Many people have a right to be complaining about the horrible officiating at the World Cup. However, Diego Maradona, whose Argentina squad never should have been allowed its first goal against Mexico (changing the entire complexion of the game), is about the last person who can legitimately complain.
I was really hoping against hope that Ecuador would win its game, and Uruguay would beat Argentina, keeping the latter out of the 2010 World Cup. That said, anybody proclaiming the glory of Argentina for barely sneaking in as the 4th of four qualifiers from South America (with a fifth up for grabs against Costa Rica) is delusional. That team has serious issues facing them going into next year, and if they don't get a #1 seeding (which they very well may not), they may not make it out of the first round, a la France in 2002.
That said, Diego Maradona is still a first-rate loudmouth buffoon, not just for acting like this is a true triumph, but for the way he expressed such "triumph":
Classy - you barely get your team in the World Cup, are facing real issues with both your players' style and seeming lack of interest in playing while you're the coach; you've threatened to leave the team before the World Cup, throwing everything in turmoil; and now, you're neurons failed to stop what was going through your head from coming out of your mouth, and you're facing disciplinary action and possible suspension heading into the World Cup in less than 9 months.Following the match which Argentina defeated Uruguay 1-0, Maradona delivered a expletive-laden tirade, broadcast on live TV, directed at reporters and critics whom he claimed had shown no confidence in his work.
“This is for those who didn’t trust this team and for those who treated me as garbage. We’re in the South Africa World Cup; with nobody’s held and with all honours. Those who didn’t believe in me suck it…” he told most of the Argentine media at the press conference following the match.
As the Honduras situation remains at a standstill, I offer the following suggestion. With the U.S. men's national team heading to Honduras for a World Cup qualifier, let "soccer diplomacy" settle it. If Honduras wins, Micheletti can stay in office; if the U.S. wins, Zelaya, with international support, returns to finish out his term.
I haven't figured out what to do in the case of a draw, though....
Anytime Brazil's national team beats Argentina in soccer, it's a great day. It's an even better day when the Brazilian victory makes Brazil the first team from the Americas to lock a spot for the 2010 World Cup. It's an even better day when Argentina's loss leaves them in fourth place and in danger of not even making the World Cup. And it's about as great a day as it can be when Brazil beats Argentina 3-1, in Argentina. (And the goals were beauties, especially the first one).
Normally, I hesitate to gloat - sports is the one arena in which I'm superstitious. However, I can't help but point out the troubles Argentina is facing, while Brazil is looking very good. When Brazil first hired Dunga in 2006 after the World Cup debacle, Brazilians killed him. They thought he wasn't devoted enough to the well-known stars (Ronaldinho in particular); they thought he was incompetent-looking; they thought he was too relaxed. I thought this was exactly what they needed, given that the previous coach effectively cost Brazil the World Cup by refusing to sit a fat Ronaldo and not knowing how to use his younger stars (bringing Adriano and Robinho in against France only in the 5 minutes was absolutely inexcusable). Dunga made it clear - you had to earn your way onto the team, and those who played well on the national team would get to stay, while those who did not would sit. I thought this was exactly what was needed, and it turns out, I, and more importantly, Dunga, was right. Players like Luis Fabiano, Felipe Melo, and Daniel Alves have come into their own under Dunga, and even the very-young Pato has had some good playing time in international competition. It's enough to make me very hopeful about next year.
But what could make me giddy? Well.....the horrible position of Argentina. They are ridiculously good on paper. But it just hasn't translated, and the blame is increasingly falling on Diego Maradona's coaching. When Argentina hired him last year, I had my doubts about his appointment giving Argentina that extra bump, and it looks like I'm increasingly right. Some criticisms are silly (so what if he took his players to church?), but criticisms about his tactics are both more serious and more long-term. For whatever reason, Argentina clearly has not clicked under his leadership, and now they're only 2 points ahead of Colombia in the qualifiers, facing the very real possibility that they may have to play the 5th place team from Concacaf just to qualify for South Africa next year. I still think they'll pull it off, but it's definitely not worked out the way Argentina had hoped. And I totally agree with pc - Argentina's in big trouble. If they fire him now, they're (probably) going into the World Cup with major trauma - this isn't like baseball, where you fire one guy and plug another one in there. But at the same time, they look completely unprepared for next year, and if they can't handle the physical and inspired play of a team like Brazil, there's no way they get very far next year (and again, that's if they make it, an assumption everybody had coming into the qualifiers based on how they looked on paper).
