Spain is victorious! (Belgium anxiously awaits news of its fate.)
Would this joke be funnier if the Netherlands had won?
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Spain is victorious! (Belgium anxiously awaits news of its fate.)
Would this joke be funnier if the Netherlands had won?
Historiann 
It would be funnier if I didn’t have to dick around on Wikipedia to figure it out.
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Indeed, this one kind of resonated interestingly with the basic Western Civ narrative. But what wouldn’t have: Portugal-Brazil? Netherlands-Brazil? U.S.-UK? I just heard that Man-U. is coming to Philly in a couple of weeks. I’m not sure that a game is ever going to get that much traction here, though, if going down one-nil five minutes into a ninety minute contest can be portrayed as having dug a hole that you may not be able to climb out of. The major, philosophick question to me, however, is why do they say “nil?” Or maybe it should be, why don’t *we* say “nil?”
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I wonder if the Hapsburgs had an octopus predicting their success?
ps you can see why Mary Tudor found Felipe so attractive….
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The Hapsburgs had a few Popes in their corner, IIRC–much better than a trick octopus.
Never trust court painters–I can’t get past the smallpox scars, decayed teeth, bad breath, and general smelliness of bodies in history that painters wouldn’t or couldn’t have conveyed.
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I think it’s funnier this way, because it all ended so very badly for the Spanish in the Low Countries the last time. It’s not quite the same as the other narratives put forward by Indyana, because Spain wasn’t exactly a foreign oppressor of the Dutch (the Low Countries passed into the Spanish monarchy only with the accession of Charles V, whose patrimonial lands they were), and certainly didn’t colonize or ruthlessly exploit them in the same way (as the Americas, for example). I’m only mentioning these facts because to me it makes the joke more lighthearted and me feel ok about rooting for the Spaniards!
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phooey! I was hoping the octopus would be wrong… fortunately I had no money riding this. Only pride.
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Philip II was one of the more attractive Habsburgs. They just got worse and worse (the inbreeding – Philip II and Philip IV both married and procreated with nieces).
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Philip II was one of the more attractive Habsburgs.
And that ain’t saying much. The guy’s all over the Prado, with that head like a light-bulb.
Seriously, though, Viva España, campeones del mundo! My partner is Spanish and plays fútbol three nights a week. He got a standing ovation at his game last night! And yes, he put a World Cup star on his national team jersey. Whoooo!
I am left craving octopus, though.
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For the game to really re-enact Spain vs. The Netherlands circa 1580, we would have needed the English team to show up, hack around incompetently for about ten minutes, and then leave. Although the disgraceful performance of the English referee nearly pulled that off…
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LOL I’m an art historian – I’m the last to trust court painters! But her father was fooled by a Holbein, so I actually meant that LOOKING at the portrait, one can see why she was interested in him. It IS an attractive portrait, of course!
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@Perpetua:
right? and seriously, if freakin’ VELAZQUEZ can’t even make you look good…
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