Brazil is the top team in the tournament and North Korea the worst.
Brazil is all about Samba and brings to mind the free love of Haight Ashbury of the 1960s.
On the other hand, the PRK is regimented, repressive and reminds me of the Iron Curtain.
Ahhh, those were the days of the Olympics: the USA vs. USSR. American college kids vs. unemotional and robotic Soviet block athletes.
The Soviet block nations didn't travel very well. Communism didn't allow many fans to travel to Montreal or even Munich. They did have enough resources, however, to build a dominant sports power.
In addition to the USSR, Romania, Bulgaria and especially East Germany had success. The Germans also invested a lot in performance-enhancing drugs.
After the wall came down it's just North Korea and Cuba carrying that communist flag. Dictators Kim Jong-Il and Fidel Castro are doing their best to keep the commie dream alive. (China qualifies as repressive dictatorship but they now dig capitalism.)
But what an outdated philosophy in today's World. The information revolution makes it nearly impossible to control the media and minds of the masses.
Cuba has suffered because there's no more Soviet blank check. North Korea still has China's back, if you count sending a few hundred "fans" to root for their Korean neighbors.
You can't make this stuff up. North Koreans can't afford or can get a visa to South Africa to watch their team play. The theater of the bizarre, but that kind of thing would've been normal in international sport in the 1960s or 1970s.
Here's hoping the tyrant dinosaurs and their regimes won't survive much longer.
The Korenas did a great job today. They were aggressive early and their keeper gave up a tough goal to the near post. Let's hope he doesn't end up in a forced labor camp in a few weeks.
A 2-1 loss to Brazil was no disgrace for North Korea.
The people of the PRK, however, deserve more than a decent soccer team and nuclear weapons. Food and freedom would be better.
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