TO THE NEXT STEP

Before going any farther, what what was Zinedine Zidane thinking? The Daily Mail is reporting that he was "goaded by a racial slur" into delivering that head-butt to Italian defender Marco Materazzi that, if it didn't hand Italy the World Cup, certainly made the task at hand for the Azzurri a lot easier. (Deadspin, as always, has more.)

Seriously, has there even been a more ignominious exit in North American sports?

Anyway, the plan here today was to write about taking the next step as a soccer fan. It's clear that there is a distinction between World Cup fans and soccer fans. There's the people who only get interested once every second year (for the World Cup and the European championship), and there's the people who truly follow soccer, keeping close tabs the Premiership and all the top leagues in Europe.

There's nothing wrong with being the former, but it is dilettante behaviour, and strive to avoid that around here.

So, this failed soccer hater who has adopted Sweden as his international side is now looking for a Premiership club to support. Any suggestions can be sent to neatesager@yahoo.ca. My friend Neil Acharya is a Liverpool supporter and initially suggested I follow suit -- not because that's his favourite club, but because of the Reds' long, proud history and the fact it has roots as the working man's team, even though the team is loaded these days.

Then again, this redhead avoids from red attire, tends to support teams with an inexplicable capacity for good seasons followed by disappointment when it matters most (the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Minnesota Vikings). Liverpool just doesn't seem like the right fit.

So sometime between now and August, yours truly will settle on a Premiership squad, for good or ill, for thin and thinner. Liverpool is in play, but Arsenal, Chelsea and Man U are not, so don't even go there.

Previously:
Confessions of a Failed Soccer Hater: How Bill Hicks Made Me A Soccer Fan (June 8)

OTHER BUSINESS

• There's also a distinction about soccer fandom to be made in Canada, and this was suggested by the Toronto Sun's Rob Longley a couple weeks back -- there's soccer fans in Canada and then there's Canadian soccer fans. There's obvious passion for the game here, and there's some talented players, but almost none of that is put toward our men's national team, currently No. 83 in the world.
• The hammer has dropped on Hamilton Ticats coach Greg Marshall, who's been fired. So after becoming the first Canadian in recent memory to pilot a CFL team, he's now the first to get canned. Everyone saw this coming: Hamilton's been a disorganized mess this season and kept beating themselves; the past two off-seasons it supposedly upgraded its personnel after that smoke-and-mirrors nine-win season in 2004, but has lost 17 of its past 22 games. Marshall has to be the fall guy. Early gut feeling here: he'll either go back to university ball with the Western Mustangs (his alma mater) or — longer odds on this one — maybe resurface with the resurrected Ottawa CFL team.
• The view here remains that the Martin Havlat deal is the beginning of the end of Ottawa's Dynasty That Never Was, although James Mirtle notes that the Senators led the NHL in scoring this season "with Havlat only playing 18 games and Smolinski contributing just 48 points. Those aren't insurmountable losses."

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.