Compete Level

This is actually one of my favourite sports things - kind of annoying that the times are all so much later than usual. I absolutely love just turning games on at 9am and working through it.

Anyway, I went to the Canada/Bosnia+Herzegovina game and it was an absolute blast. Had a smile on my face the whole time - was helped by having seats not far behind the net where both goals happened AND was among a ton of Bosnian fans who were bringing it.

Had never seen live soccer/football whatever before, it's so great to watch them do crazy ball shit up close.

I thought about not watching it because the US are doing so much fuckery as hosts but I don’t have anything else going on. The US team was a lot more fun than I anticipated.

I watched a lot of the Canada BIH game — the BIH defenders all looked like bouncers and Canada was getting thrown around for a lot of it. Seemed like there were empty seats at that one, which I was surprised by. Hope you didn’t have to sell a kidney to get tickets.

Didn't see empty seats personally, not sure what the attendance was. I was able to buy my ticket via a resale site for less than 50% of the face value which *was still objectively too much money and basically spent my entire year of personal "doing stuff" money) but it was worth it, imo.

Still got two kidneys - I need to keep 'em in case Eugene Melnyk gets ressurected and needs one.

Suck my ass vegas

Assuming that was a shot across the bow of the little hamlet Vegas, Curaçao

Was super fun watching the game yesterday on a College Street patio with a bunch of people, will hopefully be doing something like that again on Sunday. It's definitely too bad Canada has such key injuries - Davies and Bombito to start and then losing Kone was brutal.

Probably a decent chance at beating South Africa with the lineup as is but then they'll be playing the Winner of Morocco and Netherlands/Japan which feels fairly impossible

Cabo Verde all the way, baby

I couldn’t believe they didn’t score a few times down the stretch of that game, glad they moved on at least

Watching the Canada South Africa game on TV and they cut to the stands and showed some in slow motion doing the wave. As their arms went up, one woman dropped her phone over the edge and did the Ron Donald “Oh nooo”

Watched it with my bro in law at a proper cokehead boozer in my hood, unforgettable experience

world cup has been really fun in vancouver, surprisingly so

also, i am an honorary colombian now

Buncha awesome matches yesterday.

practice wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2026 6:07 pm Watched it with my bro in law at a proper cokehead boozer in my hood, unforgettable experience

There was some surreal (albeit fairly minimal) ceremonial world cup "drive around with a flag and honk" Canada celebration. Has been fun in Toronto!

(Tho to be real, Brazil "drive around and honk" was still much bigger even despite it being a barely consequential win for them)

if they had any clue the patrons of the neighbourhood coke boozer would have denied me entry when I showed up in a Leafs shirt

I found myself surprised at how devastated I was. still not like mood/week ruining like hockey/baseball but it was properly heartbreaking.

it had to be one of the worst possible ways to lose (parking the bus and allowing Argentina chance after chance to harness the power of your leafs tshirt)

Yeah it's hard to escape agreement with all the cliches about not being brave enough to keep playing. Michael Caley is a yank whose soccer opinions I borrow and he was mystified by England's 2nd half well before they gave up the lead, based on Argentina not having a ball winner anywhere on the pitch after their subs

The other part of my experience at the pub to report is I arrived about 10 mins before kickoff when it was obviously standing room only but many of the seated people were at the perimeter of the room so it was almost impossible to find a place to stand and watch where I wasn't blocking a sitter's view. I had tried and I thought succeeded to gain assent for a spot but then a sitter came up and said I couldn't stand there I was blocking the view. The experience recalled the famous sitter vs stander debates at the Ottawa folk festival and I enjoyed finding a sensibility common to both Ottawa boomer yuppies and members of England's vaunted white working class

“Well, can I sit on your lap?”

I appreciated the world cup final if only because I couldn't sit down to watch until well into the 2nd half, but I could be confident during that whole time that when I did tune in it would still be 0-0