This is a good week to talk soccer, if only to celebrate two World Cup qualifiers in the next week.
The third edition of Howler Magazine – getting better issue by issue – contains an all-century team picked by Howler contributors and other so-called experts (including me.) The first team, in classic 4-4-2 formation, consists of: Brad Friedel, Steve Cherundolo, Eddie Pope, Alexi Lalas, Carlos Bocanegra; Landon Donovan, Tab Ramos, Claudio Reyna, Clint Dempsey; Eric Wynalda and Brian McBride. The subs are: Kasey Keller, Thomas Dooley, Jeff Agoos, Marcelo Balboa, John Harkes, DaMarcus Beasley, Cobi Jones plus Archie Stark, Billy Gonsalvez and John (Clarkie) Souza, the latter three from well before my memory. The voting was done electronically and I cannot find my worksheet, but I am 95 percent sure this was my team: First team: Keller; Cherundolo, Dooley, Balboa, Beasley; Donovan, Ramos, Reyna, Harkes; Dempsey, McBride. My bench included: Friedel, Pope, Lalas, Michael Bradley, Wynalda, Jones and Harry Keough, the defender on the 1950 U.S. team that stunned England, 1-0, in the World Cup in Brazil. I was blessed to sit next to Keough at lunch in St. Louis in 2010, and I wrote about him when he passed in February of 2012. For me, Keough represents all the stalwarts in the great soccer cities, who played this sport back in the day. One explanation: I included Beasley on the back line because he has saved this current qualifying effort by shifting to left back, and playing the full field, defense to offense. He was one of the young stars on the great 2002 run in the World Cup – and was the 80th-minute sub by Bob Bradley before the desperate 91st-minute goal against Algeria in 2010. He didn’t touch the ball on that run, but his presence was a sign that the U.S. had one run left. He makes everybody better. If I’d waited another month or two, I might have put Jozy Altidore on my bench, too. Readers may choose to comment. The Summer 2013 issue of Howler is devoted to 100 years of U.S. soccer, with features on Jurgen Klinsmann, Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey, among others. Then there is this story, I never heard before, about a bloke who was abusing Harry Redknapp at West Ham in 1994, only to have Redknapp put him in the match at halftime. The fan then put the ball in the net (but you need to read right down to the last paragraph.) Jeff Maysh finds Steve Davies and tells his weird story. Thanks to Howler for a memorable edition. This is a good week for soccer. I hate that the match at Costa Rica Friday night disappears into a dark hole known as the beIN channel. The Mexico match in Columbus, Ohio, next Tuesday is on ESPN. A good week for soccer. I am currently polishing my book about the eight World Cups I have covered, enjoying memories from Barcelona in 1982 to the American rally against Algeria in 2010 on a goal by – now here’s a name from the past -- Landon Donovan.
The bulk of the book needs to be turned in by July 1 so it can be published next May, before the World Cup in Brazil. However, the last chapter is just sitting there, unfinished and unresolved. Right now it looks like the editor could be waiting for the final chunk of copy in late November. Our Lads are currently in the middle of six finalists from their region. The American team plays its two final qualifiers, against Jamaica in Kansas City on Oct. 11, and in Panama on Oct. 15. But if the Yanks finish fourth, they will have to play a home-and-home series against New Zealand, the winner from the Oceania Football Confederation, in November. After watching the Americans once again look inadequate in a friendly against Belgium on Wednesday night, I don’t see them dominating their Concacaf region. Jurgen Klinsmann’s team plays his home nation of Germany in Washington, D.C., on Sunday at 2:30 PM in good old RFK Stadium. The Germans have not called in regulars from Bayern Munich or Dortmund, who played in the Champions League final last Saturday, but I think reserve players from the Bundesliga could infiltrate the American defense. This generation – at least the version assembled and coached by Klinsmann – is clearly not working out. After watching the defense bumble against Belgium, I am extremely nostalgic for stalwarts of the past. Whatever Donovan has left, can you imagine how he could open up the field with his speed and experience? As of now, the last chapter in my soccer book is sitting there, awaiting a conclusion. Your thoughts? Judging from the lovely messages Robbie Rogers has received, his friends and teammates care for him and would surely welcome him back.
Rogers needs to work out the complications from his coming out the other day, and most of us have no idea what that involves. He is part of the new generation that has been around gay issues from the start – friends who had gay parents, friends who came out, people who had the comfort to live their lives more in the open, plus all the references in pop culture that were not there in past generations. It’s easier now, even if incrementally. The older generation still gets a little nervous when the subject comes up; the intolerant religious flank is watching a new generation pay no attention. Rogers has already scored and created important goals for the national team through his ability and instincts. He is only 25. When the time comes around again, it would be wonderful if he played the sport at which he excels. He also could contribute something vital: he could be the first openly gay male in one of America’s major leagues. Rogers could come home, to the right team in Major League Soccer, which has enlightened leadership that enforces penalties on homophobic slurs. That league will not permit ugly stuff from the crowd like the chants Rogers could expect if he stayed in England. (Ask Tim Howard about the lyrics he hears making fun of his very mild case of Tourette’s syndrome.) My guess is that the time is right to openly welcome a gay player in an American league, as has already happened on the women’s national soccer team. Megan Rapinoe, one of the best and most popular players, came out a year ago. For that matter, her coach at the time, Pia Sundhage, one of the more mature and interesting leaders, is gay. The world did not end. The pressure would be considerable in a male league, from media scrutiny, from fans, probably from some conservative fans and sponsors and the inevitable religious groups. Blazing a trail as a gay player would be challenging, but then again so was sitting at lunch counters for blacks in the 1960’s and so was playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Jackie Robinson in 1947. It’s a different time. Those sweet messages to Rogers from his pals tells me they already get it, and will be there if he decides to play again. I hope he does. Your comment is welcome. Feeling smug on Sunday evening, I worked on a project that was due. (Retirement is hell.) I came down at 10 PM and, doggone, the Super Bowl was still on. What did I miss?
