Welcome to This Desperate Gambit

The basic idea of this blog is, admittedly, wholly unoriginal. I highly doubt that I was the first person to look ahead to the 2010 World Cup and think to themselves "I know what I'll do. I'll watch all of the matches and report my thoughts on them!" When creating a soccer blog, I doubt that many ideas are more rudimentary. The slight wrinkle I have to offer comes from the circumstances I find myself in as a working American on the East Coast: I have absolutely no chance of watching more than a half an hour of live soccer during any given weekday. The entire World Cup schedule will fall between 7:30am Eastern Standard Time and roughly 4:30pm EST. Seeing how I work 8:30am to 5:30pm (more like 8:00am to 6:00pm when considering the commute), this means that I can watch a whopping half an hour of live soccer per day, ruining any chance of catching the matches live. I'm sure this is nothing new to most anyone reading this as anyone in my position that was employed would have to have one of the most flexible or coincidentally perfect schedules known to man in order to watch this World Cup live. The difference is that I have decided to make a serious go at this. It is impossible for me to watch everything live. Fine. I accept this. However, I will then attempt to do the next best thing: preserve my ignorance of the outcome to every missed match and watch every one of them once I have arrived home at night.

I don't know if I'm doing this because I watched the vast majority of both the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, or if it's because I desire terror filled work days where revelation lurks around every corner, or if I simply need something to do. Regardless of the why, the decision has been made. Every work day, I will avoid all possible ways of discovering who won each match, from commonly used websites to talks with coworkers to outright curiosity. Every night I will get home from work, politely wait for my roommate who is attempting to do this as well, and then watch all the matches on DVR. And yes, every weekend morning I will awake by 7:30 in order to start the day off right. This is most likely not going to work, let's be honest. I'll overhear someone say something, or someone will send me an email with a score in the title, or I'll make a stupid mistake and go to a website that clearly will post scores in progress. But I'm going to try and that experiment is what this blog is dedicated to.

As background and as clarification, I am an American soccer fan. I live and work in the greater Boston area (although not originally from here) and I've been playing and following soccer since I was six. I watch as many Premiere League (go Gunners), Serie A, and La Liga games I can, which is made more possible by finally having Fox Soccer Channel in my cable package as well as ESPN deciding to commit some minimal resources to covering the best soccer in the world. I love the drama of international soccer and have watched the last two World Cups as well as Euro06. I followed this US national team all the way from the first qualifying match and I've even stooped to watching MLS to get some background on the fringe players. All of this being said, I pale in comparison to real soccer fans. My knowledge is respectable but far from comparable to, say, a casual English soccer fan. I can give you any number of excuses. I didn't start following it until I was too old, I have way too much information stored in my head from hockey, football, baseball, tennis, etc., whatever. The fact of the matter is that I have some knowledge, but I'm not going to act like I know all the bench players for even the Spanish national team or that I'm supremely confident in which African team is going to surprise everyone this year. So that's where we stand. If you want to read professional, expert analysis, I'm afraid you've stumbled upon the wrong place. But if you're interested in this desperate process or you just want to read some talk about the World Cup matches, welcome. I'll do my best to make it interesting.