Euro 2012, a 16-team tournament held every four years to crown a national soccer team as European champion, begins Friday. Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain — the so-called PIGS, whose sovereign-debt crises are the continent’s most acute — are all competing.
I’m not a big believer that “soccer explains the world.” But some PIGS are notorious for cheating at the game (e.g., writhing in feigned agony after minor contact in the hope of causing the referee to show an opponent a yellow card). I’m thinking of Italy (which is also in the middle of a match-fixing scandal) and Portugal.
It will be interesting to see if such a correlation holds at Euro 2012.
From powerlineblog.com