The 38 Most Fun World Cup Names
Roger Cormier finds the real meaning of the planet's biggest sporting event, while Jesse Spector is in The Pavilion tweeting through it
The 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup starts on Sunday, somehow. While I've seen a decent share of Premier, Europa, and Champions League action over the last four years, I've done so at a bit of a distance. It would be on television as background music while I was very much online (before the pandemic sometimes I'd ride my exercise bike). So I couldn't truly provide a World Cup preview proper. What I can tell you is it's on Fox and FS1 this time around, I hope Jon Hamm did more commercials for it as Santa, and there are exactly 38 names that are fun to read and say. I root for them all and pray none of them is as problematic as the host country.
Pervis Estupinan, Ecuador
Gonzalo Plata, Ecuador
Virgil van Dijk, Netherlands
Daley Blind, Netherlands
Denzel Dumfries, Netherlands
Wout Weghorst, Netherlands
Memphis Depay, Netherlands
Pape Matar Sarr, Senegal
Moustapha Name, Senegal
Formose Mendy, Senegal
Nick Pope, England
John Stones, England
Declan Rice, England
James Maddison, England
Shaq Moore, United States
Tim Ream, United States
Joshua Sargent, United States
Ben Cabango, Wales
Franco Armani, Argentina
Rogelio Funes Mori, Mexico
Robert Gumny, Poland
Keanu Baccus, Australia
Jonas Wind, Denmark
Jesper Lindstrom, Denmark
Kingsley Coman, France
Bechir Ben Said, Tunisia
Nico Schlotterbeck, Germany
Toby Alderweireld, Belgium
Wout Faes, Belgium
Axel Witsel, Belgium
Thorgan Hazard, Belgium
Bono, Morocco
Ilias Chair, Morocco
Fred, Brazil
Christopher Wooh, Cameroon
Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, Cameroon
Joseph Aidoo, Ghana
Maximiliano Gomez, Uruguay
By Jesse Spector
It sure feels like a good time to have started The Pavilion, and really started to dive into The Flushing Review, what with Twitter becoming… well, guess we’ll see. I think Ben Collins is probably right.
And, if he isn’t, that embedded tweet will disappear. I think that’s unlikely. Globally, there’s too much invested in Twitter as part of infrastructure — both in the wider Web for things like Substack’s embed feature (the theme of today’s Pavilion!) and, more importantly, for government services communicating with people, especially in emergencies.
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but that doesn’t really sound like me. At the same time, everything that’s done on Twitter can be done by another service. I have a Mastodon account from another crisis of infinite Twitters, but I haven’t gone back to it, and I don’t plan to, essentially, until I can embed toots here, which I’ll know I can do when I start seeing embedded toots on other Substacks.
Speaking of which:
We’ll keep adding to our list of recommendations… gee, it’s almost like a blogroll… as we go.
There was Mets hot stove news!
Hernández has a 5.04 career ERA… but 2.67 in 27 innings against the Mets, including one scoreless frame this year in which he walked J.D. Davis, then got Mark Canha on a lineout to right field. After Eduardo Escobar bounced into a force, Escobar was caught stealing for the final out.
The Marlins game where Escobar had a walkoff single, on September 28, Brigham struck out Pete Alonso as part of a scoreless outing. The Mets got him for a couple of runs in a July appearance, highlighted by a Francisco Lindor RBI single… on which Brandon Nimmo scored from first base.
Sanchez is a 22-year-old with big strikeout numbers and huge walk numbers through A-ball, and he posted an ERA of 11.05 in 7.1 Arizona Fall League innings… it’s not really clear why he was in the AFL, but, hey, the Marlins traded for him, so they saw something they liked, and the Mets get a couple of pitchers with experience in the division who they clearly feel like they can work with.
It’s hard to say what we’ll do if there isn’t a Twitter, but our Discord sure will be part of it, and we’d love to have you join us there…
