and all we can do is wait and see what happens.

Update (Friday 5:30AM CST)
Well, it looks like the general “go ahead” has been given and the EPL is going to take it one match at a time. What this probably means is that Queens Park Rangers will get to play their first EPL match since 1996 while Tottenham vs. Everton (at “epicentric” Tottenham) will probably be postponed until a later date. What is wild is that outlying communities such as West Bromwich, Liverpool, Birmingham and even Manchester are up in the air because the idiocy has seemingly spread to them to some degree. Here’s hoping to a relatively smooth weekend that doesn’t screw up the table too much.

In 2005 Houston joined Dallas in the MLS when the San Jose Earthquakes shook themselves over to the gulf changing their name to the Dynamo in the process (I still like the originally planned name of “Houston 1836,” but apparently it was offensive to Hispanic fans).

It was always figured that FC Dallas and the Dynamo would have a pretty good rivalry, but Dallas already had been butting heads with the Chicago Fire since the beginning of the MLS and fans were pretty invested in that. Top that with a hatred for the Colorado Rapids that started up around the same time that the Dynamo hit the stage and the Dallas/Houston thing just got rather marginalized.

Flash forward a couple of years. Houston had already come out really strong by winning the MLS Cup in their inaugural year of 2006 and followed up with a repeat in 2007 while FC Dallas just couldn’t get their act together.

From a fan’s perspective, things were just nasty. At a couple of the FCD/Dynamo matches I attended at Pizza Hut Park (Dallas’ home turf), things were downright nasty. I watched in awe as Houston fans paraded up and down the concourse, ripped out seats in their designated section and even, after one match, attacked a FCD fan. Hell, even me and my friends were hassled by a couple of Houston fans in what has got to be one of the funniest war of words I’ve ever seen (more on that at a later date).

The 2010 season, however, changed everything. FC Dallas started out by winning the Texas Derby (which claimed El Capitán) and then pushed their way to the MLS Cup Final while Houston did not even qualify for the playoffs.

To say this didn’t sit right with the Dynamo organization and their fans is an understatement.

At the beginning of the 2011 season, this lovely billboard was put up on the tollway leading to Pizza Hut Park. It annoyed the hell out of me, but I thought it was pretty funny.

When it didn’t get the reaction Houston was looking for, they followed up with this gem of a commercial.

That’s what finally got people pissed off. We are allowed to joke about things like our home stadium being way up in Oklahoma, but we don’t need the stinkin’ Dynamo making cracks about it.

Dallas quickly retaliated by putting up this banner at Robertson Stadium (the Dynamo’s home turf). Funny right?
Dallas then turned around and got the San Jose Earthquakes involved with this little stunt

All of this “frivolity” leads up to Dallas taking on Houston at Houston on Saturday, May 28. FCD will be coming off a Wednesday away game in Seattle, and Houston will be coming off a Wednesday away game in LA against the Galaxy.

Needless to say, both teams will be sufficiently riled up for this match. Who can say what will happen out there, but it’ll be a doozy of a match with FC Dallas leading the Dynamo going into the match by four points (that doesn’t include the result of the matches that both teams have tonight).

Houston who?

Typically a large majority of Americans have to be reminded that this grand culmination of the FIFA championship is going on. This year, however, a couple of factors have conspired to bring the World Cup to the attention of Americans.

The first of those factors are the two goals that FIFA officials robbed the US team of in the first round of play. Nothing unifies Americans faster than the thought that we are getting screwed over by some foreigner. That combined with the general hatred of referees in any sport and you’ve suddenly got Joe Six-Pack talking about the World Cup with his buddies on their bass boat.

The second, and way more important, factor has been the ever-present drone of the vuvuzela.

Never before has a two dollar piece of mold-injected plastic generated such a buzz (see what I did there?) on such a grand scale. Broadcasters have had to create new audio filters to cancel out some of the noise, whiny players (I’m looking at you Cristiano Ronaldo) have complained that is breaks up the players’ focus and doctors have been all over the media warning about potential hearing loss due to the 144 decibels these little monsters can pump out.

