for-za! for-za! for-za!

Ah, futbol. Like hockey, boxing and MMA, it is one of the few sports during which I can yell KNOCK HIS BLOCK OFF!! (This is usually unnecessary whenever Italy is playing, because they seem to get injured a lot anyway).

BP's clusterfuck has taken the backseat ever since Clint Dempsey drilled his shot at Rob Green, and now the man can't even play golf without being harassed by the press (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup-2010/7825460/World-Cup-2010-Robert-Green-takes-to-the-golf-greens-to-ease-goal-blunder-woe.html).

Rob Green made a huge mistake, and I like puns such as "hand of clod" and "stars and tripe," but he really doesn't deserve all the heat & bitching that everybody sent his way. All right, the dude let a grave error go down on his watch. Well, he didn't do that shit on purpose. And no matter how good you are, EVERYBODY is prone to making mistakes. The better you are, the less likely you are to err; still, nobody (except for Chuck Norris) is 0 percent likely to make a mistake. It's like an asymptote (http://www.hockeyzombie.com/comics/2009-08-02-090802.jpg). Your skill level might go shooting off to infinity (x value), but your likeliness to fuck something up (y value) will never reach 0, although it will get very close.

Sometimes the best in the world fuck things up. At UFC 111 Georges St. Pierre had Dan Hardy in what looked like a surefire armbar. He was an arm twist and a hip elevation away from breaking the Brit's arm and actually finishing the fight, but he turned the arm the wrong way and lost the dominant position. This guy's 20 - 2, hasn't lost a fight since 2007 and has defended his belt 4 times without ever really being in trouble. While his mistake wasn't as costly or pun-yielding as Rob Green's ("armbar" is a pretty tough word to work with, though there is probably a wealth of gay jokes connected to Georges's taking Dan's arm and putting it between his legs right by his balls), it's still a big deal to see a guy who has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu mess up a basic submission.

Also consider Zinedine Zidane (three-time FIFA world player of the year) and Ron Artest (2004 defensive player of the year), who both deviated from the sportsmanship that highlighted their careers (all right, maybe not so much for Ron Artest) and either headbutted an Italian guy or punched the wrong spectator. Bill Buckner let an easy ground ball roll past him in the '86 Yankees X Red Sox World Series, and in 2009 Kurt Warner's second quarter touchdown pass went instead to linebacker James Harrison, who huffed and puffed and ran the ball 100 yards the other way for a Pittsburgh touchdown. (Credit to Kurt Warner for throwing someone's touchdown pass, like he intended.)

SHIT HAPPENS. It's unfortunate, and it doesn't happen often, but sometimes even the best people make mistakes. We should all do a Rob Green right now: forget about the blunder, deal with the 1 - 1 draw, bury it and enjoy the ensuing games.

And go to a doctor. Maybe get that hand of clod checked out.