So I was watching a fight last night, and a soccer game broke out…

Yes, I’m talking about the battle royal between Portugal and the Netherlands yesterday. As the perspicacious twohundredpercent notes under the subdued headline “Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight!”, it was awful, shameful, horrid…and vastly entertaining.

For connoisseurs of slow-motion train-wrecks, it was truly Must See TV. My favorite bit was when Univision’s Pablo Ramírez and Jesús Bracamontes jokingly reassured viewers that they weren’t tuned into the wrong channel—that this was not, in fact, the lucha libre over on Galavision, however much it might seem like it at first glance. What a way to finish off the weekend.

I have also been able to stay amused, even during the duller matches, keeping my eyes peeled for lookalikes. The coaches have been especially good fodder for this. Keith Olbermann’s twin somehow wound up coaching Iran; Luiz Felipe Scolari seems to me like a cross between Gene Hackman and Gerald McRaney; and while I can’t put my finger exactly on who Ricardo Lavolpe reminds me of, I’m sure he must have played a villain in one of the second-tier spaghetti westerns.

Yesterday, I was also able to spot among the luchadores a long-lost Osmond brother, going under the name of Cristian Ronaldo; and several World Cup bloggers have already remarked on the resemblance between yesterday’s overworked referee Valentin Ivanov and “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” fixture Ryan Stiles.

Good times, good times.

Oh, and for those of you who care about it, there was some pretty good soccer played here and there too. Though not in the England match. If Sven’s men sneak into the final it’ll be mostly on account of their ability to make opponents, as well as spectators, lose their will to live. And that would be my explanation of why the Ecuadorans showed no sense of urgency whatsoever yesterday despite being behind, even when it got to the 80th minute…or the 85th…or the 88th…