Thanks to the blackout, I got to see most of the last quarter, and came to this conclusion: the officials were quite right not to call pass interference on the last desperate play. Not that any sport wants situational officiating, but interference would have to be blatant to be called on the last fling downfield – arms being yanked out of their sockets, a kung-fu kick to the ankle, stuff like that. Of course, the receiver and defender are going to be getting physical with each other in that spot, but that was no time to over-react. All day Sunday, I was looking forward, as I always do around the Super Bowl, to an outbreak of pitchers and catchers to make me feel warm all over. This week there is something even more immediate – the U.S.-Honduras World Cup qualifying match in San Pedro Sula on Wednesday at 4 PM, eastern time. The match is being carried on something called BeIN which is not included by my carrier. Looks like I am going to have to find a pub that carries this BeIN. Some friends are upset because the U.S. looked so miserable in that 0-0 draw with Canada in Houston last week. I can only say that match had nothing to do with World Cup qualifying. It was the equivalent of a baseball spring training game, when the regulars don’t quite make the bus ride. In other words, it was a scam on paying customers. Michael Bradley is in Honduras. One Keano glare from him, and intensity will rise. In the meantime, there are reports of hundreds of matches being influenced in recent years by a gambling ring out of Singapore. Soccer is a tricky sport to fix, in that scoring is so random. If you want to get to a player, try the keeper – there have been a few with a gambling jones over the years. But the person you really want is the ref, that solitary figure running around in the midst of 22 players. The prominent clubs in Italy were penalized after the 2006 World Cup for a long pattern of influencing matches. Juve spent a year in Serie B. Officials from the richest clubs were able to request friendly refs for their matches. What did friendly mean? Unclear. But all it takes is one friendly call. Talk about situational refereeing. When I first started to follow Serie A back in the late ‘80’s, lesser teams would play their hearts out for 70 or 80 minutes against Juventus or AC Milan or Inter Milan, but near the end of the match something would happen. A Juve player would become entangled with an opponent in the penalty area. The two would go down, both writhing. The ref would come a-running, suddenly energized, point to the little disk 12 yards from the goal. Rigore! Penalty kick! It happened so often that I accepted it as a fact of life in Serie A. I’m looking forward to Wednesday’s match. Officiating in the Caribbean can get pretty situational, too. Your comments always welcome. GV Whether putting the ball on the fast-moving toes of Ruud Van Nistelrooy or Ryan Giggs, or knowing where the cameras were, David Beckham usually had a sense of time and place.
Then he came to America and found a way to make money and grow old, not always gracefully but near the end with even an appealing touch of grit. Not only that, but he got to dub the voice of the Geico Gecko in the commercials. At least, I think that’s him. Check out this video where imagination and reality overlap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mgne1gQjbo. Beckham is leaving Major League Soccer after Saturday’s championship game between the Galaxy and Houston. (ESPN Broadcast begins at 4:30 p.m.) Beckham has done his six years, longer than I thought he would last, even though he had picked a nice safe aerie above Los Angeles for his family. But he stuck it out and last year helped win the championship, with a hamstring injury that seemed to deepen the lines in his once pretty-boy face. He was hobbled all game, so he resorted to things like tackling opponents in the open field, just like the Yanks do in their funny version of football. He was probably worth the $32.5-million guaranteed for five years and the $4-million he endured in his sixth and final season. He earned it, by coming along at the right time in the careful maturation of M.L.S., when he could have talented teammates -- maybe not the level of his old mates at Man U or with the Galácticos of Real Madrid, but players who could do something with the ball when he directed it into their path. The league has had plenty of aging international stars in the 17 years it has been directed first by Doug Logan and since 1999 by Don Garber -- Carlos Valderrama, Roberto Donadoni, Cuahtemoc Blanco, Youri Djorkaeff and Lothar Matthaus, just to name a few. Most of the old guys looked as if they were here for a nice holiday with the wife or the girl friend, and frankly that’s what I thought of Beckham’s amazing summer vacation when he turned up in 2007. Some of the old stars became disillusioned almost right away. I remember watching Donadoni, fresh from AC Milan, coming to the hideous own-goal MetroStars in the first year of 1996. Donadoni was a modest team player, and he would receive the ball on what could have been an attack, except that he would look to the left and find not a great option and he would look to the right and find not a great option. Where were Van Basten or Gullit when he needed them? However, M.L.S. has gotten better incrementally, in size and attendance and talent, and Beckham was able to use his aging skills. I know it wasn’t a lot of fun for Landon Donovan and other members of the Galaxy, who were caught in a huge promotion on the run. My friend Grant Wahl wrote about that in a fine book in 2009 called The Beckham Experiment. But the league and the Galaxy were able to absorb a Beckham era, and see him toss his aging body around in a title game. Beckham is talking of some further adventure. My guess is that despite his disclaimers his ego is angling to go back for a farewell tour with Man U. How many people get a flying boot in the face from somebody named Sir Alex and yearn for a cameo return? But Beckham understands that he is part of show biz. He gave as well as he took on this gig. My wife once flew over Istanbul and ever since then she has yearned to go there. Last week we did.
