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© St. Petersburg Times, published May 31, 2002
The global frenzy starts at 7:30 a.m. today when France and Senegal open the World Cup, allowing all those countdown clocks to stop ticking and all those goal counters to start slowly clicking away like tiny odometers of joy for soccer fans the world over.
In a city that has seen its soccer team fold this year, in a country still not embracing the sport the way the rest of the world has, soccer is still just soccer, but the Internet is worldly enough to offer all kinds of insight as to what the next month could bring.
fifaworldcup.yahoo.com: You know the sport is taken seriously when the event's official site not only has a page devoted to referees, but individual bio pages for 36 assistant referees, complete with dartboard-ready photos. The site has plenty of on-field information but is also great at covering the peripherals, including a feature Thursday on kimchi, an intriguingly spicy Korean side dish.
sports.com: This overseas site rarely lives up to its nearly ideal name, but it covers this event well, with an Ultimate World Cup fantasy game, lots of links to less subtle gambling and previews and Cup histories for every team. It is harshly honest about the U.S. entry: "The convoluted makeup of the CONCACAF Zone made it virtually impossible for the USA not to qualify, but they nevertheless managed it without too many worries, despite three straight losses at one stage."
worldcuparchive.com: Great site to hone your Cup knowledge; you'll need to use your head to make it through a tough 10-question quiz. One page highlights the history of World Cup mascots, and another offers an individual all-time top-10 ranking. The FAQ page proudly admits that Ricky Martin's La Copa De La Vida, popularized pre-la vida loca during the 1998 Cup, is not on the site because "I chose not to."
manutd.com: The home of Manchester United points out that Man U. players will be represented on five World Cup teams. A poll asks which one will advance the furthest, with Argentina outdrawing the home Brits by a 2-to-1 ratio. Alas, the site's online store somehow won't have merchandise for sale until Wednesday, the e-commerce equivalent of an own goal.
uglyfootballers.com: Former Mutiny favorite Carlos Valderrama is immortalized among the All-Time World Cup selections on this site, devoted to the fact that beautiful soccer isn't always played by beautiful people. From the gap-toothed Ronaldo to severely-goateed Alexi Lalas, they're all here, with more bad hair than a trip through your old yearbooks. Players are rated on an ugly-o-meter, and one section juxtaposing players and their wives is fittingly titled "Beauty and the Beast." Additional galleries showcase mullets, men in black (ugly referees) and streakers.
POP-UPS EVOLVE: The new trend in online advertising isn't those pop-up ads we've all been killing off like lovebugs, but rather "out-of-banner" ads that seem to leap out onto the page. FIFA's World Cup site has a Budweiser ad that shows a silhouetted player bouncing a soccer ball, then kicking it through your computer screen.
Visit NBA.com recently and you saw a Gatorade bottle bouncing around the screen, followed by a flash of neon lightning, and weather.com recently featured a Nike ad that had Jaws music in the background with a shark lurking back and forth through three-day forecasts until it emerged as a harmless Swoosh. While still annoying at times, it's an amusing upgrade on the pop-ups -- for a gallery of animated demos, visit unitedvirtualities.com.
TID-BYTES: An online poll at rolandgarros.com Thursday asked fans what they thought of Serena Williams' garish red, green and yellow "soccer dress." Sixty percent deemed it "inappropriate for a tennis player." ... CNNSI.com's Peter King, listing his 10 favorites to win next year's Super Bowl in San Diego, ranks the Buccaneers second, behind St. Louis. "This is how much I believe in Jon Gruden," King writes. ... We've seen supposedly super-secret football playbooks pull high prices online, but a single play? One seller at eBay.com had former Heisman Trophy winners Steve Spurrier and Danny Wuerffel each sketch the X's and O's of one touchdown play from the Gators' 1997 Sugar Bowl victory. The autographed, framed pair of plays was bidding at $1,025 on Thursday, with a week still left on the auction. -- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, e-mail staff writer Greg Auman at auman@sptimes.com.