Erwin hits it on the head: Brazil and Argentina right now are the tale of two coaches. A lot can happen over the next 9 months, but right now, I really like where Brazil is sitting; watching Argentina flounder just makes it that much more pleasurable.
All is right in the world. No doubt, beating the vaunted American team is what gave Brazil that little extra push to attain number 1 in the world rankings.
It's true.
Others commented on the sheer miracle of the U.S. even getting to the semi-finals of the Confederations cup (to summarize: after losing 3-0 to Brazil and 3-1 to Italy, they were able to go on only after Egypt beat Italy 1-0, and the U.S. beat Egypt 3-0, and Brazil beat Italy 3-0 ). But this victory outdoes even that previous unlikelihood. Spain hadn't lost in thirty-five international matches straight, tying the all-time record. This game was virtually a foregone conclusion in Spain's favor. Sure, they were due for a loss sooner or later, but the way the U.S. had played, it didn't seem like it would be this game.
But the U.S. played ridiculously well, and Spain did not. Sure, we didn't have as many shots, but our defense was lights out, and when we shot the ball, it went in the goal. It's as simple as that.
I don't want to bet against the U.S. in the final (most likely against Brazil, though at this point, who knows?), but the loss of Bradley at midfield for the next game due to a (ridiculous) red-card (though he may have merited yellow, which would have forced him to miss the next game anyways) will really cause problems. Plus, Brazil is just really, really good. But so is Spain, and look how that turned out.
If only the U.S. could play like they did against Egypt and Spain all the time....
FIFA announced the 12 Brazilian cities that will be hosting the 2012 World Cup. In no big surprise, the final will be in Maracana stadium, which hosted the 2006 Pan-American games and can seat up to 87,000 people, in Rio de Janeiro. Other non-surprise hosts are Sao Paulo, as well as Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais), Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul), Curitiba (Parana), Salvador (Bahia), Recife (Pernambuco), Natal (Rio Grande do Norte), Brasilia, and Fortaleza (Ceara). Several other "small" cities from Brazil's underrepresented regions were also in the mix, and the final two sites will be Manaus (whose new stadium design is the best), in Amazonas, and Cuiaba, in Mato Grosso. The South/Southeast and the Northeast are heavily represented, which was to be expected, and those regions offer a great variety in presenting Brazilian culture, history, and geography. But the selection of Manaus and Cuiaba means games will also be in Brazil's interior and in the Amazon, bringing much-needed and well-deserved income into those states and cities, as well, and letting tourists see much more of Brazil than they usually do when they pass through (usually hitting only Rio and/or the Northeastern beaches). The stadium rennovations have already begun and are in variou sphases of completion (Rio is virtually set, and Brasilia was beginning when I was there in July 2007).
It's a shame other little-visited cities like Rio Branco, Campo Grande, Goiania, and Florianopolis were left out (as were Belem), as each has plenty for tourists to see beyond Rio and the Northeast, and those cities could have used the income as well. Still, it's overall a justifiable list, and the inclusion particularly of Manaus and Cuiaba is excellent for Brazil and for those who will travel to the 2014 World Cup.
(And for geography buffs, here's a good map).
Yes, that's right - there are early reports that the Super Bowl may end up in London some way down the road. While I think the American population really overrates the value of the Super Bowl within the sports world, there's no denying it's popularity. To be (temporarily) fair, Goodell insists that the NFL hasn't and will not consider the idea of hosting the Super Bowl in London sometime soon. Still, even if this ever enters the phase of "serious talks," this has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard - the most popular sporting event in the country held overseas in a country that is already obsessed with a different "football."
