Weekend Junkpile: US Wins + Netherlands Heads to South Africa + One for the Ladies + Probably the Only Post I’ll Ever Write That Discusses Daryl’s Biceps

By: Laurie | June 7th, 2009

All kinds of fun stuff going on this weekend, with lots of newsy bits that aren’t quite enough in and of themselves for an entire post.

First off, Netherlands becomes the first non-Asian non-host team to qualify for South Africa 2010, taking what has been described in multiple places as “an unassailable lead” in Group 9 with a 2-1 win over Iceland.

(And this France fan is not jealous of a five-team qualifying group made up of Scotland, Iceland, Macedonia and Norway. At all. Or anything.)

(Well, okay, maybe I wouldn’t personally choose Scotland.) Sigh.

Congratulations, Netherlands.

And the USA’s chances of actually making it to World Cup are looking a whole lot better this morning than they did Wednesday night, when they’d just finished that disastrous 3-1 performance against Costa Rica.

The boys in red, white and blue battled back after again going down 1-0 in the first five minutes, and they ended up with a 2-1 victory on the back of a Landon Donovan penalty and a gorgeous Carlos Bocanegra diving header.

Check it out at about the 1:20 mark, and especially the final, slo-mo replay at the end of the clip. Methinks Boca REALLY wants to go to the World Cup.

Nice work, boys. Here’s to being in South Africa in 2010.

(Although after watching Wednesday night’s game, I’d cheerfully pass on the upcoming Confederations Cup. I’m thinking swine flu could be used to our advantage here. What do you say?)

Also, ladies, I was searching for video of Bocanegra’s goal in standalone form. No luck there, but I did find this video, devoted solely to Bocanegra and Landon Donovan. It made me giggle.

I’m sure there have to be one or two ladies out there (or guys, we at The Offside are equal opportunity) who might appreciate this. Or, if not, you can just giggle right along with me. (Yes, it does include the infamous Donovan drinking fountain shot. How did you know?)

And finally, speaking of “for the ladies.” My favorite guilty pleasure Kickette did “Boys Week” this week, where guys from all of our favorite footy blogs offered up their pearls of wisdom and humor for the female audience. This included our very own editor, Daryl.

Daryl did us very proud here at The Offside by doing intelligent things like picking the manly and respectable Paolo Maldini as his mancrush, Louise Redknapp as his favorite WAG, and Stevie G as the Footballer He Would Choose to Be if given the opportunity.

(I think I would have picked Tim Howard, Noemie Lenoir and Yoann Gourcuff respectively. Because women can too have man crushes. Pretty sure.)

But of course Daryl can only control his own portion of these posts, which led to an intro on the Stevie G one which read something like this:

This post is brought to you from Daryl over at The Offside. Please welcome him with an air kiss and a firm squeeze of his biceps.

Hee. I was heartbroken this week that my Skype-equipped laptop was broken so I couldn’t harass him mercilessly about this. So instead I’m doing the next best thing, which is mentioning it here, thus publicly humiliating him in front of an international audience.

You’re welcome, Daryl! Love ya!

P.S. I really wish they’d been able to get Chris to participate.