Gee. And here I was hoping that the greeter would be one of my Argentine cousins. That woudl have been cool.
He’s not a local sports hero but is second only to Pele and maybe Ali in name recognition around the world. Billions have watched him play on the biggest stage in the world. i.e. The World Cup.
Which is still irrelevant.
And FWIW, how do we know that no one recognized him? You never know what falls on the cutting room floor.
I doubt if many Americans would even know the name, let alone the face. Checking his wiki bio, he is 51 yrs old, been retired for 15 years, been almost 20 yrs since he played for the Argentine Team.
I doubt if I would recognize Joe Montana if I ran into him on the street. Larry Bird, Michael Jordan possibly, because they are so tall.
Then again most Americans couldn’t find Iraq on a map. My point being that this is more a sign of how ignorant most Americans are of the world outside their borders rather than how famous Maradona is.
Who cares? I doubt I could even recognize Pele by sight even though I know the name. Same thing with most *American *sports stars. Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world, would you expect someone from a country where that is not played to be able to recognize famous players on sight? Same thing.
:rolleyes: No. It shows that soccer is not as big a deal in America as it is in other countries. Unless you think people from other countries should be able to recognize American sports stars just by seeing them, without hearing their names.
I can cite plenty of evidence of ignorant Americans about the rest of the world, but not knowing Maradona on sight is not evidence. Its apathy, more than anything else.
Geography is routinely taught in school. Soccer trivia is not.
And FTR, I can find Iraq on a map. But I suspect a good proportion of Argentine Adults could not find Iraq on a map, probably a similar percentage as Americans.
I would recognize the *name *of hundreds of people who are national icons of of foreign countries. There are substantially fewer people of those people who I would recognize by sight, and the Maradona of 2011 isn’t exactly at his playing weight.
It’s pretty unrealistic to expect Racers to be able to recognize hundreds of famous people by sight. I absolutely wouldn’t be able to pick Stephen Harper, David Cameron, or Angela Merkel out in a crowd, and I don’t think that makes me an Ugly American.
For what it’s worth, I guessed the greeter was Maradona, based on his soccer jersey and my vague memory that he’s had weight problems. Thing is, though, if I were a Racer, I wouldn’t have said anything, because I would have thought it more embarassing to mis-identify some other national soccer hero as “Maradona” than to plead ignorance.
Now let’s be careful, it’ll really hurt Laggard’s feelings when it becomes clear that there are major international pop stars that we’ve never heard of as well.
I’m a generally well informed sports fan, and I doubt I’d recognize almost any major sports star from more than a decade ago who isn’t still seen widely outside of sports through advertising or other work (Charles Barkley I still recognize because he still constantly pops up; Clyde Drexler, who I used to watch, in person, play every few nights, I doubt I would).
I know who Maradona is. But I don’t know that I’ve seen an image of him since I was in college and he was still playing (and his career peak was when I was still in elementary school). So, if you said “who do you think this middle aged person wearing a soccer jersey and holding a ball is” I’d have to guess Maradona. It’s not like he’s still constantly seen (or ever was in the United States) hawking shaving cream on TV and making appearances on talk shows.
But if you expect me to assume that a random middle-aged Argentinian holding a soccer ball at a TAR pit stop is Maradona, that would be quite a stretch. I’d just assume it was another example of a random person wearing a popular/traditional outfit for a country where soccer is very popular. It’s not like every pit stop features a global celebrity.
(Not to mention, if showed me the picture of Maradona that is on his Wikipedia page next to the guy who was at the pit stop I don’t know that I would recognize he was meant to be an impersonator.)
First of all, STFU. Second, I get your point and maybe even agree with you.
My point was that to Americans he’s just some dude. To the rest of the world he is well known and not some “local sports hero” as someone said he was.
And again, STFU asshole.
Really? In Cafe Society?
Is that frowned on?
Yes. A moderator will be by shortly to slap your wrist, and tell you that personal insults are forbidden outside the BBQ Pit.
Moderators will do what moderators will do.
But if asshole is the worst thing I’m called this week, I’ll be ok.
Though I didn’t expect such a direct backlash at learning that there are major international pop stars that Americans generally haven’t heard of.
At the risk of (a) hijacking the thread further, and (b) generating my own reprimand 
I’ll go out on a limb and guess that some American soccer fans are extremely sensitive about the fact that most Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about the sport that so excites their passion.
I, for one, am shocked to learn that they do not teach about Argentinean football heros in American clown school (or at the Border Patrol, or during Big Brother, or anywhere in Kentucky). It is a shame.
Back on track, this seasons teams seem generic to me. Only two episodes in and I can see that there are going to be a lot of Team Who Is Thats (?).
I’m sad that TAR producers yet again felt that had to include a team from another reality show.
I’m surprised how long it took to set up a solar oven to boil water. One team said they stood around for about 45 minutes plus construction time. Border patrol got [seemingly] quite lost and still managed to be one of the first teams out.
Seems like Americans are becoming more and more bilingual. Most teams were able to at least get the gist of the Spanish conversations that had to engage in.
I would imagine that fluency in Spanish would be a great help, if not mandatory, for a border patrolman.
Speaking of which, based on next week’s previews, it looks like they’re still in South America.
Didn’t one of the racers recognize (although since he was an imposter, “mis-recognize”) him? I would swear I saw and heard one of the two guys (Elliot and Andrew?) say something about him being famous and headed the ball back and forth for a few moments.
I saw that they had a bottle of water to fll the pot. I think I would have put in as little water as possible, unless there was a rule they had to use the entire bottle.
I didn’t see any team taking any care to aim the solar oven, with an open bottom it would have been easy to do and probably would make a big difference.