There are dozens of wonderful things to say about Turkey (and I probably will) but first I need to talk about the frustration for a soccer freak of looking down from a hotel window directly into a soccer stadium -- with no game going on. Hundreds of ferries and freighters and tugs were moving up and down the Bosphorus as we stared into the beginnings of Asia, but in seven days and seven nights I never spotted a single person moving on the lush lawn of Beşiktaş, one of three Super-division teams in Turkey. One Sunday there was an Istanbul derby at Fenerbahçe, a main rival, based across the Bosphorus, essentially on another continent. As a foreigner, you could try going there, somebody advised me, but nobody from Beşiktaş is allowed to travel to Fenerbahçe, and nobody from Fenerbahçe is allowed to attend a match at Beşiktaş. The trip involved a 20-minute ferry ride and a 40-minute walk, but there was too much else to do in this amazing city of mosques and museums, ferries and restaurants, hills and water views. Soccer was in the news. Fenerbahçe was firing its star Brazilian, Alex, for unknown offenses. He had been there seven years, a long stay for any international import, but the owner wanted him gone, and now he was. Soccer always makes friends. Turks reminded me that Brad Friedel, the durable American keeper, spent a formative time with Galatasaray, the other Istanbul powerhouse. I told Turkish fans how I had covered the 2002 World Cup, when Turkey made its best showing ever, finishing third. People nodded reverently when I praised the great act of sportsmanship, after beating the spirited Reds of South Korea, 3-2, in the consolation match, how the Turkish players invited the Koreans to take a victory lap with them. But that was a long time ago. Now Turkey is in danger of not qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. One day in the amazing Cappadocia Region (with its unique geological formations and cave dwellings) we were eating in the celebrated Old Greek House in Mustafapaşa, where the popular soap opera Asmali Konak was filmed. Our guide, Gökhan Yaramis, a tall former college basketball player – and a Fenerbahçe man – was joined by his fellow guide Emre Ardik, a Trabzonspor man. Gökhan and Emre are buddies, who once spent nearly 24 hours driving in a snowstorm to watch their teams in Trabzon, alongside the Black Sea. “We want our cup!” Emre told me with passion. A year ago Fenerbahçe was implicated in a game-fixing scandal and was bounced from the Champions League. Sounds like Juventus, the perennial king of the 89th-minute penalty kick, amazing coincidences Sunday after Sunday, decade after decade. Gökhan never argued. Apparently, the punishment stood on its own. He’s a great guy, an educated guide who could respectfully tell us the history of Christians who lived in caves to avoid the Romans, and could also tell us of the Muslim faith that reached the region centuries later. Later he invited us to his lovely apartment in a pleasant town, so we would know more about Turkish life. Gökhan put on his yellow and navy blue vertical striped jersey – and displayed his matching yellow sneakers – his gamer outfit, for watching matches. On Tuesday he would watch the qualifying match on the huge screen in the town square, as Turkey would score first against Hungary, but then lose, 3-1. By that time, my wife and were flying home. There is so much to remember about Turkey; I will always check the soccer scores. Jürgen Klinsmann has had his ugly moments on the road. I once saw him take a 50-lira coin on the head at Atalanta, while he was playing for Inter, around 1989 or 1990.
Those things were nearly an inch in diameter and weighed two ounces, and a few of them in your pocket could slow you down. The coin that clanged off his head undoubtedly felt like a manhole cover. Klinsi returned with a mesh wrap over the bloody bandage, and staggered to the end of the match. Welcome to the road. Now Klinsmann is coaching the United States in its quadrennial adventure in the Concacaf region, which is nothing like what he experienced on the road with the West German and German national teams. The mood swings of the U.S. team were evident in the last week when the U.S. lost in Jamaica, 2-1, and then beat Jamaica four days later in Columbus, Ohio, winning by a 1-0 score after overwhelming Jamaica in the first half. It was obvious from watching Wednesday’s match that U.S. is not the same squad without Landon Donovan and Michael Bradley, who were injured for both matches. The rare home-and-home format is an inequity in the qualifying round because it penalizes a team twice if its star player, or players, cannot make it against a formidable opponent. Although, in Concacaf, all road games are formidable. The U.S. survived at home without the practiced explosiveness of Donovan and the intense control of Bradley at midfield. The highlight of the match was Clint Dempsey’s rubbery face as he taunted the Jamaican players, twisting his features into more expressions in a few seconds than an old Vaudeville comic could do. Check out the video at: http://i.imgur.com/DGYZE.gif I must admit, I had never heard of Graham Zusi, who replaced Bradley on Wednesday and took command. Turns out he is a stalwart with Sporting Kansas City. It is impressive that Major League Soccer can send a home-grown player right into the starting lineup of a must-win qualifying match. The league continues to grow and play a role in the development of U.S. soccer. Now the U.S. must play at Antigua and Barbuda on Oct. 12 – Columbus Day; supply your own jokes – and then play host to Guatemala on Oct. 16. Klinsmann is no fool. He is learning what Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley knew from experience in the American program – take nothing for granted in Concacaf. The mood swings from road to home matches are a reminder that U.S. soccer is very much a work in progress. The mood against Antigua and Barbuda will not be as hostile as the receptions in Mexico or Guatemala or Costa Rica, where the fans are intense and some of the calls mysterious and strange objects fly out of the stands, although not necessarily those old 50-lira coins. There are millions of reasons to love Brazil – Sonia Braga, for sure, plus the throaty way Brazilians speak Portuguese, Brazilian music from Villa-Lobos to Tom Jobim, feijoada, Brazilian football fans, Brazilian football nicknames, and then good old joga bonito itself.
