The One World Futbol Project: Let The Games Begin!

Khartoum, Sudan

Every once in a while, your Bloguero stumbles across something that delights him, that brings great joy and excitement to him, that he just has to share with you. It happened again this week. And the joy is still bubbling inside your Bloguero. This time it's the One World Futbol Project.

Your bloguero found this through Facebook, and this article in the Times. And in this New York Times video.

What is it? It is absolutely brilliant. Delightful. Wonderful. Here you go:

Soccer, known in most of the world as “football” or “futbol,” is the world’s most popular sport, with billions of fans and hundreds of millions of amateur players worldwide. Unfortunately, the traditional soccer ball poses some problems — it can be easily punctured or ruptured. It requires frequent inflation with a pump and needle, which are easily broken or lost. As a result, the phenomenon and waste of deflated soccer balls is a common sight in the backyards of families with soccer players at home. The short life‐span of traditional balls, and the expense of replacing them, means young people in disadvantaged communities are often left to play soccer with rocks, cans, or “rag balls” made from trash, plastic bags, and string.

Our mission at the One World Futbol Project is to make a meaningful impact on the lives of youth around the world through the One World Futbol, a virtually-indestructible ball that never goes flat and never needs a pump. Our goal is to bring the joy of soccer and play to youth in disadvantaged communities so that children can be children no matter where they live.

The problem with traditional balls is obvious. If you play outside on cement, or sand, or dirt, or anything but a groomed pitch from the Barclay's Premier League, the balls die a quick death. The panels fall off. They deflate. They get holes in them that can't be repaired. They scuff or scrape right through. A beautiful ball one minute can be a useless carcass the next. Who can replace the ball when it was donated in the first place? When there's no money, no store, there's no replacement. Even balls made of garbage and duct tape are better than that. Because when they get used up and fall apart, there's always more garbage and duct tape to make a replacement.

The other thing is the cost. You can get cheap balls in the US and other places that last about thirty seconds in play, and you can get expensive balls, costing more than $100 each, and everything in between. But if you're not in the US, or you don't have money, or you're living in poor countries or even in richer countries without super sports stores, it's hard to find a ball, let alone an affordable one. ball. And if you're lucky and you find one or are given one, it lasts only a relatively short while. And then, oof, it's used up and useless and cannot really be satisfactorily repaired.

Enter the One World Futbol Project. And the ball:

Virtually-Indestructible. Unlike any inflatable ball on the market, the One World Futbol never needs a pump and never goes flat, even if punctured. The ball is made using state-of-the-art technology that requires no stitching and is designed to have the same rebound characteristics as a traditional soccer ball. It’s the same size and weight as a standard soccer ball, but it can also be used for netball, volleyball, and many other games.

All-terrain. The One World Futbol is ideal for any playing surface, not just grass or regulation soccer fields: indoors, on concrete, on blacktop, on grass, on a beach, on dirt, or even on a rocky field. The ball can withstand the harshest conditions without deflating.

Sustainability. The ultra-durability of the One World Futbol also helps meet a significant environmental challenge by eliminating the waste of discarded, punctured soccer balls. In Africa alone, 20 million deflated balls make their way into trash heaps every year.

Buy One, Give One. For every One World Futbol you buy through our “Buy One, Give One” program, we give a second ball to children and youth in need through organizations working in disadvantaged communities such as refugee camps, war zones, disaster area and inner cities.

No Child Labor. Many traditional soccer balls are still stitched together by hand by children and adults working under deplorable conditions in Pakistan, China, and India. The One World Futbol is manufactured using state-of-the-art technology that does not require stitching.

Your Bloguero read this. It was clear to him. He said, "I gotta have one of these balls. And I gotta have it right now!" Your Bloguero just loves this. It makes him smile. This the solution to something your Bloguero always saw as a problem.

