We (NZ) are the champions!
That’s right, I’m talking about the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
I went to bed just after Italy scored the penalty goal against New Zealand to make a 1-1 tie. I woke up to the news of the game finishing at the same 1-1 tie and I was like, “Holy shit”.
Game summary at FIFA.com
And not only me, my Facebook homepage this morning is filled with status messages announcing the surprise.
Now, the big players such as the German and Italian teams receive unlimited budgets when they attend the World Cup tournaments. They get paid BIG bucks, sleep in the most luxurious beds, but all that the Kiwi team strives on is simply the spirit of sportsmanship. First we tied 1-1 against Slovakia (rank 25). Now this? We were ranked 73 places behind Italy, we were made up of half part-time players, and dude, that 1 goal we scored is the second ever goal scored by New Zealand in the FIFA since the 1980s.
More embarrassingly for the four-time FIFA World Cup champs, if it wasn’t for the badly called penalty shot for which the referee is now being verbally bashed, it would have been Italy 0 to New Zealand 1.
Aside from the FIFA, New Zealand Olympic gold medalists are similarly part-timers who compete for an interest in the sport, and upon returning to New Zealand, need to continue working in their other jobs to feed themselves. Consider how Chinese participants are pushed into hard training from a young age, and that winning a single gold medal for Taiwan equates to not having to work for the rest of your life.
Despite what the scoreboard says, despite being an underdog, New Zealand is a winner. We are the biggest champion of all for having the true sportsmanship that is supposed to ground these sports competitions.1
Woooooooooooooooooot!