My only question is, if England were to get the Super Bowl, would New York host the Champions' League finals in exchange? I'm sure that would go over well in both countries.
The NY Times has a great article up on Marta, the 23-year-old Brazilian soccer star who is one of many international women's players participating in the new Women's Professional Soccer league. It's a great article worth checking out, as it touches upon everything from gender and sports in Brazil (and the U.S.) to the value of strength and speed over technical skill in U.S. soccer to making sports work in the current economic crisis.
And to just get a sense of how good she is, you can see the goal Sokolove references at the beginning of the article here. It is, simply, one of the best I've ever seen.
If this report (in Portuguese) is true, then Diego Maradona is going to be the new coach of the Argentine national men's soccer team (and as I write, it's now confirmed in English, here). It's daring and bold, to say the least, and no doubt a major PR move, guaranteed to get Argentina completely wound up about their team in a way they haven't been since Maradona was on the national team. He is an individual whose popularity is rivaled only by Evita. Imagine if Derek Jeter were a national hero rather than just a Yankee fan idol (with Jeffrey Maier as the Hand of God), and you only begin to get into the hero-worship of Maradona. When I was in Argentina, I seriously saw a soccer game on TV which was split-screen: on the left was the actual game, and on the right was a camera focusing on Maradona (in the stands that day) the entire game, just to capture his reactions.
This will be interesting, to say the least. Among other things, Maradona is a former coke fiend with an explosive temper whose most basic life events make national headlines in Argentina, where the population holds him as highly in Argentina as Evita. He could be great, though I hope not; I like him about as much as I like Jeter, and his fans are perhaps even more obnoxious (Maradona is not, never was, and never will be the greatest soccer player; that was Pele. You'd think a goal total of 307 vs. 1280 would be enough to settle that). I just don't see this working out, and if it's as embarassing for both the men's team and Maradona as I hope it will be, then this should be fun. However, if Maradona is successful, this will be really ugly, and Argentine fans will become even more intolerable than they already are (which is really hard to even begin to imagine).
...UPDATE: Given the coach and the player, guess we're virtually guaranteed of seeing this again...
As bad as the story about Dominican baseball players was, this story about a private company in Brazil buying soccer players' contracts and reaping a profit if they make it big really makes me uncomfortable. Basically, Traffic, a private company, is buying up the contracts of young, promising soccer players, and then making deals with Brazilian teams to let these young men pay. The teams pay the salaries, and by playing on big teams in Brazil, they have the chance to get the attention of European clubs and maybe get signed there. It may sound good at first, but I have a lot of problems with what Traffic is doing.
Firstly, as the article points out, buying players' contracts and then reaping the rewards of the transfer to Europe (something required in soccer) really pushes FIFA's rules banning third parties in soccer (in an effort to effectively prevent what is happening in the Dominican Republic). However, what really makes my skin crawl is this: "Instead of investing in the stock market or real estate,” Julio Mariz, Traffic’s president, said, “these people are investing in buying the economic rights to football players.”
I'm not so naive as to pretend that there is no sport where players aren't used to make a private profit, and many sports probably privately view atheletes as these types of "economic investments;" indeed, the notion behind signing a Lebron James or an Alex Rodriguez is certainly in part the hope that the name will bring fans to the games, thereby helping the private ownership to turn a profit. But the money remains in the hands of those who are nominally the owners; it behooves them to try to invest in the team. Ceratinly, not all owners will use the money they make to improve the team (the Pohlads come to mind here), but by and large, the system seems to work for the most part (though admittedly because organizations like MLB, the NFL, and the NBA put into effect things like the luxury tax or the salary cap to help self-regulation). But by letting a third party enter into the equation, this simply kicks up to another level the ideological exploitation of players for the hopes of personal profit for a private company.
