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World Cup NYC: Portugal v Angola

With the many, many features in the New York City media in the past week listing locales for watching World Cup matches, it's would seem academic that New York City has caught World Cup Fever. Or, at the very least, a World Cup post-nasal drip. The true nature of the city's love for the game caught up with us this weekend, in our attempt to see salt cod powerhouses Portugal take on plucky Angola on Sunday afternoon. We're not ready to declare the city soccer mad just yet.

It would appear that Puerto Rico has some beef with the Portuguese--maybe it's an anti-Iberian thing--because our first attempted viewing locale at Tintol, a newly opened Portuguese tapas bar near Times Square was thwarted by an even more nationalistic group than soccer fans. The Puerto Rican Day parade blocked off 46th street, so we couldn't even get to Tintol. Or so we thought--amny misprinted Tintol's adresss, and they may very well have been open, but by that point, we were blocked by the parade and it was impossible to know.

Plan B was The Girl from Ipanema, on 14th Street between 7th and 8th. Peeking inside, we saw a solitary man at the bar, wearing a Portugal jersey. Where was the World Cup passion? We abandoned all hope of watching at an "authentic" location, and went to Brass Monkey on Little West 12th in time for the start of the match. Boasting themselves as a World Cup HQ to rival Tonic, they had about three vaguely Portuguese fans in attendance for the match, and few people beyond that except those there to celebrate NYC Scooter Block Party weekend. (We'd expect that soccer fans and scooter fans are a similar demographic)  To us, it looked as if New York's World Cup Fever was a 48 hour bug.

Brass Monkey is still a nice spot to see the games; they have an international selection of beers on tap, making it a welcoming place for a wide variety of fans. Their selection did little to improve the action of the match, which peaked with a goal in the fourth minute by Portugal. That would be the sum total of scoring, and other than the intense giddiness we felt when we realized that one of Angola's best players has a haircut similar to a Charles Schultz drawing and is named Loco, it would be the most entertainment we would get from the match.

Bored with the game, we decided to do a preview of Monday's Czech Republic-USA match while eating at the bar. We pitted their Czechvar on draft against that perennial American culinary all-star, barbequed ribs. Using our complicated system of prognostication based on what we ate, we predict a 2 (Czechvars) to 1 (plate of ribs) victory for the Czechs.

If only all sports reporting could be so crisp and delicious.

Who: Portugal v Angola

Where: Tintol (55 W. 46th), Girl from Ipanema (252 W. 14th), Brass Monkey (55 W. 12th)

America's Moment of Shame: The best announcers of the tournament, Adrian Healy and Tommy Smyth, are English and Irish, and are stuck covering the dullest group in the tournament. Nice call, ABC.  

[Image via Kate Sullivan]

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·   Germany World Cup [Official Site]