It was only then in his excitement that your Bloguero discovered the best part. The very best part. The part that has him jumping up and down. The part that inspired this post. It's this: When you buy a ball for yourself or as a gift, One World Futbol donates another one. Let your Bloguero say that yet again with a smile:

Buy One, Give One. For every One World Futbol you buy through our “Buy One, Give One” program, we give a second ball to children and youth in need through organizations working in disadvantaged communities such as refugee camps, war zones, disaster area and inner cities.

Want one or a dozen or a case of these balls yet? Here you go! Buy one, give one.

And that's not all. Check this out! This is just wonderful.

Your Bloguero loves all of this. He asks you to please pass it on. After all, it's the world game, and it's just gotten so much better!!

Balotelli's Violin

The world's most mercurial player, Mario Balotelli, singlefootedly lifted Italy over favored Germany in the Euro2012 semifinal, 2-1, thereby making your Bloguero's day. Balotelli scored twice; Germany goes home. That is so very gratifying.

Sunday is the Euro2012 final, world champions Spain v. Italy. 2:30 pm ET. If you're in the US it's on ESPN. If you're somewhere else, just turn on the telly. This will be a great, exciting game. Do not miss it.

An Embarrassment

Yesterday in a friendly, the US lost to Brazil 4-1. The US got totally pwnd. Neymar had a field day: one goal (a PK at 12 minutes, see below), 2 assists. Faced with the fact that the US played terribly against a real futbol power, Jurgen Klinsmann (whom I have never liked) had this to say:

"We need to get an edge more nastier," said U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann, the former German star and coach. "Maybe we're a little bit still too naive. Maybe we don't want to hurt people. But that's what we've got to do. You've got to do that at the end of the day. So we've got to step on their toes more and get them more frustrated and make a case with the referee maybe as well, for us, not only the opponent."

Translation? Expect the US to be thugs. Expect the US to try to make up for lack of skills with aggression. Expect a kind of futbol that is an embarrassment.

Personally, I don't want to watch that. And I certainly don't support it. Let Germany play that game. The US is entitled to something less embarrassing.

Neymar:

Neymar Is A Wizard

And a special h/t to John who says, "I am agog at his footwork for this beauty..."

Socrates, RIP

The BBC reports:

With an unwavering fondness for cigarettes and alcohol, the lifestyle of Brazilian football legend Socrates would probably be met with a disapproving eye from many managers in the modern game.

But then again they just might cut a little slack to the larger-than-life midfield maestro, who died aged 57 on Sunday.

For Socrates, with his almost-telepathic vision and ability to unlock a defence with either foot, is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

Throw in his stylish Bjorn Borg-style headband and beard combos, the man born as Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira became the symbol of cool for a whole generation of football supporters.

But then Socrates was never a stereotypical footballer.

With philosophical views as strong as his famous Classical Greek namesake, he was never unduly worried about expressing his opinion and became almost as well-known for his political opinions and activism as for his football.

The two passions famously came together as part of the Corinthians Democracy movement in the mid-1980s, when towards the end of Brazil's military dictatorship, the Sao Paulo club became the only one in the world run on a democratic basis, as a symbol of rejection of the military regime.

Most Brazilian footballers of his age were likely to have named predecessors such as Pele or Garrincha as their idols. Not so Socrates.

His heroes included Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the men who led the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, and ex-Beatle and anti-war protestor John Lennon.

He will be missed.

Bob Bradley Fired

AP today reports that Bob Bradley, coach of the US Men's National Soccer Team, just got fired. It's hardly a surprise.

For U.S. soccer fans, the scene was tough to watch: Archrival Mexico celebrating a Gold Cup victory on American soil, cheered on by a largely pro-Mexico crowd at the Rose Bowl.

A little more than a month later, Bob Bradley has been fired as coach of the U.S. men's soccer team.

Bradley led the team to big moments during his tenure, including Landon Donovan's heart-stopping goal to secure a place in the round of 16 at last year's World Cup in South Africa and an unforgettable victory over Spain in 2009.

