March 4, 2011 Taylor No Comments

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The full roster of the Total Soccer Show returns to the studio to discuss Josh’s performance in a recent FIFA soccer videogame tournament, hosted by the Richmond Celtic Soccer Club. We spoke with Will McClung, the event organizer, about the overall tournament and conducted various post-match interviews with Josh after his performances.

From there, we moved on to a discussion of the FIFA videogame franchise (FIFA) Disclaimer: we are aware there are other franchises out there and were not attempting to discredit them by focusing on FIFA. However, the tournament only utilized FIFA and the four of us only play that particular game, so it seemed a better idea to talk about what we know.

So, we focused on the past, present, and future of FIFA, with discussions also including the role the game has played in developing soccer fans in the United States and what glitches have made us/our friends punch walls and throw controllers. Good times all around.

Then, we debut a new (and possibly recurring) Total Soccer Show game: The Twitter Game. Basically, Taylor came into the studio with a list of ten tweets. Each tweet is dated, and accompanied by three multiple choice answer options. The tweet is read aloud, the contestants (Albert, Josh, and Daryl) jot down their answers and then read them aloud, along with their reasons for selecting them. There were 10 tweets, so the winner was the player that answered the most correctly. Here’s a sample from the first one:

Tweet: 02/21 – “Yesterday was an unforgettable day. I can only thank you guys for such wonderful years with the club.”

A) Andy Carroll
B) Luis Suarez
C) Ronaldo

Could you have answered this one correctly? Possible hints would have been that Ronaldo hardly ever Tweets in English, and Andy Carroll was probably too busy hating Mike Ashley to spend time on Twitter. Thus, the correct answer was Luis Suarez.

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Things mentioned in this week’s show

Richmond Celtic FC (and Will McClung) were the organizers of the FIFA tournament. They’re a solid group of guys, even when they take on the Total Soccer Show Team in various competitions.

Gus’ Bar & Grill. We spent a solid 2.5 hours here this weekend watching Josh play videogames, drinking once it was socially appropriate (always), watching Michael Bradley not play for Villa, and observing roughly 40 members of the Richmond Lions Rugby Team as they watched England defeat France. Good times, indeed.

Not specifically mentioned, but this abbreviated History of FIFA: 1993-2009 definitely shows the development of the game through the years. The thing I miss most? The oversized jerseys from World Cup 2002.

As mentioned in the Twitter game, while Obafemi Martins was preparing to fly through the air after scoring for Birmingham City against Arsenal, one less-than-kind BCFC player decided to “thank” Laurent Koscielny for his involvement in the play (:16 seconds).

And lastly, as Nani himself said, “To those who says that males can’t cook, you should try this cake that I just made.” He can run. He can dribble. He can score. And he can definitely bake a cake.