Being emotionally acknowledged as the best in the world, based on the record and the way Brazilians carry themselves on and around the field, is mostly a blessing, but this superior image can also be a burden. Everybody wants to knock off Goliath, even a nimble and attractive one. The Brazilians were a moving target again on Saturday as Mexico outwilled them, 2-1, in the gold medal match of the Olympic tournament. (At which point the Games ended for me, except for those highly entertaining clips of Usain Bolt. Time to get back to baseball and joga bonito of all nations.) The Brazilians wanted this title badly, never having won the Olympic gold medal. The nation put together a squad that included three allowable over-23 players back in June and prepared hard for this tournament. But Mexico came into Wembley with the grim mission and skill that has often not traveled well from Azteca. The only category Brazil won was nicknames, employing reserves known as Hulk (in English) and Pato (which means Duck in Portuguese.) That's what it said on the back of their classic yellow jerseys. Those are the football names of Givanildo Vieira de Souza and Alexandre Rodrigues da Silva, opposites in physique but teammates in odd nicknames. Brazil has a long tradition of giving nicknames to its sporting heroes. (In the '80's, its star basketball gunners were Oscar and Hortencia, their given names.) Brazil football had Pelé and Garrincha in the long-ago past, and when I started following in the early 80’s it had Sócrates (one of his many classical given names) and Falcão (I always assumed this wavy-haired bird of prey was named for the way he soared but in fact it was his last name.) Then there was Alemão, the Portuguese word for German, who was called that because of his light hair and complexion and also for his efficient work at midfield, or so I was told. And who can ever forget the mainstay of the emerging Brazilian women’s teams of the 1990’s – Mariléia dos Santos, who sported the name Michael Jackson on her jersey long enough to score a reported 1574 goals. I saw her play a few times and never saw her perform the moon walk – or score, for that matter; Brazil had better players – but now she is the coordinator for women’s soccer in the Brazilian federation, having a far better middle age than her male namesake. On Saturday, Hulk came on early in the disastrous final. British broadcaster Arlo White said it was pretty apparent why he got his name – the man’s shoulders and chest swelled out his No. 12 jersey. (His father was said to be a fan of the television series, and the son wound up having large pecs.) The Hulkster was mostly ineffective until extra time when he scored a goal and nearly set up the tying goal. Another sub was Pato, who does not waddle or quack, but does come from the town of Pato Branco, which means White Duck. With their wonderful nicknames, the Brazilians now must prepare for the 2014 World Cup, when they will be hosts and once-and-future favorites as well as beloved symbols of the world’s game. That’s not a burden, is it? Have I forgotten any epic Brazilian nicknames? (NB: In my earlier version, I called Pato's home town Prato Branco, which would mean White Plate. He's from Pato Branco, of course. My fault. One of the flaws of Underwear Guys filing precious little essays untouched by human or even editor hands. GV) The hard part of watching the Japanese and Americans battle for the Olympic gold medal on Thursday is knowing there is no sustaining model for big-time women’s soccer.
The 2-1 victory by the Americans was terrific television, just like matches last Monday, last July, in 1999, in 1996. But two American professional leagues have failed since the United States allegedly discovered women’s soccer during the Summer Games in Georgia in 1996. NBC did right by the women in this Olympics. I can recall an American soccer federation official, Hank Steinbrecher, screaming at NBC functionaries right after the 1996 final in Athens, Ga., when the network played catch-up ball in showing the American gold medal celebration when it hadn’t bothered showing the match itself. ''NBC must think the world is full of divers,” Steinbrecher snarled. In 2001, it was a shock to me when the league known as W.U.S.A. opened a few miles from my home on Long Island – with tens of thousands of registered female players within driving distance – and Mia Hamm and the best players in the world could not fill a dinky so-called stadium. That league went down, as so did something called the W.P.S., not because the media did not publicize them but because ratings did not attract sponsors. Apparently, people – girls, women – would rather play soccer than watch soccer. That’s probably good. Now there is talk about a few teams forming a new league in 2013 but I will believe it when I see it. To a soccer buff who loves to watch the women’s game, it is sad to think there is no showcase for charismatic players of this generation – Americans like Hope Solo, who made three terrific saves on Thursday, or Carli Lloyd, who scored both goals, or Alex Morgan, who won Monday’s semifinal over Canada with a sensational leaping header, plus that great bridge to the past, Abby Wambach. Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy and the rest can be secure in what they accomplished, but Solo and her teammates have earned the right to wear the t-shirts they broke out Thursday that said Greatness Has Been Found. It’s kind of a passive statement, but the point was made. They are the champions, my friends. And the highly competitive Solo can be assured that her three magnificent saves Thursday probably trump anything the resourceful Briana Scurry ever did during the golden age. Plus, the game itself keeps improving. As great as Michelle Akers was – she’s still the best female player I have ever seen – the skill and tactical level of these players keeps rising. On Thursday, I saw fine points I don’t think were being performed in 1996 or 1999 (admittedly, memory is tricky.) Megan Rapinoe forwarded a ball with a flick of the back of her head; Morgan chased a ball along the end line and pivoted and blindly centered it to create the first goal; and Lloyd dribbled over 30 yards and split two defenders to find her space for the second goal. Have the new champions learned from coaching? From competition? From watching the Messis and Cristiano Ronaldos of the world, as I suspect female basketball players have learned from watching the Jordans and Kobes? The women have expanded the art of the possible in their sport. The new wave has produced three hugely entertaining matches – Thursday’s final, plus Monday’s American victory over Canada, plus last summer’s shootout victory by Japan over the U.S. in the 2011 Women’s World Cup following the terrible tragedy in Japan. The matches were gripping; the players admirable; as an American with friends in Canada and Japan, I could not root in either match. But I do root for women’s soccer. Sometimes there were tears of rage. Once there was even blood. Spain had never beaten Italy in regulation time in seven meetings in a major tournament going into Sunday. The only victory over Italy had come in a penalty-kick in the 2008 Euros quarterfinals when Iker Casillas saved two shots. It is hard to believe that Spain is the great dynasty for one generation in the history of the sport. Not long ago the Spaniards were seen as under-achievers, long on talent but short on will. I've read articles in Spanish papers back in the day with Spanish observors fretting over a litany of losses in the World Cup and the Euros, brooding if there was something wrong with the way people were raising their sons. That blather is over now that Spain is the champion of three straight major tournaments, after the 4-0 drubbing of Italy on Sunday in the Euro final. Even if the last two goals were accomplished while Italy was gassed, and short a player because of injury, it was still an overwhelming victory. Spanish players ran and Spanish players passed, and the lines met at the perfect spot near the goal. We are getting used to this art. It is hard to remember the misery of the past generation. The most painful defeat came in the 1994 World Cup quarterfinals in Foxboro, Mass., when Roberto Baggio scored a late goal for a 2-1 victory. That match ended with Luis Enrique of Spain rolling on the ground after Mauro Tassotti cold-cocked him in the nose with an elbow. The cheap shot from Tassotti remains tied for the most vicious play in World Cup history with West Germany’s Toni Schumacher’s human steamroller hip check that broke the jaw of France’s Patrick Battiston in the 1982 semifinal. In those primitive times of 1994, the lone-ranger referee, Sandor Puhl of Hungary, got no help from his two sideline assistants and no electronic advisory from FIFA Central on a headset. He had missed the play and could only wonder why Luis Enrique’s jersey was suddenly flecked with blood. Two sidelights to that ugly moment: *- By the time FIFA caught up with the play, Italy was through to the finals, and Spain was long gone. But Tassotti received an eight-match suspension for international play, and was never chosen to the Azzurri again. It took Tassotti 17 years to shake hands with Luis Enrique, before a match in Milan last year. *- In the video, as the Spanish players tried to alert the hapless ref what had occurred out of his vision, one Spanish player has the name Nadal on his jersey. It is indeed Miguel Angel Nadal, uncle and one of the great role models for that current Spanish sportsman, Rafael Nadal. And, yes, that is Pep Guardiola, then a Span defender, recently the Barca coach, milling around with other frustrated Spanish players in 1994. The blood of 1994 was ancient history in Kiev on Sunday. Italy has been a perpetual dynasty since winning its first of four World Cups in 1934. It had a good tournament, in the face of soccer scandals back home after a disastrous 2010 World Cup. But after a long and painful path, Spain is now a dynasty. The New York Times is running a Goal blog asking readers how they rank Spain with all sports champions. Here, I want to congratulate Spain for joining the great soccer nations like Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Italy. Much better to be remembered for rolling past Italy in 2012 than for suffering the cheap shot from Tassotti in 1994. Your comments are welcome about Spain's coming-of-age. . Mario Balotelli broke down Germany – Germany! – on Thursday.