Bradley owes the firing to the non existent defense and defensive midfield and to that has-been prima ballerina, Landon Donovan. The US blew a 2-0 lead to Mexico. And lost 4-2. How did they do that? Well, they didn't play any defense. For the entire game. They watched Mexico move the ball around. They didn't challenge or press. And as if that wasn't enough, Donovan's first four (was it 6 or 7?) touches gave the ball away. And he didn't run. Ever. Yes, he scored in the early going. But where was he for the net 85 minutes? When you play that lackadaisically, it's stimple: you stink. And, of course, your coach gets fired.

I said before that US play against Mexico in the Gold Cup was a disgrace. As if it needed it, this confirms that assessment. See for yourself:

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game

Landon Donovan Loses The Ball. Quelle Surprise!

Last night the United States Men’s National Team was humiliated in the Gold Cup. The score: Panama 2 – 1 United States. It sounds closer than it was. Panama was ranked 67th in the world; the US, 22nd. The US Team’s play for the first 60 minutes was apathetic, flat, uninspiring. And if there was a plan for the game, it was not evident. The US finally got started after an hour, but by then it wasn’t enough.

Panama’s Gabriel Gomez scored in the 19th minute. How did that happen? The United States defense was more porous than Swiss cheese. The defensive backs were watching the ball. The defensive midfield was flat footed. Nobody was between Gomez and the keeper. He lifted the ball over Tim Howard for an easy score. Then, as if this lack of coverage and intensity weren’t enough, as if it weren’t enough to alert the US that it was time to get their heads into the game, an unnecessary foul by Tim Ream in the box led to a penalty kick and a 2-0 score in the 36th minute. In other words, the US’s disastrous play in the first half gave Panama a 2-goal lead that the US would be hard pressed to catch up.

Ream, who plays in the MLS for the New York Red Bulls, is inexperienced. Granted. But the foul he committed is one you might expect in under-16’s play. He didn’t have to clear the ball from the box to the far, other end of the field. No real power was required. All he had to do was make a challenge or get between the ball and the keeper, and then poke the ball into the abundant, nearby open space. Did he do that? Of course, not. The resulting foul, committed in the box in a panic, was just bad soccer.

It would be easy to blame this loss on the US defense, which was truly awful. It was awful in the same way that the US lost to Mexico, 5-0. It was awful in the same way that the US played in the World Cup, constantly giving away early leads. It was awful in a way that is now familiar: the US doesn’t begin to play defense until it is down. Way down. Maybe even too far down.

But some of the blame for yesterday’s game has to go also to a lackluster US offense. And in particular to Landon Donovan. For the first 60 minutes Donovan was absent, and when he touched the ball his passing was dreadful. My informal count: his first 5 passes lost possession of the ball. I saw him walking, not running. I saw him watching. And, of course, you didn’t even hear his name until the second half. Yes, he did a good job on set pieces in the second half. But that was far too late, and the US was not going to come back. The US finally scored in the 68th minute, and had a close miss in the 80th minute, but it was too little too late.

How to explain this disaster? Donovan told the Boston.com,

“Sometimes you just come out flat for whatever reason. At this level, and against a good team, you can’t do that,’’ said Landon Donovan.

That is just pathetic. And it’s not an explanation for anything. If the US were any other country, there would be calls today for the firing of the coach and the benching of Donovan. Instead, we’re treated to this weak tea:

Despite the loss, the US team can clinch a spot in the quarterfinals by beating Guadeloupe in its final Group C stage match Tuesday in Kansas City.

The US deserves better. This team is an embarrassment.What Casey Stengel said about the early Mets fits this team perfectly.

Futbol, Galeano, Mexico

Eduardo Galeano

A Scheherazade story by Eduardo Galeano in a 2009 Washington Post:

... a former member of the Mexican congress, Victor Quintana, told me the book saved his life. In the middle of 1997, he was kidnapped by contract killers, hired to punish him for exposing some nasty business.