And this leads into my third problem with this setup - it takes the profit out of the hands of the clubs. The Times treats this like a new form of free agency, but that isn't really accurate. When European clubs want to sign Brazilian players from other clubs, they have to pay the player's previous club the "transferral fee." Therefore, if a player does great but decides to go on to play in Europe, his club is financially rewarded for its loss. This is huge, because soccer clubs aren't like baseball or football or basketball teams in the U.S. Each club is literally that - a club open to public, where your kids can learn to play soccer, basketball, learn gymnastics, learn to swim, and any number of other physical activities, as well as social events. These transferral fees in part help the clubs keep those activities going. Certainly, soccer gets the bulk of the money from these deals, but it doesn't just go there. And while you do have corruption among many of the clubs' boards where personal gain may be happening, at least some of the money has to go to the clubs. When an organization like Traffic becomes involved, that's no longer the case, and the club loses a major source of income for its programs. And of course, because soccer is first, that means lesser (but still important) activities like swim lessons, basketball, and all the others, will be cut first. And of course, previously, if a club was selling a lot of tickets to games and making money for the club due to a popular player, and that player then went to Europe, the transferral fee would help cover what might be an initial drop-off in game attendance. But with tactics like Traffic's, that's no longer an option, either.
Botafogo's president says there is no other way, given the rising economy and the growing difficulty of getting good young players to stay in Brazil long enough, but I can't believe this. He's absolutely right that it is increasingly rare to see young players in Brazil staying very long (when a young star of 17 years old or less emerges, the question is never "if" he'll go to Europe, but "when," "Where," and "for how much), but Traffic's operations do nothing to stem that flow from Brazil for bigger money. I really don't know what else can be done, either, because the clubs in Europe and in other parts of the world just make more money, and can offer more, than Brazil can; in some ways, the sporting world is one of the final arenas where old imperialist relations still play out regularly.
The article closes with Brazil's Football Agents president claiming that, while Traffic's approach is flawed, this could help gain investment for Brazilian clubs. To put it lightly, I'm not convinced. Rabello's partisanship as head of Football Agents should be clear enough, but additionally, agents and third-part groups simply will not make the clubs any money. They will poach young players, lease them only until they can make the maximum profit, and then send them to Europe, reaping the rewards while Brazilian football clubs suffer even further and witness a greater decline. Brazilians are the greatest soccer players in the world, but issues like this make the prospect of Brazil's national football league dim indeed.
I hadn't planned on writing about soccer-star Ronaldo having (mistakenly) picked up some transvestite prostitutes. It just didn't seem relevant. I really don't care what Ronaldo (or anybody else) does or does not do in his spare time, and hadn't thought the story was really worth writing about. So he apparently picked up a couple of prostitutes, only to discover they were transvestites. Embarrassing for him, yes, but who cares? Prostitution is legal in Brazil, so he wasn't doing anything illegal. And not to put too fine a point on it, but picking up transvestite prostitutes with ease in Brazil is well within the realm of possibility - they often gather in places like Copacabana, and are not too hard to find in Lapa on any given night, and the fact that many have facial hair removed via lasers or even have surgical procedures to remove their Adam's apple can lead to some confusion, I suppose. Certainly there must be more important things going on in Brazil, right? Why would I blog about this?
Well, I wasn't going to. But the New York Times writeup hits upon something important in this - the media's obsession with this story (and stories like it).
But not all of Brazil’s soccer fans seem ready to forgive and forget. Reports of Ronaldo’s wild night, which ended around 8 a.m., have become Page 1 news here.
To be clear, the criticism he is facing is nothing compared with the media frenzy that would probably have erupted in other countries where prostitution is illegal — and sexual mores more rigid. Still, the fact that Ronaldo’s misadventure has been front-page news here for several days — and that some cartoonists and blogs have made him the butt of jokes, even as other commentators have said his behavior is unbecoming of a role model — is evidence that soccer stars are held to a different standard.
