Portugal-North Korea

The World Championship football has reached its final stages and the entertainment level of the games has gone up from the group stages. One of the more fascinating games in the group stages was Portugal-North Korea. Of course the game was very entertaining and one of the few times that a team tipped as a favorite played really great and completely trashed its opponnent by
7-0. But during the game I couldn't help but think about other things. One of the 22 players on the field was Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is the most expensive player of all time and if one wants to show that football revolves more and more around money, he should be your example. He cost around 90 million pounds. Ronaldo is good but this is pretty ridiculous. It's probably more than North Korea's budget. Not only is he pretty expensive, but we practically know everything about him. We've seen all his goals and commercials, know all his moves, we know what he loves, what he hates and that he occasionally goes out with Paris Hilton. Even people who don't follow football know who Ronaldo is. What a contrast that is with the North Koreans! They play in a country that's practically completely closed off from the rest of the world. Most North Korean players are not even known by the best scouts in the world and we've probably seen more from Ronaldo then, the North Korean people from their own players. Only the leaders of North Korea can watch international television. The people obviously shouldn't come in contact with the evils of capitalism. But the Big Leader obviously let his North Korean footbal players watch some footage of Ronaldo. After all they constantly had two people defending him. Unfortunately they forgot to defend the other player. The other Portugal players sliced pretty easily past the North Korean defense which, in true communist fashion, let Portugal share the ball very easily. Not only that but up until Portugals seventh goal every goal was scored by a different player. Until 6-0 none of this players was Ronaldo and as the score grew bigger and bigger Ronaldo grew more and more desperate. He hadn't scored for Portugal for a very long time and he knew that if he didn't even score in this game the Portugese press would become very critical of his play in the shirt of Portugal. When Ronaldo scored it was very obvious that it was a big relief for him. It is quite ironic that in a game aginst North Korea the man's biggest concern was that he would be criticicized by the free press. The North Koreans lost 7-0 in their first ever international match to be broadcast live in North Korea. They'd be happy if their punishment was being criticised by the free press. The Leader was probably not amused. When a team trashes another team, we often use the phrase 'they killed them'. Although the fate of the North Koreans probably, and hopefully, won't be that bad, this phrase has probably never been closer to being literally true.