Poor guy... My condolences. He took a courageous decision. I hope it doesn't affect his play too much...
The room mates: Abbondanzieri - Heinze Ustari - Messi Ayala - Cufre Riquelme - Coloccini Maxi - Lucho Aimar - Saviola Cambiasso - Cruz Mascherano - Palacio Burdisso - Milito Missed the other 2 pairs ... and I believe I read before they left that Carlitos was going to be alone. Missing: Franco - Scaloni - Crespo - Tevez - Sorin .
My heart goes out to Cufre.... I real gentleman whom I was lucky enough to meet in Toronto when Roma played Celtic in an exhibition game at the Skydome!! Nice guy and very excited that he had an Argentine fan in Toronto . I wish him well.
Argentina play with madness but France look to stars Harry Pearson Friday June 2, 2006 The Guardian In sport, nuttiness and genius often walk hand in hand down the tunnel, whistling a happy tune. The England captain Bobby Moore lined up all his clothes in strict order of shade, and one of his successors, David Beckham, obsessively rearranges his product endorsements during TV interviews. The most recent example was Tiger Woods's pronouncement that "golf is a sport for white men dressed as black pimps". If you find Curtis Mayfield's Superfly popping into your head whenever you see Colin Montgomerie or Thomas Bjorn, maybe you should drop the Striped One a line. Or, better still, seek specialist medical advice. In no area is this link between success and insanity more apparent than in football management, where the best men often display not so much a degree of craziness as a degree in it. Therefore, if you want to know who will win the World Cup you should not analyse the squads and tactics, but psychoanalyse the coaches. The Argentinians won in 1986, for example, thanks in no small measure to the flagrantly unhinged Carlos Bilardo. As a player in the 1960s Bilardo belonged to a group of Estudiantes players known as the Young Assassins. A midfielder of rare malevolence, it is perhaps sufficient to say that even Antonio Rattin considered him a right dirty bastard. Bilardo carried on in much the same vein as a manager, refusing to let his players exchange shirts with opponents and stomping, yelling and turning the colour of an over-ripe damson before the kick-in was finished. Surprisingly, he was also a doctor who had practised as a gynaecologist. You can only hope he waved his arms around a lot less during crucial moments in that job. In the lead-up to France 98 it looked as if Argentina had found a worthy successor in Daniel Passarella. On assuming the job Passarella issued an edict: he would not pick homosexuals, players with earrings or long hair, or players who looked like women. This seemed the authentic voice of lunacy, especially since on one count or another it excluded every one of Argentina's best players. The truth was altogether less excitingly off-his-crust. When Passarella captained Argentina's World Cup- winning side of 1978 the manager was the chain-smoking César Luis Menotti. Menotti looked like the type of ageing lothario you might find tapping out the rhythm of You Sexy Thing on the table in a provincial wine bar but he was a coach of mental subtlety. When his star striker, Mario Kempes, was struggling to score in the early stages, Menotti told him to shave off his moustache. It was so effective that Kempes hit six goals in the knockout phase, including two in the final. What appeared madness in Passarella was merely historical precedent mixed with old-style bigotry. His team lost to the Dutch in the quarter-finals. Passarella's successor, Marcelo Bielsa, also appeared to have the right stuff. This was a man so obsessed with football he did nothing but watch videos of games 24 hours a day, a man who spoke sentences so long he made Garth Crooks seem monosyllabic. The Argentinian press nicknamed him "The Mad Man", but that turned out to be wishful thinking. Bielsa - brother of the Argentinian foreign minister, incidentally - was merely a nerd. As a consequence an Argentina squad packed with talent failed to get beyond the group stage, while arch rivals Brazil went all the way thanks to Big Phil Scolari running up and down the touchline in that strange crouch of his, ranting and pointing like an irascible neighbour who has just had his pants set alight by Stan Laurel and can't find a water butt to sit in. The human mind is a mysterious thing, as likely to sell us a dummy as Ronaldinho. Often what we take for the febrile spark of inspirational delirium is revealed in competition as merely the final pop of asininity's dull bulb. And yes, I mean you, Glenn Hoddle. So we must tread warily when making predictions. While Poland's Pawel Janas has shown promising symptoms of the kamikaze spirit in discarding his top scorer, Tomasz Frankowski, for no good cause, and Germany's Jürgen Klinsmann increasingly sounds like one of those residents of California who end up wearing all white and yelping like dogs in a bid to rid themselves of emotional blockages, I don't think either is quite the finished article. My fancy is for France. True, they struggled in qualifying, but their coach, Raymond Domenech, has recently revealed a deep-rooted belief in astrology and announced that he doesn't trust Scorpios. Luckily, he hasn't picked any. It worked for Ronald Reagan when he was winning presidential elections, defeating communism and living with a chimpanzee, and I believe it could do something similar for Domenech and Les Bleus Though a lot will depend on the alignment of the planets, clearly.