It was compelling viewing at the center-of-the-Italian universe, Mama’s of Corona, Queens, surrounded by antipasto and cannolis and friends. Three Italophiles – a local hero named Minaya plus a Blum and a Vecsey -- watched Balotelli grow in stature before our eyes. As soon as the big dude blasted his second goal against what had been the strongest-looking team in the Euros, his inner knucklehead could not resist, and he whipped off his jersey, the worldwide macho gesture of goal-scorer pride. Of course, by football regulations, that cost him a yellow card, making him vulnerable to suspension for Sunday’s final against Spain. Still, Balotelli was an impressive sight, a son of Ghanaian immigrants named Barwuah, adopted at 18 by an Italian family, displaying his rippling muscles. “If he scores another goal, they’ll put up a statue of him in Florence,” somebody said. “Il David Nero,” somebody added respectfully in Italian. The Black David. The growth of Balotelli in this tournament has been impressive, a tribute to the man himself and also to Coach Cesare Prandelli, who seems to treat him with calm dignity, neither despairing nor fawning. In the quarterfinals, Prandelli sent Balotelli out first for the penalty kicks against England, and the big guy whacked one past his Man City teammate Joe Hart. If the coach thought he belonged out there…. On Thursday we gathered for the semifinal at Leo’s Latticini, also known as Mama’s, at 46-02 104th St., about a mile south and west of the ballpark I prefer to call New Shea. Ron Blum is a football-soccer expert for the Associated Press; he takes his family to Verona and La Scala every year. I have been an Italy admirer since my first family trip decades ago. And Omar Minaya, son of the Dominican Republic, grew up in the traditionally Italian neighborhood of Corona, dropping into Mama’s when he could afford a sandwich or a biscotto. Later he played two seasons of pro baseball in Italy, and loves to speak the language. Minaya, who now lives in leafy New Jersey, and works in the front office of the San Diego Padres, was on a short home visit for his son's graduation. He remains the favorite son of Mama’s, which has two outlets in the Mets’ ballpark. When he worked nearby, he often ducked over to Mama’s for a snack, a chat, a World Cup match. Anybody who still has a home neighborhood is a lucky person. Although he left after the disastrous season of 2010, this is the kind of guy Omar Minaya is: last year he escorted his successor, Sandy Alderson, to Mama’s –“just to show him the neighborhood, you know,” Minaya explained on Thursday. Mama’s remains the way it has for seven decades, with inevitable changes. The matriarch, Nancy DeBenedettis, passed late in 2009 at the age of 90, but her name lives on. Get this: the official city street sign on the block now says: Mama’s Way. And get this: Public School 16, a few blocks away, has been officially renamed. The Nancy DeBenedettis School. (Read more here about her inspiring American life.) “I get tears in my eyes when I talk about it,” said Irene DeBenedettis, one of three sisters who operate the little empire on Mama’s Way. She was showing me a montage in the window, photos of friends and celebrities who have visited Mama’s. (Half a decade ago, Mario Batali, the celebrity chef, paid the huge compliment of dropping in. (“Mama asked him, ‘Who does your hair?’” Irene said, referring to his iconic ponytail. ) Inside, we were fussed over by Marie DeBenedettis and Carmela Lamorgese, Mama’s two other daughters, and we saw Carmela’s daughter, Marie DiFeo, and her baby, Gina DiFeo, born last Sept. 23, and was wearing an Italia shirt for the Germany match. The staff, from far-flung provinces of Italy, bustled in with cheese, salami, olives, bread, plus pasta with absolutely delicious broccoli rabé, followed by roast beef and potatoes and salad. There might have been a bit of wine, too. Then came the desserts and the coffee. Before the match, we stood and sang the Italian anthem, Il Canto degli Italiani (The Song of the Italians), the most merry anthem in the world. Perhaps we were not as passionate as Gigi Buffon, the Azzurri portiere, who bellows the anthem with his eyes closed, but we tried. Then we remained standing for the German anthem. Oranzo Lamorgese, Gina’s grandfather, is originally from Bari but lived and worked in Hamburg and Dusseldorf for a decade and played semi-pro soccer there. He spoke with great respect for modern Germany – and its football squad. At halftime, Marie DeBenedettis came back and said their deli next door just had a customer – Dwight Gooden himself, buying a hero sandwich. She had invited him to sit with us, but Doc said he was double-parked and didn’t want to get a ticket. We watched as Prandelli wisely removed Balotelli, to protect him from a second yellow card, to preserve him for the final as the Azzurri outlasted Germany, 2-1, to advance safely to the finals. Italy has long produced artful midfielders and defenders who specialize in the defensive catenaccio, the bolt. But now it has a force up front, a striker who is growing in size and tactics, match by match. The three sisters plied the Italophiles named Minaya, Blum and Vecsey with enough love and goodies to last us until Sunday’s final. Mille grazie, amiche mie. There was a great tableau on television the other day when Cristiano Ronaldo asserted himself in the European soccer tournament.
