The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: World Cup, La Liga is Creepy, and the Internet is Unreasonable.

It’s been a busy week despite the international break. As I write this, Orlando City is about to start its U.S. Open Cup campaign, OCB is still in action, and there’s the World Cup. Let’s see what got my blood boiling this week.

The Good

The World Cup has started. Yes, I know it started several days ago, but now I get to write about it. Group stages often have blowouts, as we know from the USWNT game, but there are also exciting matches like Italy’s 2-1 stoppage time victory over Australia. I hope you are all as excited as I am for this World Cup. You might have noticed that I haven’t used the “Women’s” descriptor. That’s because as a U.S. National Team supporter, I think the squad that not only makes the competition, but has also won it, gets to be the one to be descriptor-free.

The Bad

The illegal streaming of sporting events is a problem, not only in the U.S. but around the world. There is a lot of money being made by those who provide, distribute, and advertise the content. As such, when said content is being illegally streamed, those companies and organizations are going to want to do something about it. La Liga has an app that their fans can download to follow games and stats. In order to combat the bars and other establishments not paying for the content, they used the microphones and GPS units of personal phones to track those illegally streaming matches. That was a step over the line. I understand why La Liga would want to use the technology to crack down, but it still wasn’t a great idea. Despite the fact that the data was collated and individual information was not accessible to the organization, someone there should have brought up the creep factor.

The Ugly

We all know about the USWNT’s massive drubbing of Thailand. While that game was ugly, the aftermath has been uglier. Everyone from Canadian TV analysts to Joe Schmo on Twitter threw in their two cents worth. There were those who felt the goal celebrations were excessive given how badly the U.S. was beating Thailand. While I can understand that perspective, it should be noted that the USWNT went over to the Thailand team following the match and encouraged them to keep fighting. It should be remembered that Thailand deserved to be there. They may not be at the same level as the U.S., but they gave Australia all they could handle on their way to the World Cup. It might have been unfortunate how the match and the celebrations went down, but it might have been more offensive if the U.S. had treated Thailand as anything other than equals.

Let me know what you think, but let’s keep it civil in the comments. Go City!