They had him trussed up, face in the dirt, and were kicking him to death, when, just before finishing him off with a bullet, they started arguing about soccer. Victor, more dead than alive, put in his two cents. And he started telling stories from my book (Soccer In Sun And Shadow), trading minutes of life for every tale out of those pages. Time and stories came and went, and at last the murderers left him, beaten and broken, but alive.

"You're okay," they told him, and they took their bullets elsewhere.

Understanding this story at a minimum requires an appreciation of the culture of futbol (read: soccer). If the argument is about baseball or the NFL or WWE, the story is implausible because it can only happen in cultures in which there is futbol and an obsession with it. These cultures are primarily in this Hemisphere. That's why I could wear a Club America shirt to the Fruiteria and be told by the clerk, "That team is no good," in three languages. The response to this? Shrug and say in three languages, "Maybe this year. Just wait."

The World Cup: A Brief, Gringo's Guide to Futbol

Most of the planet has been tuned in to the World Cup since June 11, 2010, and will continue to watch and argue about it until the last whistle is blown on July 11. It's expected that the audience for the final game will draw a tenth of the people on the planet. An audience of about 600 million people. It doesn't matter very much to these people that their own countries didn't qualify, or got eliminated. No. They're watching, glued to the Tube, because that game is the World Game. And they love it. And they know great Futbol when they see it.

Unfortunately, in the US relatively few people care about futbol. Or soccer as most call it. They don't reflect on the fact that the barefoot kids kicking a ball made of duct tape and rags in a vacant lot in Port au Prince or Kabul or in a favela in Rio are playing the same game that well scrubbed kids wearing uniforms and $100 shoes are trying to play in this country. So they don't reflect on how democratic the game is. How anybody can play. And does. And how all you need is some ground and something to make a ball with. Shoes are optional. Goal posts are optional. Uniforms, optional. Only getting the ball into a goal counts.

And best of all, you don't have to be big. In fact, it helps to be small and fast and coordinated. Lionel Messi is a big star at 5 feet 7 inches. England's Peter Crouch at 6 feet 7 inches is consistently insulted by those who say he's a good player, for a big man. What helps is to be fast, very fast, and to have the kind of endurance that lets you run without stopping, hard, for 90 minutes and to be coordinated. The game doesn't let you use your hands, unless you're a goalkeeper, so you have to be able to use your feet, your legs, your thighs, your chest, your head. You can learn to do this with practice. The part you cannot learn you have to be born with: it's a futbol gift that is distributed at seeming random across the entire world. But you recognize it as soon as you see it.

In the US the common folklore is that futbol is boring. Right. It's boring in the same ignorant way as anything that has not been examined and is not properly understood. Actually, I suspect that this is a rap given the sport in the US because you cannot stop the game for commercials. That would be sacrilege. You cannot cut away to the studio. You watch until the time runs out. Then, and only then, do you get up, get something to eat, relieve yourself, watch commercials. In Spain you don't stand up during the game. That blocks others' views. Same in Germany and Italy. OK to yell and scream and curse and drink. Not OK to block somebody else's view.

Who are these players in the World Cup? The world's best futbol is played by club teams. The club season starts in early Fall and continues until Spring. Some of the teams are famous names, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, to name a few from the top of English Premier League. In England there are about 5 professional leagues below the Premier League. Every one of the players in every one of the teams in every one of those leagues aspires to play for a team in the top league. And every single player on a team in the top league aspires to be "capped," to be asked to play for the national team. That is a huge and important honor. This is the situation in the top leagues throughout Europe, which are in Italy (Internazionale, AC Milan, Lazio), Germany (Bayern Munich, Wolfburg), Spain (Barcelona, Real Madrid), France, and Holland. It's also the case throughout Cental and South America and Asia. The US has a few leagues, the top one MLS isn't really good. That's why the MLS season is going on now even though the world cup is happening. The players in MLS aren't at the World Cup (with a very, very few exceptions).

If you have DirecTV you can actually watch futbol in the regular, club season from England, Italy, Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and so on. These are exciting games. Goltv.tv and FoxSoccerChannel broadcast live and taped games.

