Dear God, please help me not to hate soccer...

No, seriously, having played soccer myself for pretty much all of my childhood, I've almost sworn off of soccer all together. This World Cup has been horrific. As if it wasn't bad enough that both Croatia and the USA got knocked out of the tournament in the group stage. I know that Americans aren't the best soccer players in the world, but they made it to the semi-finals during the last World Cup and Croatia finished third the time before that!

Ever since the World Cup began, every team that I have cheered for has lost, save maybe once or twice, and those times I really didn't care much for either team. The second round wasn't so bad. A few teams I like did well, like the Ukraine, England, and Brazil. Then the quarter-finals did me in. Germany beat Argentina. Italy beat the Ukraine. Portugal beat England, and then the worst thing imaginable happened!! A replay of the '98 World Cup.

The '98 World Cup in France got me hooked. Croatia was in the semi-finals, and they were doing amazingly well. Then they lost to France, which just about broke my heart, and I decided I hated the French soccer team. Brazil and France played in the finals. I like the Brazilian soccer team, I really do, and I was rooting for them all the way, but France won. It was horrifying. When France and Brazil faced each other on Monday I was very excited.

You know how everyone who watches sports has teams that they always root against, no matter what? For example, my dad and LeAnne always cheer against the Miami Dolphins and my dad always roots against the Yankees. That's how I am with the French soccer team. And they weren't just playing any team, this was Brazil! I wanted payback so badly. Yeah...well...if you didn't already know, I'm sure you've figured it out. France won. I'm pissed.

I was already fed up with the World Cup at the group stage, regardless of who was winning. The refs have been awful! I try to be fair and I know they have it hard, but this tournament has shown the worst refereeing that I have ever seen. In the last game Croatia played, one of the Croatian players got 3 yellow cards!! For those of you who don't know, that's not supposed to be possible. The ref never sent the guy off!

Beyond that, at the beginning countless games had tying (and occasionally winning) goals scored in the last couple of minutes, or worse, injury time! You think you've got a game won, and then "BAM!!!! GOAL!!!!!!" and I freaking hate soccer!

The highlight of the World Cup for me was the game Holland vs. Portugal (I was cheering for Holland, but they lost). If you're going to have bad reffing, you may as well have a game like this. 20 yellow cards were handed out, 4 of them red cards!!! It was like soccer meets MauMau (the card game). "Take a card please." "You didn't say thank you, take another card." "DON'T ASK QUESTIONS!! Take another card!" Haha... Yeah... That was fun.

The teams in the semi-finals are Germany, Italy, France, and Portugal. I hate them all, but I guess I'm cheering for Portugal because they're the ones I hate the least, which means they'll lose. I'm pissed... Maybe someday something good will happen and I'll want to watch soccer again...until then...I'll stick with CSI: Miami.