I Often Wonder.......

......when watching a European soccer game what language all the players are speaking to each other.

In Europe, for example, many people speak two languages due to the small size of the countries and the proximity to other neighboring countries that speak other languages and mixture of cultures, etc, etc......

Take Madrid for example......nowadays at Real Madrid, with 6 Dutch players on the team, one can imagine that a lot of Dutch is heard in the locker room (although they have yet to all play together). But with the escalating number of teams having a very high number of foreigners, i always wonder what language they are arguing, talking, yelling instructions in.

Real Madrid has players from Argentina, Germany, Mali, Italy, Brazil, the afore-mentioned Holland, Portugal, Poland and of course, Spain. But think about the other leagues around the world having Brazilians, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, French, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, Africans, Argentines, Greeks, Turks, etc, etc. Which makes me often wonder what one angry player says to a ref who is most likely a citizen of the country he is "refing" in.

As we all know not every foreigner takes to learning quickly the language of the club that now employs him (as anyone who watched Beckham during his time at Madrid knows, when he insisted on conducting post game press conferences in Spanish, honestly I don't think he was that bad).

Well with last week's red card to Arjen Robben came this article from Spanish daily Marca which provides an answer at least to what an angry Dutchman (who has played in Spain for just over a year) yells at a Spanish ref who has just red carded him (on TV we see the player's arms start waving and flailing and expletives surely start flying).....I can't even imagine how creative these guys get when cursing in all the above languages....or do they?

The article shows you just how eloquent Robben got when the red card came his way......(apologies to those who don't speak Spanish, but I think you can figure out the expletive highlighted in bold text towards the bottom of the article in the referee's quote on what he officially recorded as what was said to him by Robben and thus his reason for showing him his 2nd yellow card).......a very original response indeed. (and if you can't figure it out, this picture may help you see what Robben is about to start saying.....)

And in closing, here's a funny clip of two Hondurans, Wilson Palacios and Maynor Figueroa, who play for Wigan Athletic in England teaching the Brits a little something or another about Spanish....

PK's = OK!

Don't ask me why....but I love Penalty Kick shootouts.

All I'm saying is that yesterday my heart was POUNDING as Everton lost to Fiorentina in the UEFA Cup via the old PK walking of the plank.

I mean I felt like a kid again....

OH NO! HE MISSED IT!.....Thump, Thump....

SAVE!....YES!.......Thump, Thump, Thump....

MADE IT!....YES....Thump.....

Maybe it's the kid in me, maybe I just like to suffer, who the hell knows. I like something being decided in one strike, one move, one save.

I was there in the crowd when the Ukraine advanced over Switzerland in the Round of 16 in Germany in 2006....and I KNOW everyone remembers THAT one!...
And if you don't let me tell you.....IT WAS PRETTY DAMN EXCITING!

But strangely enough, for some reason I don't feel the same way about NBA games being decided by free throws...

Things that make you go hmmm.......

Don't Cry For Me Catalunya

Now I have to say it, I hate seeing players get hurt. No one wants to get hurt. No one wants to see someone else get hurt. No one wants one of their players to get hurt, and much less, no one wants to hurt someone else…except perhaps that poor excuse for a sportsman Martin Taylor of Birmingham who just about tore off Eduardo Da Silva’s foot. (you might want to think twice about clicking if you are squeamish)

Anyways, so last week Lionel Messi pulled his hamstring yet again in Barcelona's Champions League match with Celtic at the Camp Nou. Now this kid is great. He is really incredible. Kaka may have won FIFA's Footballer of the Year award, but you’d be hard pressed to say Messi didn’t also deserve it. And I like watching this kid play, much as it pains me to say it. What I didn’t like was seeing him hurt and now being forced to sit out for 6 weeks and miss crucial matches for Barcelona. Because you always want to see the best players play, especially in these most crucial times of the season when they have an opportunity to really shine and wow us meager humans all over the world with their sheer brilliance causing jaws to drop from Catalunya to Cambodia. As much as I do NOT want Barcelona to win the La Liga this year, I DO want them to lose the title with a full strength Messi in their squad. You always want to beat the best right?