At first I really didn’t think twice about the hub-bub. It was kind of nice having something to distract from the inane commentary while I watched the first round of matches.  After the third day of three-match-a-day footie (and yes, I’ve been watching every single match), I just began ignoring them.

Then I tried watching an MLS match.

The play was good, I had beer and grilled meats, but something was missing. That’s right, I wasn’t enjoying my footie because it didn’t have the constant drone of the vuvuzela. In just one week I had been turned into Pavlov’s bitch.

Lucky for me, however, I had a variety of means at my disposal for faking that vuvuzela feeling. The easiest was to just get on the internet and download an mp3 of the buzz. Next, I hopped into the iTunes app store and found a couple of free apps that filled my need (plus it’s a great app for confusing people in bars).

So, damn the naysayers. I can understand banning vuvuzelas at events like Wimbledon and the US Open, but these plastic horns are here to stay. Besides, I’ve been seeing them at high school and college football games for years.

Haters gonna hate.

Like I said, I’m not old.  At least, my mind isn’t old. My body, on the other hand, has different ideas.

I’m put together funny. Yeah, I know that sentence alone sets me up to a bevy of grand insults (most of which I’d laugh my ass off at), but it’s an undeniable fact. Almost all of my joints have way more give than they should. This can be exploited in good and bad ways (if you haven’t seen my “elbow trick,” you are missing a show of shock, wonder and potential revulsion) depending on how I apply myself.

Recently, that application has been recreational soccer. “What,” you say to yourself, “that wussy Euro-sport?” Yes, that wussy Euro-sport. My hatred of soccer haters will definitely be addressed in another posting.  Either way, I play soccer on a lovely little co-ed team and get a fair amount of exercise while I’m at it (before negating that exercise after the game at the bar drinking beer). In the course of the two and a half years I’ve been playing with this group of people, I’ve noticed that I cannot play without two knee braces if I intend to walk in the three days immediately following a match. In the past eight months, if I have a lot of cross-field passes, my right ankle feels like it wants to fall off the next day, and I won’t even go into how bad my hips hurt if I’ve got to move across the field quickly when I play defense.

I still play pretty decently, so I keep it up.  This week, however, I think I finally discovered the limits. This week, I took one hell of a header right into the ground, and by header, I don’t mean I hit the ball with my head, my face hit the ground well before my body. To quote the wise sage Yogi Bear, “It’s alright, I landed on my head.” Unfortunately, the rest of my body followed my head (like it does). Not smart enough to throw my hands out to catch myself, I landed with my hand pinned between my chest and the ground: injuring both hand and ribs. Apparently I also slid cartoon-style with my legs swung up behind me. Two days later and that’s not doing any favors for my neck. Squeezle (who doesn’t attend my games due to the violence of amateur sports and the potential for amphibian sightings), to say the least, was not pleased: she’s been waiting for me to seriously injure myself from the first day I walked out on the pitch.

This wasn’t unexpected.  I’ve broken a few toes over the past several seasons, but that’s close to the most serious injury I’ve obtained during a match, and I almost always have broken toes (another piece of evidence that I’m put together funny: I have scary-long monkey toes). Several of my friends have jacked up knees, ankles, etc. from this league, so it was probably only a matter of time before my clumsy self got taken out with something serious.

Now for the worst part about all of this: I suck at standing on the sideline not being able to play. When I last had a broken big toe, I hurt it worse by being on the sidelines “ghost playing.” I know, right? That kind of crap qualifies me to be picked up by the short bus to go to work, but it happened. At this point, I’m guessing I’ll be sidelined again this next week (if squeezle has anything to say about it), and I’ll probably aggravate something worse by fidgeting around “encouraging” my teammates.

Add on this situation the fact that continued injuries are pretty much inevitable as I get older, and it’s almost downright depressing. Then again, I’ve got good meds for that, and I do like to drink away my sorrows, so bring it on.  As soon as I can I’ll be right back on that pitch to get ready for the next round of hurt.

I’m smart like that.