Is this something to do with soccer?

Yes. It's based on Mario Strikers Charged, which is the most recent Mario Soccer game.

Hard to tell, I'll bet, because the ball is not the traditional design.

It was the ball that suggested soccer, actually. The uniform didn't mean anything to me, nor the name.

Yeah, I guess if you've never played the game it doesn't make any sense.

You can say that soccer (football in places where there is no *real* football) both is and isn't popular in Canada. Among older Canadians, soccer is a game played in Europe, mainly. It was played in Canada in small stadiums, and attended mostly by Italian and Portuguese-speaking immigrants.

However, the immigrant population of Canada has grown enormously, and especially in big cities like Toronto. It's been calculated that something like 2/3 of the people living in Toronto were born in some other country, I think. Which means they brought their interest in soccer with them.

So, now, whenever anyone so much as drops a soccer ball by accident in Swaziland or Brazil, it's news. When the world cup thingie is played, the #@$%! fans are out in the street blocking traffic. Considering the insignifance of the game in *my* mind, the fuss seems little short of insurrection, and I want the army called in to clear the celebrating fans out of the streets.

I've often called soccer the simplest game in the world. It was designed for the extremely poor, since all you need is something soft to kick -- a dead puppy will do -- and some mud to kick it around on -- like, say, a toxic waste dump. You don't really need skates, sticks, shoulder pads, bats, bases, mitts, hoops, or anything that costs more than 35 cents. But if you *do* have 35 cents, why watch soccer when you can watch something as bizarre and colourful as hockey?