This is the opening weekend of the 2021-22 Premier League football season. For my wife, that signals weekend mornings spent largely with me screwed to the couch watching games. Today, I got a two-hour footy session with my weekly pickup game in before I hunkered down. But hunker I did.
I got cleaned up in time to catch Liverpool down in southeastern England to take on newly promoted Norwich City. The home side had a record-setting season in the Championship last year, winning the league and automatic promotion going away. The visitors were hoping to bounce back from last year's injury-damned season to reclaim their brilliant 2019-20 form.
As the game started, I got a look at Norwich City's dazzling kits. Unlike so many teams that sport various combinations of red and blue, The Canaries play their home matches in vibrant yellow tops with bright green accents. They're glorious, though I couldn't wear that scheme. (I'm more of a winter, you see.)
Here's what I'm talking about:
There's a detail here that struck me as I watched the match. Most English clubs wear the logos of either anodyne corporations (Manchester City/Chevrolet, Liverpool/Standard Chartered financial services, Brighton/American Express, Tottenham Hotspur/AXA) or oddball betting/gaming sites (Crystal Palace/W88, Southhampton/Sportsbet.io, West Ham United/Betway, et al). Not the elegant Canaries. Norwich proudly wears the Lotus emblem front and center.
Lotus, one of the world's fabled automotive brands, shares a Norfolk homebase with Norwich City, and their livery is green and gold, so there's a natural affinity between the two. And as I watched the early stages of the match, another affinity struck me.
Zman should support Norwich City. They play a free-flowing attacking brand of football, so they're easy on the eyes - you might say they like to rev their engines. They don't care all that much about playing defense, so they play of lot of exciting games. Their best player is Teemu Pukki, who's from Finland. Zman loves Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen, and Keke Rosberg - noted Finnish Formula One drivers. The Canaries just signed USMNT forward Josh Sargent, so there's a jingoistic angle for the taking.
I promise I'll work a little harder at finding teams for the rest of you. Or not - this one worked out pretty well for me. And Z.
Up the Canaries! And Up the Zman!
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15 comments:
This is awesome and I can’t wait to find out whom I should support.
"Up the zman!" sounds like something my gastroenterologist would say at the outset of my colonoscopy but I guess that's also a soccer thing. The Lotus connection makes this a natural and TR called me a canary on a few occasions too. Further, I've been to Norfolk a bunch of times but I didn't see anyone rocking Norwich City gear at A.W. Shuck's.
I wish I named zson Teemu Pukki.
trying to avoid the obvious for you, whit. or am i?
Zman kept us guessing with cars, so maybe that’s more fun. I tried rooting for Portsmouth for a spell since I was born in the Virginia namesake, and then they plummeted.
The following exchange took place in my front yard between me and my 60-some-odd-year-old neighbor.
zman: Hi Tom! Man is it beautiful today! I wish I hadn't done my yard work yesterday.
Tom: Yeah, I'm just trying to wrap things up here. I have my colonoscopy tomorrow so I need to start the bowel prep soon.
zman: Oh. Um. That's great. The humidity really lifted overnight.
Tom: I'm going to be going to the bathroom for the rest of the day.
zman: Right. Enjoy the weather!
I know it’s been labored over extensively here in recent weeks, but Maine is awesome.
I’ll be there on Thursday, Rootsy
19, 4, and 4 for the knightwolf to close out summer league. averaged 14.5 points and 6 boards over the wolves' four games. solid.
learned tonight that barack obama follows me on twitter. no big deal. just trying to stay cool. like my new best friend barry.
Big time, I’m on my way, I’m making it
Maybe QAnon was right and Trump is actually running the government because this Afghan withdrawal is a fucking disaster.
it is that. the culmination of 20 years of mismanagement by leaders from both parties aided and abetted by a media/natsec establishment with a vested interest in our presence in a place we never belonged.
Agreed. I give Biden credit for ripping the band-aid off and finally ending this but they are making a shambles of this. Feels like State & DoD we’re not on the same page and nobody took control at the top. Now they are scrambling. Exiting a 20 year morass was always going to be ugly, but we had to be able to do better than this. This result is what I would have expected from Trump. There are a ton of Afghans that we owe a lot to that are going to die because we didn’t have our shit together. That’s really depressing.
amen to that
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