First off, let me apologize for the lack of postings and failure to answer e-mails and comments. Three words: World Cup fatigue. I’ve also recently breached this blog’s monthly bandwidth allocation but Ploghost‘s Abe Olandres helped me keep this site up. If you ever need a Philippine web hosting company, Ploghost should be your first choice.

From PinoyPress comes this link to a New York Times article: “The World’s Watching – and, Perhaps, Cheering.” Journalist Carlos Conde was quoted in the article as saying: “If there’s anything that can be said of my country, it’s never crazy about football. Basketball, yes, as you know, but not football. There’s absolutely no buzz here.”

Football, sadly, isn’t as popular here in the Philippines as it is in the rest of the world but over the years, its popularity has grown in the island I now call home, Cebu. With live broadcast of matches restricted to pay-per-view channels, I’ve been catching some of the matches through Internet TV, using the TVUPlayer.

When it’s available, I watch the feed from ESPN2 because of the English-language commentary, albeit it isn’t at par with the commentaries of ESPN-Star Sports pundit Gerry Armstrong, a former Irish international player who annotates the games I watch. I mean, the ESPN2 commentators actually described Brazil as akin to a team with five point guards and they keep saying “soccer.” It’s football. Period.

At times, however, the ESPN2 feed is cut and I’m left with no choice but to use the CCTV feed, which has Chinese commentaries. I’ve never watched a goal scored in the CCTV feed – it’s either I’m still off chasing a page deadline or the ESPN2 feed is reactivated and I revert to it. I’ve always wanted to listen to the Chinese version of the familiar GOOAAAAAAAALLLL!!! cry of commentators after a team scores.

Brazil, the team I’m rooting for, will face a reinvigorated France next. Sol Amante, our managing editor, settles her dilemma, she’s saying Allez Zizou but I’m sure come game time, a certain Frenchman I’ve been told about will be sacre bleu-ing himself hoarse.