A two-man jury of his peers – Eusebio and Luis Figo – was seen celebrating the goal that would put Portugal into the semifinals. My friend Rob Hughes described Ronaldo’s match so well in the International Herald Tribune and New York Times. Figo was leaping into the air as befits a Galactico of the past decade, whereas Eusebio was more earthbound as befitting a deity of the ‘60’s. They have given and suffered in public. Now it is Ronaldo’s turn. By sheer talent and burning will, Ronaldo has become the dominant player – perhaps the only dominant one – of the current Euros. You cannot take your eyes off him. Italy plays as a unit with masterful passing but no finishing. It controlled the ball for over 60 per cent of Sunday's scoreless quarterfinal with England and had to win it in a shootout. Germany, which beat plucky Greece on Friday, is a force, free and inventive enough, but depending on a system. Spain, going for an unprecedented third straight major championship, depends on brilliant players fitting into a balletic order. The short precise passes were beautiful to watch on Saturday during the 2-0 dismantling of France. The great correspondent Jere Longman writes that Spain is falling short of the high expectations it set. It's hard to tell from the tube, but that's why Jere is there, to get the feel on the ground: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/sports/soccer/euro-2012-critics-point-to-the-flaws-in-spains-art.html Italy and England, the two old men of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, came into the Euros refitted with old parts and new parts. New parts contributed two of the most inventive goals of the tournament so far – Danny Welbeck’s backheel flick of a goal for England, Mario Balotelli’s powerful backward cannonball for Italy while out-wrestling an Irish defender. Welbeck and Balotelli are part of the changing face of European football, black men in a formerly mostly-white world. Both were in the starting lineups Sunday as their clubs figured out how much they needed them in the knockout quarterfinal match between England and Italy. . Balotelli, greeted by an unusual display of warmth from his Premiership colleagues in the pre-game handshake line, was a tower of frustrated strength, playing against his Manchester City teammtes, Joleon Lescott and Joe Hart, the keeper. He and Hart smiled at each other before Balotelli calmly scored on the first penalty kick. In a way, Eusebio is the spiritual grandfather of Welbeck and Balotelli.. Born in Mozambique of an Angolan father, he chose to play for Portugal. In the 1966 World Cup, he was the stately, sturdy core of the team that defeated Pele’s Brazil, 3-1, in the first round, with Eusebio scoring two goals. Pele and Eusebio on the same pitch. Can you imagine? In the quarterfinal round, Eusebio was hacked and pummeled by the mystery team from North Korea, caught so vividly in the greatest documentary ever made about soccer -- the classic Goal. Eusebio responded with four goals within a 32-minute span in mid-match, carrying Portugal to a 5-3 victory. Portugal lost to the host team England, 2-1, in the semifinals but 1966 was still the high point of Portugal’s international soccer history. A championship in the Euros would bring Ronaldo up to Eusebio’s stature. Figo was not so lucky. He was aging in the 2002 World Cup when Portugal surrendered three quick goals to the United States and lost its first match, 3-2, and never reached the knockout range. So now Figo leaps in the air in celebration of Ronaldo. Well, don’t we all. With his smirks and scowls and self-centered preening – and that is just toward his teammates – Ronaldo is not the most appealing figure in this tournament. Just the best, He can leap like a pro basketball player, making himself dominant in scrums at both ends of the field. He lurks like Maradona did, but can accelerate like a Bo Jackson or Gale Sayers going around the end in American football. Suddenly he is there. He stunned the very good young Czech defender, Theo Gebreselassie, son of an Ethiopian-born doctor and a Czech mother, by zooming in for the goal that won the quarterfinal and sent Figo flying and Eusebio beaming. We will see Ronaldo again in the semifinals against the defending champions. Then Italy against Germany. Lucky us. (Always happy to have your opinions/reactions/critiques under COMMENTS) (And just in case you missed these goals, the precious heart of this sport. We celebrate them when they happen.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rs4ahcHc-g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYKs5VifNGU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVgjeK_FFcA&feature=related Alkis Panagoulias, with his stout Greek-American heart, coached underdogs.
He was in charge of the Greek national team in the 1994 World Cup that did not score or even tie a match and he coached the American national team in 1985 that could not qualify for the World Cup. Now Alkis will miss the next big opportunity for glory as the surprising Greeks take on Germany Friday in the quarterfinals of the European soccer tournament. Panagoulias died Tuesday in his adopted home of Washington, D.C., at the age of 79. He was totally at home in both cultures, gloried in American progress in world soccer, reveled in the Greek championship in the 2004 Euros, shortly before they were host to the Olympics, where he worked at the soccer tournament. The Greek enclave of Astoria, in my home borough of Queens, will surely be buzzing Friday for the match that has obvious connections to the financial crisis of Europe. I’ve seen that neighborhood buzz before. In 1993 Alkis was sighted making a flying visit to a favorite taverna in Astoria, and people came flocking just to see him – Panagoulias is here! Panagoulias is here! -- and wish him luck. Greece would up losing all three matches against Nigeria, Bulgaria and Argentina, yielding 10 goals without scoring a single goal. His other World Cup fiasco came in 1985 when he was in charge of an American national team that played in the ruins of the North American Soccer League. Needing only a draw at home to advance to the final round of qualifying, the U.S. played Costa Rica in Torrance, Calif. Before game time, a band of several thousand Costa Ricans came marching into the stadium, honking horns and chanting. After the U.S. lost, 1-0, the heartbroken players retreated to the scungy little locker room. ''When are we ever going to play a home game?'' asked Gregg Thompson, a young defender from Minnesota. Alkis’ blunt response was: ''Never.'' Things have gotten better for both nations Panagoulias coached. At the moment, the Greeks are the personification of the question Butch Cassidy asked the Sundance Kid: “Who are these people?” With so many glamour teams in the Euros – current powers like Spain and Germany, teams with aura like Italy, France and England – Greece just keeps coming. It rallied for a 1-1 draw against Poland, lost to the Czech Republic, 2-1, and shocked Russia with a goal in the second minute of injury time in the first half and held on for a 1-0 victory. They play with passion and defense. Now they have been discovered. All of Europe is savoring the obvious implications of Greece playing Germany with the backdrop of the economic turmoil in the European Union. Make your own jokes. Going into the knockout round, Germany is the ascendant team in this tournament and Greece is the underdog. Alkis’ funeral is Friday at a Greek Orthodox church in Falls Church, Va., at 11 a.m. – leaving plenty of time for mourners to go root for his homeland. They pop up on the television, from different cities. Slava Bilic and Laurent Blanc could theoretically meet in the quarterfinals, although not the way they met in 1998 – with one of them reeling in faked mortal pain.
