Ahoj! Moje Meno je Paul (I hope my Slovak is correct)

May 20th, 2010 | by: Paul | View Comments

Well hello there! I am pleased to introduce myself as the new blogger for the Slovakia World Cup Blog. I’m actually one of two, Neil from the Napoli Offside will be sharing blogging duties with me- but he will probably be introducing himself later.

Anyway, here’s a little about myself:

I’m from Houston, Texas; 22 years old and a recent college graduate. As far as futbal is concerned, I am an avid supporter of Athletic Club Bilbao through my Basque hertiage and have been blogging over at the Athletic offside for about a year now. I also consider myself a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur and my hometown Houston Dynamo.

Now, you may be wondering, why would a Basque-American from Texas care about the Slovakia national team? This is a fair question, and, admittedly, I still consider the USA my main team for the tournament. But, that doesn’t answer the question.

For the spring semester of 2009, my college offered a Semester in Bratislava, which I attended. I lived at the Lutheran Evangelical Faculty of Comenius University for three months, and while in Slovakia had a great time, made many friends (both Slovak and American), and basically fell in love with the country. Slovakia was in the midst of their World Cup qualifying campaign and that is where I began to follow the Slovakia team. As far as the Slovak language, I picked up a little bit and have a phrase book and Google Translate, so maybe I’ll throw it in a bit here and there. Again, the United States is still my #1 team, but Slovakia is still a very close second. Admittedly, I don’t know too much about the Slovakia team, but in the coming days I’ll be reading up as much as I can about them, watching youtube highlights of players, and scouting them via Football Manager so that I will be a competent blogger.

That's me, with the statue of Hans Christian Andersen in Bratislava.

I’m eagerly awaiting the world cup and hopefully I’ll be back very soon with a “real” post!