Blogs

And Now For Something Completely Different

By Vaughn Ververs

June 9, 2006 / 1:43 PM EDT / CBS News

(AP Photo/Hermann J. Knippertz)

GOOOAAAAL! There you have it, my complete depth of knowledge about World Cup Soccer, or any soccer really. Apparently I missed class the day they taught Franklin Foer's ground-breaking theory of "How Soccer Explains The World." Fortunately, we all get a make-up chance courtesy of Foer's new blog. What good is being the editor of an intellectually high-brow magazine like The New Republic if you can't use its Web site to blog about World Cup Soccer. Foer explains:

What will this blog cover? Whatever the hell interests us--the political economy of Mexican soccer, Argentina's porous defense, Michael Essien's dirty tackles, Lionel Messi's paunch. The participants include intellectuals, a great American film director, foreign correspondents, a Mexico soccer journalist, and a humorist. I hope that it's an alchemy that yields unique takes, or at least delightfully madcap conversation.

Having already solved such vexing issues like Iraq's economy, the "porous" U.S.-Mexican border, al Qaeda's "dirty tricks" and, well, Dick Cheney's "paunch," there simply isn't anything left but to put this massive amount of brainpower to the task of analyzing the World Cup. Maybe I'm being too rough on soccer aficionados. After all, they say soccer is the most popular sport in the world. Just one question though: How many Rhodes Scholars does it really take to figure out that Brazil is likely to win it all?