Yep, and Messi is pretty much the best. Period. Go ahead, tell me who is better?.....I’m waiting…..yeah, you got nothing.

And to top it all off, this kid is twenty years old…..TWENTY!

(Yes, this is where you insert the line about him being the best in the world and not being able to buy a beer in this country.....but he lives in Europe and he is from Argentina....So that line doesn’t really apply now here does it? After all, those Europeans and South Americans really do know how to live...trust me, I just spent a month in Argentina drinking Malbec, Tempranillo and devouring massive steaks for about $4 USD a piece).

Which leads me to my ultimate point. Don’t worry, I am getting there. This kid is twenty years old, he is just a kid, and he got hurt in a game, and got taken out and told by a very good doctor and probably his very disappointed coach that he can’t play for 6 weeks. So he did what any normal 20 year old that tears a muscle and
is told he can’t play top flight football does when he gets this news….he cried.

Right there...

On the field...

In front of the world.

That was cool.

You don’t often see the world’s top athlete start to cry in front of 80,000 fans at home and millions more on TV when he comes off the field injured. I don’t think I ever saw MJ do that......or Pele, or Maradona, or Van Basten, Butragueno, no one. At least not that I remember. Granted, we also didn’t have 19 live HD cameras at each game, but still I don’t remember ever seeing that. At least not for an injury that you can come back from in 6 weeks. Which, by the way, if I tore my hamstring, I am pretty sure I would be hospitalized for at LEAST a week, and I would cry like a girl too, but from the pain and from the fact that I would never be able to do any kind of physical activity ever again. Sad, but true.

I mean that tells me that he really really loves playing this game. That as soon as he realized he got hurt and couldn’t play again for a long time and maybe miss his team's biggest games of the year it made him sad….really sad. So he cried. Sort of makes me sad. But not really, because Barca, even with Henry and Ronaldinho and Eto’o, still have a lot of work to do to make up 8 points in the standings (although yes, there is a lot of football to be played...that is after all why they play the games, right?) I mean this guy really is a kid out there, living the dream, having the time of his life. And if you know about his life, he is living a dream:

• Boy grows up poor in Argentina.
• Boy gets diagnosed with some kind of rare growth hormone deficiency.
• Boy’s family can’t afford the medical bills.
• Boy has SICK (no pun intended) talent for the beautiful game.
• Big shot in Barcelona gets wind of boy’s talents and…..
• BOOM…..
• Big time Spanish club offers to pay his medical bills in order to sign him and own his rights as long as he and his family move to Spain, and start a new life so that he can legally play there.
• Boy then grows up (very quickly) to be the best player in the world before he can buy a friggin beer in the US. (Not that he probably gets carded anywhere).

Or something like that goes the story, but trust me, if execs at Paramount even knew the tiniest bit about soccer, they would be eating this story up and making into a movie….oh wait….I think they did that with Goal! The Dream Begins, which actually wasn’t terrible…and NO, I am NOT biased!

So cry on Messi, cry on. I would too if I were you and I couldn’t play. I mean I would probably cry if I COULD play, only because I always wanted to and never even came anything close to being in the same stratosphere to being able to play at any sort of elevated level. But don’t worry, because in six short weeks you will be back and running around with that smile on your face, driving defenders nuts and probably still impressing your world-class teammates and millions of fans all over the world. And you will go back to your incredibly glorious life that you have achieved for yourself at such an early age, when most people are in college or university sitting in some totally arbitrary class completely unrelated to what they will do later in life….or worse yet, struggling to get by and only playing soccer in the park on weekends with their friends or neighbors to try and forget their everyday troubles. But you will be back soon, playing on the blindingly beautiful neon-green grass pitches of Europe and you will regain your post atop the Everest of football.

You will be back, and you will be millions...like Evita said way back in the day.

But you won't win La Liga in 2008.

So go ahead and cry again Messi. Cry on…