VIVA LA UNDERWATER BOAT DEVILS!

While I'm not the world's biggest soccer fan, it has grown on me a lot over the past couple of years. I had season tickets for Real Salt Lake for a season, still go to a few games each year and paid casual attention to British Premier League games (now that they're on NBC quite a bit).

Over the past year, I've started to get more and more into soccer and it's mostly due to that Manchester United podcast (we've been going strong for almost a full year, only missing one week) that I'm part of. I still don't know much about the intricacies of the game and I couldn't tell you why some players work where others don't, but I'm learning.

The other huge boost that I got was getting laid off just before the World Cup started. I was planning on catching as many games as I could, but figured I'd only be able to catch the Saturday games and daily recaps. That changed, and I took full advantage of my summer vacation and caught as many as I possibly could. Now I'm really starting to get the hang of things.

The Premier League starts up again in a couple of weeks (with the German and Spanish leagues starting soon after), and pretty much every club is in pre-season mode. A whole bunch of teams from Europe (including some of the big names like Manchester United, Man City and Real Madrid) came over the U.S. for a little preseason tournament called the International Champions Cup. It doesn't really mean a whole lot, and it's mostly for the teams to build their profile in the United States, but it's still pretty awesome.

Manchester United was scheduled to play in Denver against AS Roma a few days after the Nine Inch Nails/Soundgarden show, and there was no way that Casey was going to miss it. He bought a couple of tickets and my friend Paddy, who also does the podcast with us, bought a few as well. Casey was going to take his wife, and Paddy was going to take his wife and two kids, but as the game got closer, most of the family bailed. Oz had used up the last of his vacation time on the Soundgarden trip, and Byron couldn't get away, because he and his wife had just their second kid not long ago.

I was still unemployed (still am, more or less), so I took one of the tickets and headed back to the Mile High City for the second time in less than a week.

I flew out early Friday morning, and got into town about 10:30, while Casey, Paddy and our friend Justin drove out got to town about 4 PM. We met up at the hotel and headed to Sports Authority Field to watch an open training session. Roma backed out of theirs, so we waited around in the pouring rain and watched Manchester United run around cones and do ball drills for a couple of hours.

The next day, we headed to the Four Seasons and waited for the team to leave the hotel. Casey and Paddy had a bunch of stuff they were trying to get signed, but the crowd was too big and the only player that stopped to sign anything was Chicharito—and even he only got through a handful of things before he had to get on the bus.

Casey's seats were on the 11th row behind Roma's bench, while Paddy's seats were in the 3rd deck. We split up, and Justin went up with Paddy and his friend that just happened to be in town, while Casey and I went down to our seats. The  field-level corners of the stadium ended up being pretty empty, so eventually we all met up and moved over to some vacant seats and watched the game. For the first half, Casey and I stayed in his seats and we got a great look at a Wayne Rooney goal that was awesome, a Juan Mata goal off a beautiful assist from Rooney and another Rooney goal on a penalty.

Basically, the first half was all Rooney. Since these games don't really matter, the entire team was subbed off at halftime, and the second half was decidedly less exciting, with the exception of a killer Roma goal that was lobbed in from just over mid-field.

Casey and I both way over-prepared for the 20% chance of rain, but didn't prepare at all for the 80% chance of the 95-degree direct sunlight that ended up being the case for most of the first half. It was brutal, but luckily clouds moved in, gave us some shade and cooled things down for the second half. Manchester United ended up winning 3-2 and I've never seen Casey or Paddy in a better mood.

While I'm not really a huge fan of the team, I'm glad to say that I've seen a British Premier League team in action. The quality of play is way better than what I'm used to, and after seeing that in person and spending a month watching World Cup, it's going to be tough to watch an RSL match next time they're on.

But I'll still do it. The Jazz are going to be terrible again, baseball games are getting harder and harder to sit through (more on that later), and the NFL is a complete farce. So let's go soccer!

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE VIPER

The fourth season of GAME OF THRONES ended last Sunday, with an awesome battle between The Hound and Brienne of Tarth. The week before that, there was an hourlong battle at Castle Black and The Wall.

THRONES has become the favorite show of many, many people and for damn good reason. It's really really good. It takes a bit of a commitment and you actually have to pay attention to it since there are so many characters and so many different story lines. It's a weekly soap opera with much more violence, magic and dragons. It's amazing and if you're not watching it, you should be.

Everyone spent most of yesterday (Sunday, 6/22) in withdrawals and counting down the days until season five premieres sometime next March. Luckily for us, the World Cup is on and the U.S. Men's National Team decided to re-enact the iconic battle from Episode 8 of this season, "The Mountain and the Viper."

Unfortunately, for everyone in this country, the United States decided to assume the role of Prince Oberyn Martell. It was heartbreaking.

The U.S. was up 2 - 1 going in to stoppage time, when 5 minutes (5 minutes!) was tacked on. The U.S. held on for most of it, but Ronaldo, arguably the greatest player in the world made an assist at the last minute–literally the last minute–to give Portugal a tie.

The United States was 30 seconds away from advancing to the round of 16. Now I know how Tyrion felt.

GLORY, GLORY REAL SALT LAKE!*

I'm guessing somewhere around 50% of the population of Utah will say this exact thing at some point tomorrow:

"I didn't even know Salt Lake had a soccer team!"

Well we do. And they're the MLS Champions!

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I've been a Real fan from the beginning, because I haven't. I can't even pretend that I'm a huge soccer fan, because I'm not. There's a lot of things I dislike about soccer (like the fact that you can end in a tie, that the stoppage time clock goes up instead of down, etc.) but damn, that was a hell of a game!

I turned it on right before halftime because I was watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, which 9 times out of 10 will be vastly more entertaining than a soccer match. But I turned it on just in time to see Real Salt Lake tie it up and I was hooked the rest of the way.

It was kind of weird to see the Real listed as the Eastern Conference Champions, seeing as how Salt Lake is far, far away from the East. But I guess when an entire league only has 18 teams, it makes a little more sense.

The L.A. Galaxy have David Beckham and Landon Donovan, arguably two of the most popular players in MLS (and for one of them, the world) and were pretty much expected to take this thing easily—probably because RSL went 11-12-7 during the regular season. Only two other teams have ever won a championship with a sub-.500 record and they were both hockey teams. The Toronto Maple Leafs  did it in the 40s and the Chicago Blackhawks did it in the 30s.

During the entire shootout I was standing in front of the couch, and when Donovan missed the goal entirely, I got a little smile on my face. He's the captain of the team and spent the entire pre-season promoting a book where he bashed his more-famous teammate for not having enough heart and then he misses the goal altogether? At least Beckham made his shot.

That's what was going through my head as the RSL captain Kyle Beckerman missed his shot right after. Then it became kind of a moot point.

As it came down to what could be the last play, the TV camera showed the player from the back and the only thing I saw was the back of his jersey:

A big number 3 with the word Russell above it.

That's when the flashbacks started.

"No fucking way," I thought. "Not this again."

I can't be the only Utah sports fan that got the same feeling, can I?

But at the end of the day, he made the shot. Real Salt Lake won. Now it's time for the bandwagon to get a little heavier and a few more Real scarves to make appearances.

At least we've finally got a championship team in Utah.

And at least they're not called the Salt Lake Kickzz.

*I stole that title from the phrase that Casey always says after Manchester United wins.