Your “Portugal/Wales” Wednesday Morning Open thread

Good morning!

Before we get into sports, I just wanted to quickly vent.

Today is day three of the Summer boot camp classes that I’m teaching at an educational center. It has been an aggravating shit show so far. Here are some things that have rubbed me the wrong way:

A) Prior to the boot camp, parents (in general, not my students’ parents) complained that their kids weren’t remembering the vocab they learned. VP tells me in a (seemingly) patronizing way to make sure I emphasize the importance of vocab terms they learn and to encourage them to use the terms in their writing assignments. . .Not only is that something I have always done, but I make it a rule that my students have to include at least five new terms used in their homework responses. Short of holding a gun to their head, I think I’ve done my part. Yet, it definitely felt like VP didn’t believe me, which is a piss off.

5) They gave me 7 hours of material for the week. That would be great, except I need 20 hours of material for the week. Now I have to scramble every night and come up with a ton of crap on my own time.  If I wasn’t losing money, I’d find this kind of funny with how out of touch those who designed the courses are with what goes on in the classroom. (They aren’t teachers). These kids have a final essay that is only 250 words long. They’re dreading it and will also have to present their essay using powerpoint. I asked VP how long these end of bootcamp presentations should be in terms of time. VP said 5-10 minutes(!) for an essay that’s 250 words. I have been giving these kids topics to present in class as practice. These kids are struggling to get to one minute, let along ten minutes.

IV) Parents. They pissed and moaned about the importance of vocab terms, wanting their kids to do research projects and presentations. As a result, that’s what their kids are doing (at least in my class). Want to take a guess how long it took for some of them to complain about their kids having “difficult” and slightly higher amounts of homework? ONE. F*CKING. DAY. It’s almost like doing an intensive two weeks of material into one week would require doing more work! What is this, some sort of boot camp? Oh . . .

If you’re into European sporting events, today is a great day for you! We have:

Wimbledon at 5AM PST: Canadian Milos Raonic plays today against an American. I can’t be bothered to look the American’s name up, so, I’ll assume it’s Andre Agassi or Andy Roddick. (MMMMMM. Mandy Moore).  Due to some major upsets, people are saying this is probably Milos Raonic’s best chance at winning the Stanley Cup of Wimbledon. More importantly, is that when Milos wins, Seinfeld fans everywhere can rejoice and proudly declare “Another game for Milos!”

Tour de France at 5AM PST: Lance Armstrong is going for his record breaking 17th straight Tour de France title this year. He is such an inspiration! #Livestrong.

We also have Canada playing Senegal in an Olympic Qualifier at 4 AM PST. If Canada wins, they advance to the regional semi-finals. And if they win that, Nationals will be right around the corner!

/pours one out for Cory Monteith.

Five time Tip O’Neill Award winner, Joey Votto, and the Dirt Bengals play the Dirt Cubs during the day. But really, who gives a shit? I just wanted to mention Joey Votto is a five time Tip O’Neil Award winner. I wonder if Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano are still a murderers row for opposing teams when they play the Dirt Cubs.

Semi-Final #1, 12PM PST: An Upset in the making?

Portugal

v

Wales

Thoughts:

This is a really bad matchup for Portugal. I really like Wales’ chance at winning this game.

Going into this tournament, the narrative was that it was a shame the players surrounding Ronaldo could not rise up to the occasion and give Ronaldo a chance to win a major international soccer tournament. That narrative has done a 180, as Ronaldo has only scored in one game out of five. It’s not that he’s playing bad, it’s just that he’s not hitting the net or he does his best Charlie Brown impression when attempting to kick the ball in scoring position. For Portugal to have any shot of winning, Ronaldo has to get out of this weird and unlucky funk he has been in this entire tournament. Portugal can’t just rely on 18 year old sensation, Renato Sanches, to do all the scoring and create energy.

Defensive midfielder, Lee William Carvalho is suspended (accumulation), leaving a void through the defensive-middle. Portugal defender and possible undercover Alien, Pepe, has been a beast for Portugal this entire tournament. Unfortunately for Portugal, he has a thigh injury that saw him miss practice on Monday and did a light workout on Tuesday. Despite some rumors, I don’t expect him to miss this game. However, he’s guarding Gareth Bale and the fact that he’ll presumably be slower could lead to disastrous results for the Portuguese side.

To be honest, if the Welsh had Aaron Ramsey and Ben Davies (yellow card accumulations) in their lineup, I would have picked Wales to win. Leicester City’s Andy King and West Ham’s James Collins are decent players, but, they aren’t good enough to fill the shoes of the guys they’re replacing.

This will be a tight match, something Portugal is accustomed to and are seemingly fine with. Meanwhile, Wales is playing with house money. Forgetting that Portugal is the International Lesser Footy equivalence of the Andy Reid era Eagles, I want to say Wales is going to win this because of just how well matched up they are against Portugal (in terms of how they play). However, there’s just no way Ronaldo is going to be held scoreless in another game, right? . . . .Right? I’m guessing Portugal wins 2-1 with Ronaldo scoring both goals. But don’t be shocked if Wales wins.

Lets hope it’s a good game.