WORLD CUP 2010, The Final Blog

As boldly predicted by Foot Massage, it's July 12th and the World Cup is over.

I'm sure by now you all know who the Pool winner is, but there's plenty more gongs to go round:

The Most Pythonesque, Philosophical Poolster: Grandmaster jRo

He really should be in the line-up for the Greek team below:

Be sure to read his blog if you haven't already:

http://carefulmedia.com/content/argentinagermany-whos-jew-choose

Best actor: Masterpick. He had us all fooled that he was a right prick determined to win the pool. And then he went and INTENTIONALLY finished in 39th spot!!! He would have been mortified to accidentally win the thing. Isn't that right, Masterpick.

Most reliable commenters: britt and Jdidur,

Many a match they saved me from talking to myself. And they finished 5th and 3rd respectively! Even when they were down at the bottom of the pool (and Jdidur really was way way down there) they were still piping in with game comments. Thanks so much.

Earliest drinker: Scottish Flash. And thank god for it. How horrible it would have been to be sober at 10:00 watching that England performance against Germany.

Funniest 5 comments: Working within the rules, G-g-g-o-o-o-al™'s comments during match 28 gave me the most giggles.

Most likely to get sent off: Just when blow hard was warning me that there was a little too much anti-German rhetoric on the site jewishbitch lobbed this cross in:

http://carefulmedia.com/content/german-bashing

Toughest to watch/listen to lose: This is a tie between vox sambou, who I watched the Brazil/Netherlands and the Ghana/Uruguay matches with, and Arwen. Bronwen's phone accidentally called me just so I could hear Arwen in a fury of tears after she found out Argentina lost. She was hysterical. And after the Brazil game Vox told me he wouldn't be able to take watching Ghana go out. But he still headed up to the Ghanaian headquarters to watch that travesty. This was him, Grandmaster jRo and Diegal shortly after Ghana scored, so it was still all smiles:

Most enigmatic poolster: delecosse. He's now befriended me on facebook, but is yet to correspond. I still think he's not a real person.

Most enthusiatic fans of the Pool: Though Masterpick would surely like to stake a claim to this prize (and to all the other ones as well) this has got to go to Super Collider and allezlesbleus who really wanted me to go professional. Here they can be seen along with  Grandmaster jRo, brainsoverbrawn, and Jdidur cheering Spain to victory in the semifinal:

 Heaviest drinker: blow hard

I think we all know why.

(Thanks to Zvi for this shot and some to follow).

Best World Cup facebookers:  Jack Russell, Anfield Forever, jewishbitch, nanabanana, giuliana22, etc.

Not everyone could remember their login credentials for carefulMEDIA (to be generous), but next time round David's World Cup Pool 2.0 will be FULLY intergrated with other social media hubs. Promise.

Best user-submitted photo: Isabella, Christina (official pool loser :( ) , Tsunami_Tami and Dr. Anton Sparta. This is a whole lotta awesome:

Cutest World Cup Couple: alphorn and SempreBrasil. A Germany/Brazil final would have been a real treat. If not for World Football then at least to read that duo's banter with one another. Or maybe it wouldn't have been so cute . . .

Best Sport:  Despite the cockiness that came with her early victory, and against her hyper-competitive nature, Arwen managed to muster some real magnamity in building and presenting the Pool Trophy--won by her own SISTER!! What a fairly-tale ending (fittingly, they watched Cinderella right after the game).

POOL WINNER: SpainSpainSpain aka-bea

What are the odds that out of 57 contestants my own daughter would win the pool!!!??? And so a life-changing mythology is born. For those who don't know, Bronwen and I always tell Beatriz that we named her in Spain and that she's therefore just a little bit Spanish. We now plan to appeal to the Spanish authorities to grant her citizenship. It seems the least they can do for her after she was so instrumental in their victory.

What? If psychic octopus can get so much credit why not Bea?

Finally, a big thanks to ALL OF YOU who played the pool or just came to visit from time to time. It's been a lot of fun for me and I'll MISS IT AND YOU!!

 Thanks again to Zvi for the pics from the final game. More of them can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zvileve/tags/worldcup/