Saturday, July 8, 2006

Patience I like to start the day reading from a spiritual master or something deep. This helps me remember the important things of life and reminds me I'm not the hotshot that I pretend to be. Here is a thought from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest. "God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience." He doesn't mean always some huge mystical vision. But it can mean down to earth, everyday situations. How many times have you seen a better way to do a process or organize a department or a better job, then the problems start. You must overcome all the problems. Patience is one thing I've learned from the many business and personal challenges I've faced. If you are in the middle of a "situation" right now, just take a deep breath and realize that most people have been there and the leaders of the world kept muddling through. 2:27:59 PM    comment []

I'm sitting in the Port Columbus airport, but this time I'm not the one flying. Picking up my son who is coming up for a couple of days. Drove over here after doing a "SOASA Cup" game near Dayton. This is the Southern Ohio Adult (Amateur) Soccer Association tournament to determine who will represent Ohio-South in the Adult Regional tournament. We've had some strong teams from the state in the past. We did Yellow Springs v Vera Cruz (a team from the Columbus Hispanic league). Nice game. One guy who let his mouth get past his sense who will sit out a couple of games now. Silly guys need to learn that when the referee doesn't buy your dive that you need to give it up and go on. I was able to watch the quarterfinals and semifinals of the World Cup. I thought the Germany/Italy game was excellent--as was the referee.  You do look better as a referee when there's not as much gamesmanship, but he was on top of things and both teams kept the pace up for the whole 120 minutes. Let's see a baseball or football player do that (heh heh). I was not able to catch the US/Italy match but I heard a lot about it. Derek (my son who started four years in high school and played every minute of his freshman college year) thought the ref was terrible--both ways. Of course he's told me many times that he never met a ref he liked?!? Anyway, that same ref had the France/Portugal game and he lost things at times. It's really hard to judge things on TV, but I didn't think that it was a real foul that resulted in the PK. I have read other commentaries though who agreed with the call. But he was weak at times. He also didn't command respect from the players. I noticed that late in the game when he was setting a wall on a free kick from the left about 25 yards out.  He set the wall, then reset it. Then backed away and the French players took one giant step forward. No whistle, so they took two more before the kick. Not good. I'm taping the Germany/Portugal match, so don't call me to tell me who wins. I'm so proud of our US TV crew who made sure to find a way to hype the 3rd place game by making it a sort of referendum on Klinsmann--should he stay, or should he go? (I know, sarcasm isn't becomming of a blogger.) It would be interesting to see him come to the US and assume command of the US team. One of my trade press colleagues from the UK is also a stringer for a London newspaper covering US sports. He attended an Arena practice. Said it was like nothing he's ever seen in soccer (he didn't use that word). He said Arena was like an American football coach dictating where every player is on every play rather than allowing the players to exploit natural creativity. I don't know, but our players surely played an uncreative and unmotivated series. I'm glad Landon Donovan could score an MLS goal this week--but where was he when his body was in Germany? 2:19:15 PM    comment []