How do you get to the World Cup? After about a year of qualifying (18 games in South America; about 10 in North America) a national team has to beat enough of the other teams in its region to make the finals. Every 4 years 32 teams are selected for the World Cup through regional qualifying. Those teams showed up in South Africa this year on June 11. They were divided into 4-team groups and played 3 games. The best two teams in each group advanced to the round of 16. Then there were games that pared the teams down to 8, and then 4. There are now 4 teams remaining.

On Tuesday, at 2:30 pm ET, Uruguay plays the Netherlands. On Wednesday, at 2:30 pm ET, Germany plays Spain. There is a game for 3rd place on 7/10, and the final on 7/11.

What does it take to win a game at this level? It takes a lot more than great individual players. All of the remaining teams have great players and have played very, very well. Spain probably has the most talented, most famous team. Germany and Netherlands have played brilliantly. Netherlands beat Brazil. Uruguay has been impressive as well. Its star Diego Forlan has been a magician throughout the World Cup. To win at this point, though, it takes massive energy and confidence. You cannot let down at all during the entire game, and you cannot be slow to start. The US team demonstrated that playing from behind, after an early goal, makes winning really difficult, if not impossible. The team has to play as a team. We are well beyond the point at which a star or two's great play will win the game. And the most important thing, I think, is that there be no defensive errors.

When a goal is scored everybody tends to blame the keeper. That's easy, but that's frequently not fair. If the defense allows a clear shot on goal, the keeper can sometimes do very little to make the save. Defensive lapses, and more important, forced defensive lapses, are the key to who will win these final games. That means that teams need a swarming, strong, airtight defense that can "close down" the field. But they also need an offense that is capable of creating space in front of the goal, space into which a striker can kick a ball into the net.

I hope you'll all drop what you're doing and watch these final games. The rest of the world will put everything on hold. You can do the same. It's worth it.

A prediction: Spain and Germany will advance to the finals. Spain will win the finals 1-0.

El Tri

This year's Mexican entry in the World Cup in South Africa is going to be really exciting. And the team's fan base in the US is enormous. It includes me.

Today's New York Times in an article called, "Most Popular Soccer Team In the U.S.: Mexico," writes:

Mexico’s trips to the United States, including Friday night’s sold-out exhibition against Ecuador at the new 75,000-seat stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, are big business.

Mexico will play Senegal at Soldier Field in Chicago on Monday and Angola at Reliant Stadium in Houston on Thursday. By the end of the tour, which is to prepare Mexico’s players for the World Cup, the team known as El Tricolor will have played six games in the United States in less than three months, almost all before capacity crowds.

When Mexico played New Zealand at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in March, the only game in which European-based players performed, 90,000 packed the Rose Bowl on a Wednesday night. It was easy to see what brings Mexico back.

Not just the sheer numbers of fans, many of whom paid more than $40 for tickets — about double what tickets would cost in Mexico — but also in the hours leading up to the game, the bustling fiesta that surrounded the stadium had the air of a carnival with face painting, lucha libre acts, bands and games.

Of course. What can be more fun than watching Mexico's first rate national team play other not so first rate national teams so close to home? I'm delighted that Mexico has started doing this. I hope they continue. I only wish I had a ticket for tonight's fiesta in New Jersey.

Chicharito Discovered

It's official. The New York Times has discovered Chicharito:

He is leading the resurgence of Chivas, one of the Mexican league’s most popular clubs. Hernandez has 10 goals in 12 games for Chivas, which leads the 18-team standings, and is bulling his way toward a berth on Mexico’s World Cup roster with four goals and an assist while playing in three recent exhibition games, including the winner in a 2-1 victory over North Korea....

One of Hernández’s recent goals, in which he rose high over a New Zealand defender and hung Jordanesque in the air before slamming a header into the net neatly mirrored the upward arc of his career. It also brought the 90,000 fans who packed the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., to their feet roaring, giving Hernández the chance to respond by throwing his arms wide, then kissing the crest on his jersey.

