http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=434361&cc=5901
This just in from FIFA. Mountains are considered performance-enhancing drugs. Sorry, Heidi. Ain’t gonna happen, Riccola horn blower dudes. No dice, von Trapp family.
FIFA prez Sepp Blatter (doesn’t he look like August from Willy Wonka?) has banned international games from being played at an altitude of more than 8,200 feet (about 2500 meters) above sea level.
The decision, Blatz says, is the result of the review of FIFA’s medical team, who found that high-altitude games, like those occurring in Bolivia and Peru, were detrimental to players’ health. Bolivia, whose capital La Paz is about 11,810 feet above sea level, is really the target of the ban, as some suggest that Bolivia has an unfair advantage in those games.
This advantage is made evident by Bolivia’s astounding World Cup qualifying success! I mean they have qualified three times since the Cup began in 1930. Most recently, these thin-air thieves qualified for the 1994 World Cup, and in 2006 they rode roughshod over their oxygen-breathing brethren by finishing dead last in CONMEBOL qualifying, just behind another high-time offender Peru. Wow, I’m surprised that FIFA didn’t put the clamp down on this injustice before.
But FIFA’s play-government needs to be carefully in this legislation’s enactment. I can see this becoming a slippery slope where they become the air quality police: Oops, no more Mexico City or L.A. matches and have they checked the pollen count coming off Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossoms.
Former Argentina coach Carlos Bilardo called the decision “wrong” and suggested FIFA ban matches where temperatures are very high. What a great idea? Every match should be played in optimal conditions only, like San Diego where the weather is sunny and mild year round. Wait, no San Diego has earthquakes; maybe we can create a bio-dome of some sort. I mean, how can our star players be expected to play when the weather is suffocatingly hot or numbingly cold, and, God forbid, when it is snowing, or even (gasp) raining?
And what about the non-environmental dangers to one’s health when teams travel, like the wake-up phone calls in the middle of the night, the batteries and bags of urine that float down on corner takers. Not to mention, the host countries whose “governments” consist of a group of angry, young men with machetes or where they have one word in their native tongue that means both soccer star and ransom.
But Blatz is right. Mountains are the real danger to soccer. Thin air. Can’t breath. Oh, wait here’s an oxygen tank.
This just in from FIFA. Mountains are considered performance-enhancing drugs. Sorry, Heidi. Ain’t gonna happen, Riccola horn blower dudes. No dice, von Trapp family.
FIFA prez Sepp Blatter (doesn’t he look like August from Willy Wonka?) has banned international games from being played at an altitude of more than 8,200 feet (about 2500 meters) above sea level.
The decision, Blatz says, is the result of the review of FIFA’s medical team, who found that high-altitude games, like those occurring in Bolivia and Peru, were detrimental to players’ health. Bolivia, whose capital La Paz is about 11,810 feet above sea level, is really the target of the ban, as some suggest that Bolivia has an unfair advantage in those games.
This advantage is made evident by Bolivia’s astounding World Cup qualifying success! I mean they have qualified three times since the Cup began in 1930. Most recently, these thin-air thieves qualified for the 1994 World Cup, and in 2006 they rode roughshod over their oxygen-breathing brethren by finishing dead last in CONMEBOL qualifying, just behind another high-time offender Peru. Wow, I’m surprised that FIFA didn’t put the clamp down on this injustice before.
But FIFA’s play-government needs to be carefully in this legislation’s enactment. I can see this becoming a slippery slope where they become the air quality police: Oops, no more Mexico City or L.A. matches and have they checked the pollen count coming off Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossoms.
Former Argentina coach Carlos Bilardo called the decision “wrong” and suggested FIFA ban matches where temperatures are very high. What a great idea? Every match should be played in optimal conditions only, like San Diego where the weather is sunny and mild year round. Wait, no San Diego has earthquakes; maybe we can create a bio-dome of some sort. I mean, how can our star players be expected to play when the weather is suffocatingly hot or numbingly cold, and, God forbid, when it is snowing, or even (gasp) raining?
And what about the non-environmental dangers to one’s health when teams travel, like the wake-up phone calls in the middle of the night, the batteries and bags of urine that float down on corner takers. Not to mention, the host countries whose “governments” consist of a group of angry, young men with machetes or where they have one word in their native tongue that means both soccer star and ransom.
But Blatz is right. Mountains are the real danger to soccer. Thin air. Can’t breath. Oh, wait here’s an oxygen tank.
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