Finally something in the written press ... The room mates: Abbondanzieri - Heinze Ustari - Messi Ayala - Cufre Riquelme - Coloccini Maxi - Lucho Aimar - Saviola Cambiasso - Cruz Mascherano - Palacio Burdisso - Milito Scaloni - Tevez Sorin - Franco Crespo Carlitos was going to be alone, but Crespo snoars way too much, so Tevez switched places with Crespo. Scaloni and Tevez combine to make the noisiest room ... and Maxi-Lucho and Mascherano-Palacio are the most quiet. A good read .
Is that Guardian article referenced saying that there were homosexuals on the 98 team? Whom may I ask was gay? I'm curious... BTW I think Pasarella may have been a Nazi in a previous life. :/
no, it's not saying that, though i know why you're confused. the words 'on one count or another' are merely an attempt at humour, not in a malicous way.
They are suppossed to be available for all 32 countries in the WC. Soccer.com has them already http://www.soccer.com/IWCatProductP...d=1&Section_Id=2314&pcount=&Product_Id=235341 .
Yesterday was the turn of Argentina ... without notice, as it is normally done, some representatives to FIFA arrived to the practices and conducted a drug test on: Palacio, Cufre, Scaloni and Crespo. Last week Brazil had received their visit. .
These shoes are pure beauty!!! I would just feel a bit embarrassed to wear them. You know, I don't want to be the guy who has the whole perfect outfit and is outplayed by a guy in normal basket shoes
i know what you mean. i used to play for a team and in training i would sometimes wear the albicelestes shirt with the 10 on the back. it didn't quite tally with my ability and after a while everyone told me to take it off
That's the problem, you can get all the fancy gear and look the part, but as soon you kick a ball everyone can see you are s***e. The reason Messi can wear boots like that is because he can carry it off.
The team against Angola is reported today to be the starting 11 ... Pekerman has already decided it. In practice today, some of the set pieces were being worked and sharpened. Reporters say: Riquelme will take the penalty kicks. In corners or free kicks into the box, Riquelme will be taking them. In the near post is Saviola ... and then in order: Sorin, Crespo, Ayala and Heinze in the back post. In the meantime, Maxi stays just outside the box as an option for a Riquelme direct pass to him. In training, Maxi has been very effective in his shots from outside the box. While those players are in the rival's box, Burdisso, Cambiasso and Mascherano stay back ... guarding the counter. .
lol.. the Brasilians are making commercials against us, it would be nice to see some of ours against them.. But yeah, here are their videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIP3viAV-Xs&search=skol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0WeWpwuclo&search=skol
Another commercial for the World Cup.. It was made for the 2002 WC by Quilmes, but it still fits perfectly for this "Mundial" (and any upcoming ones).. Anyway here's the commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx28fQgM3Is&search=mundial comercial And another one, This time from Pepsi.. It shows the skills that Messi and many Argentines have, and to me, it is better than all those Nike Brazil commercials.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSfrRK83wpI&search=mundial commercial
It is a weekly show that has reporters that make fun of different people ... and tend to "visit" the football players among others. Gonzalito was in Germany ... basically doing the usual, breaking balls. .