“Honestly, I’m just happy,” Hernández said recently through an interpreter in a phone interview from Guadalajara. “Being able to participate with the national team is a dream come true.”

I'm waiting for the World Cup. It's just a couple of months away, and I have high hopes for El Tri. Chicharito is just one of the reasons.

Brilliant!!!

Ten Best Goals of 2009

These are ten unbelievable goals. The video quality isn't great, and sometimes you have to watch the second and third replays to get what happened, but this is stunning nevertheless. Nilmar's goal and Grafite's seem to me the most astonishing. But every one of these is great.

Honduras: A Sign That The Coup Has Won

I know, I know. I'm hypersensitive, I've lost my sense of humor, I'm out of touch with common reality. I'm making mountains out of mole hills. And I sound angry.

All of that about me might be so, but today's Washington Post article about Honduras seems to me to be a sign that the coup has won, as far as the Trad Media are concerned, and that deserves at least brief mention here. Put another way, I don't think you're going to read more about Honduras in the Trad Media until the end of November when the presidential election is held there.

The point of the article in the Washington Post, if I may distill it for you, is that in Banana Republics, roughly defined as all countries in Central America, including Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, where Spanish is spoken, people would rather talk about futbol than politics. And that's how it is, the article tells us. So even if politics at the moment means living with the jackbooted foot of the oligarchy and its US armed military standing truculently on your neck, you still smile and you talk instead about futbol. As bad as things might be in Honduras, as undemocratic and repressive as things might be, as poor as the people are, as oppressive as the golpe de estado is, well, things just can't be all that bad. And why so? Because just like in normal circumstances, Hondurans can still be happy about futbol. Let's let them continue to be happy.

Bring on the stereotypes. Bring on old clips of the Frito Bandito. Bring on anecdotes of laziness. Bring on the claim that the people of Honduras are happy and that they don't really care that their democratic government has been overthrown by a coup d'etat. After all, isn't their national team going to the World Cup?

This is offensive. Especially because the coup continues in full force. And shows no signs of ending. And because nobody, that's right, nobody has a clue about how to end the coup.

On October 14, Honduras made the World Cup finals in South Africa, when its team beat El Salvador and the US beat Costa Rica. This is Honduras's first World Cup finals since 1982, so it's a big deal if you care about futbol. And, of course, the golpistas, who are in charge of the country and its military, have tried to use this event to their advantage, to capitalize on it. They even declared a national holiday.

A bus carrying the triumphant team to visit Honduras' patron saint at Tegucigalpa's cathedral after the win made an abrupt detour to the presidential palace where [interim president and chief golpista Roberto] Micheletti has set up his government. They were paraded on a state-controlled television channel and Micheletti declared a national holiday.

"We had no idea the bus was going to the presidential palace, we thought it was headed to the church," [midfielder Elvis] Turcios said.

The head of the national team selection committee, Jose Ferrari, said he did not make the decision to take the players to Micheletti but that it was practical not political because crowds overwhelmed the church waiting for their arrival.

But Ferrari is the owner of the largest media outlets in Honduras and a Micheletti-backer, and some suspect it was a deliberate political play.

"Some suspect?" Yeah, that would be me. I suspect it. I consider the non-denial from Ferrari utterly laughable, especially because the TV cameras were at the palace waiting for the event and the videos were then run on whose TV station?

Meanwhile, the mother of the team's captain made an opposing gesture of support for the rightfully elected, deposed president Manual Zelaya, who remains in asylum in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa:

"All of the team's directors are part of the coup, they wanted to use it for their own benefit," said Flor Guevara, a devout Zelaya supporter and the mother of team captain Amado.

Guevara asked her son to autograph a team shirt for Zelaya, which made it past soldiers into the embassy where the toppled leader held it up for photos. And Zelaya's team is keen to portray players as political as well as sporting heroes.

"I know there are players resisting the coup ... many couldn't speak out," his daughter told local newspapers.