As great as the independent baseball leagues are is, this may be the greatest promo for game attendance ever. The Amoeiro Clube de Futbol [Soccer] in Spain has divided its field into 6000 parcels available for sale at 10 Euros per parcel. Amoeiro then releases Rubia, the cow (vaca) onto the field. Whichever parcel she ends up defecating on, the owner wins a prize, ranging from cars to travel packages to motorcycles to a 32-inch TV. So if the cow craps on your square, you win! Even better, the contest is poetically called "Caca de la Vaca" (Crap of the Cow), and the webpage even has an animated, mooing cow that craps, revealing what the prizes are. Awesome.
(Via Randy).
Apparently, it wasn't enough for FIFA president to reveal his blatant sexism when he proposed women soccer players wear skimpy outfits to draw attention to the sport. Now, he's decrying the increasing tendency of Brazilian-born soccer players to become naturalized citizens in other countries, making them able to play on those countries' World Cup teams. His overall concern is foolish enough, based on the fact that the desire to keep World Cup teams "national" ignores any modern definition of what it is to be a "national", not to mention how arbitrary such definitions are. But you do NOT need to put it like this: "If we don't take care about the invaders from Brazil, not only toward Europe but toward Asia and Africa, then the next World Cups in 2014 and 2018 out of the 32 teams - you will still have national teams - but we will have 16 full of Brazilian players."
Oh no!!! The mongrel brown hordes from Brazil are invading Europe and taking over!!! The bastion of caucasian sportsmanship is being torn asunder!!!! First they get five World Cups, and now this!!!! OH, THE HORROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More seriously, this is about as xenophobic and ridiculous a thing I've seen from soccer leadership. It is incredibly racist against Brazilians, and not just because he refers to them as "invaders". You don't see Blatter complaining here about a broader tendency of players applying for naturalization to play on the team of a country where they weren't born. Blatter doesn't seem so upset, for example, about the Algerians who may apply for French citizenship to play on the French national team, or players from other parts of Africa, or Asia, or even within Europe. It doesn't matter if more Brazilians are doing this than any other country. If you think this is a problem, then what you need to do, as head of FIFA, is try to see that other countries put into place the same structure of scouting and training that Brazil has. But to sit in your tower bemoaning the presence of "invaders" without actually trying to find constructive ways to deal with the issue has all the maturity of a 5-year-old and all of the open-mindedness of a Confederate general. It's become patently clear that the time for Blatter to go has come and gone a long time ago. Maybe replacing him with a Brazilian would be a good idea.....
So, 39 minutes into the second half, Brazil holds a commanding (to put it lightly) 4-0 lead on the U.S. women in the Women's World Cup. This is huge, and proves right my claim that Brazil has to be one of the favorites this year, with 2006's woman player of the year (Marta) and a strong cast around her. It's going to be Brazil v. Germany in the final, with the U.S. and Norway dueling in the semifinal. Vamos, vamos brasileiras!
For those who enjoy soccer, or even simple remarkable feats of athleticism, right now, there's nothing quite like Cruzeiro (Minas Gerais) forward Kerlon's "seal dribble", in which he literally runs down the field while bouncing the ball on his head. It's totally legal, and, save for a foul (a technique which intra-state rivals Clube Atlético Mineiro used on Sunday), it's unstoppable. Check out the video at the links. Remarkable stuff...(oh, and he's only 19 - one more promise for Brazil's World Cup hopes).
I suspect there isn't much being made of it (despite the U.S. Women being defending champs), but the Women's World Cup started this week. Brazil's female team is a favorite to win this year, boasting 2006's female player of the year (Marta) and just a great squad all around. The most bizarre news thus far, though, has been Argentina's performance (Brazil and Argentina are the only two Latin American teams in the 16-team tournament). Argentina's female team...well...they lost 11-0 in their first game against Germany (including two own-goals. By the goalie.) The FIFA president lamented the result, saying it was "not good" for women's soccer, but hey, he's the moron who suggested female players wear skimpier outfits to attract attention to the sport, so his opinions are clearly...meatheaded. Suffice to say, with two losses in Group A already, and a -12 goal differential (having lost 1-0 to Japan in the final minute yesterday), Argentina is all but statistically eliminated). I'll continue pulling for Brazil in this one, and enjoy knowing Argentina has gotten killed in another World Cup.