Guevara said her gift to Zelaya was personal and not meant to reflect the political views of her son.

All of this was dutifully reported by the Washington Post.

What conclusion do I draw from this reportage? I think the Trad Media in the US are now finished with that Banana Republic Honduras and its 21st century coup. I think that they now realize that the problem of restoring democracy is intractable, that the golpistas are utterly intransigent, and that Manual Zelaya, the rightfully elected president, has no discernible route to being reinstated in his presidency. More important, none of the governments and international organizations who made Zelaya's reinstatement the first priority in restoring democracy to Honduras has a clue of how to accomplish this first step. So, faced with a standoff, the Trad Media are done. Finished. There's nothing else for them to say. Except that things aren't so bad in Honduras because there's futbol. And the World Cup.

The story is now going to die, and in November we'll be told that the election has been held, that there's a new, democratically elected president, who was not put in place by the coup, and that the election was fair enough even though it was conducted by the golpistas during their coup. And eventually, after that election, the controversy will fade in our memory, and the US, and everybody else, will recognize the elected president of Honduras. And we'll all go on. After all, it's just a Banana Republic, and it doesn't really matter to us.

Spain v US: How Embarrassing Will This Be?

I'm sorry. Just because the US managed to beat Egypt and managed on negative goal differential to make the semis (by one minus point) does not mean that the US team is an adequate, international team. It's not. Stop fooling yourself about this. The proof of inadequacy is coming on Wednesday at 2:25 pm ET on ESPN2 when the US team play Spain.

The commentators can say anything they want about the passion of the US team when they played Egypt. Playing Spain is a different matter. This is not a team ranked 45 in the world. I expect it to show that the US is dreaming to believe it will make the round of 16 in the world cup next year with this team. I expect it to reveal to all who watch how very lost this team is. You heard it here first.

Barcelona To Final In Rome

Iniesta's Away Goal In Added Time

Depending what brand of English you speak, Barcelona is/are going to the UEFA Cup Final in Rome. I'm delighted. I'm especially pleased because last week's 0-0 game with Chelsea was so frustrating. I hope know that Barca can beat Man U on the 27th.

Boca Juniors v. River Plate on TV Today

This is why nothing is getting written. Nothing is getting done. 3 pm. Fox Espanol. This is not to be missed. El duelo de titanes en la Bombonera!

h/t nomoreonionbags

He's Back!

Apparently, Mexico has decided to go with somebody who previously did well as Mexico's coach, to save El Tri from elimination from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa:

Javier Aguirre was reappointed as Mexico's soccer coach yesterday, a day after Sven-Goran Eriksson was fired.

The Mexican Football Federation said it trusted 50-year-old Aguirre to get the team to next year's World Cup in South Africa.

Mexico has dropped to fourth in the six-team CONCACAF finals. Only the top three automatically qualify while the fourth-place team must meet South America's fifth-best in playoffs.

Aguirre previously took over as Mexico coach in 2001 and took the team to the Copa America final and last 16 of the 2002 World Cup.

source.

Aguirre will, of course, inherit the same problems that faced his predecessor.

Department of ironies: Both times Aguirre was hired, it was after a 3-1 loss to Honduras. The first was in 2001; the second, 2009. His last job at Atletico Madrid ended after they lost 7 games in a row.

I'm not optimistic.

Lionel Messi Is Great!

Seeing is believing:



Told you so.

I Got It Wrong

Jozy Altidore, who saved the US from big, bad El Salvador with a 77th minute goal


Yesterday, it wasn't Mexico that had problems in the qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup. Mexico easily won 2-0. No big deal. The US, on the other hand, managed to get behind 2-0, and then had to struggle in San Salvador to a 2-2 draw. The US was dominated by El Salvador for the first hour. The defense was terrible. And this is the part of concern if you care about US fortunes in the World Cup, El Salvador is definitely one of the weakest teams in the 6-nation group.

Why do I think that 2010 is going to be yet another humiliation for US futbol?