Bilic and Blanc are two of the most charismatic figures in the European soccer championships, even though they do their work on the sidelines. In their respective first games, the camera lingered on them, as if doing a favor for those of us who remember 1998. Coaching Croatia in the first match against Ireland, Bilic resembled a roguish literature professor, played by a younger Donald Sutherland, with a blue blazer and blue ski cap perched on his head, red tie askew. He looked like a teacher who gives his best seminars in a smoky pub. Blanc, who coaches France, was wearing a shirt and tie, his glasses making him look like a chemistry teacher, who doesn’t talk much in or out of the laboratory. But his bounce when the referee makes an unfavorable call gives him away as an athlete, inside the Clark Kent outfit. They have met before – in the semifinals of the World Cup in 1998, tangling in a scrum before a free kick. Blanc gave Bilic a mild push high on the chest and Bilic went sprawling backward, clutching his face, as if he had been hit by a tire iron. The referee sent Blanc off with a red card, the only one of his career, and he had to miss the final match after France held on to defeat Croatia. At the time, Bilic was generally vilified for his blatant faking. The replays were quite clear – a modest push, nowhere near the face, maybe worth a yellow card, but more likely just the normal close-order combat in the box. Bilic was mortified at costing Blanc a place in the final (France beat Brazil) but never backed off his assertion that he had been fouled, and reacted the way footballers react – with improvised death throes. To this day, Blanc says the contact was his fault, but he knows he did not deserve a red card. In this Euro tournament, the sons-of-Bilic continue their flopping. It’s hard to justify diving to Americans who are not soccer fans, but most of us who love the sport accept it as gamesmanship, working the ref to dig out his card, as an impulse. There is even the suspicion that some players practice their dives the way others practice their free kicks. To be a soccer fan, one has to be a combination drama critic and gymnastics judge. Bilic was guilty of bad acting. The ref deserved a red card for not checking with his associates on the sideline. The game goes on. Bilic is leaving his post after this tournament; he has given six years to coaching his homeland, as a patriotic gesture, he has said. Blanc is not even two years into his chore of trying to resurrect the fallen power of France. They are World Cup-level players, the best and brightest of their time. Croatia and France could both qualify for the quarterfinals on June 23 or 24. It would be fun to see them shake hands, this time with nobody staggering backward in feigned agony. (Your comments-replies-critiques are more than welcome right here. GV.) Good Saturday. I'm finishing up a long day that began with the aroma of grilled meat and the rhythm of Latin music wafting through my open car window in the parking lot at the Meadowlands.
I hear the traffic is terrible outside. Good day for the real football -- soccer. I wrote a column in The Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/sports/soccer/argentina-vs-brazil-battle-of-stars-and-a-sign-of-soccers-arrival.html?_r=1&ref=sports And here is my take on the great rivalry itself, done for an interesting new outlet. http://whatahowler.tumblr.com/post/24698119812/vecsey-equalandopposite muito obrigado muchas gracias GV I’ve been looking forward to the tournament for weeks. I raved about the Euros on the Times Goal blog earlier this week (comments welcome there) and will undoubtedly write more for the Times’ soccer site, with all its resources.
In the meantime, I am putting up this entry as sort of an experiment, to keep it open for the next 24 days. I welcome my friends – anybody -- to comment on whatever happens. Or just watch the Euros and get outdoors as much as possible and do all the other good things at this time of year. I’m heading to the Meadowlands Saturday for Brazil-Argentina and will file for the Sunday paper. A few thoughts about the Euros: One thing I noticed in writing my Times essay was that surprising teams have won the Euros – Denmark in 1992, Greece in 2004. And other fans wrote about teams like Turkey that had their wonderful runs. Conversely, when you think about it, the Euros are a very tough tournament because they are the 16 survivors of European qualifying. There are few soft spots, as there can be in the World Cup, with its qualifiers from other regions. Sometimes the Euros can be a jumping-off point for a new dynasty, the way 2008 was for Spain. But given the hideous year-round schedule of soccer, dynasties do not last long. Remember how France won the World Cup in 1998 and then the Euros in 2000? I was sitting in Seoul in 2002 watching television as the French team got off the bus for a warmup – and those guys looked dead, and subsequently played that way. This sport chews you up. No nation has ever won the Euro championship twice in a row. Tough league. There are some great matchups in the first four days: Friday: Russia-Czech Republic. (Martina Navratilova beat a Soviet junior right after the clampdown of 1968 and she marched to the net and said in Russian: “You need a tank to beat me.”) Saturday: The Group of Death. Germany-Portugal right away. Good enough to be a semifinal. Sunday: Spain-Italy. I think I am going to be driving while that one is on. Unless... Monday: England-France. A tale of two anciens régimes. Love to hear your reactions from now through the finals. GV Barcelona looked tired, and John Terry once again showed his amoral side, but the key to the Champions League semifinal Tuesday was Didier Drogba's playing the entire field.
Once Chelsea was down a player because of Terry's stupid unprovoked foul from behimd, Drogba played his own form of sweeper, roving wherever he was needed against the crisp Barcelona passes. Chelsea's defense has been vastly upgraded under interim coach Roberto DiMatteo's version of the old Italian defense, the catenaccio (chain or bolt.) But it took an inspired star to make it work while a man down. The ball would be slotted into a bit of open space, and Drogba, 34, would appear from nowhere. One Barca shot went wide by a few inches when Drogba materialized and made the shooter alter his rhythm. He was like Derek Jeter, showing up in odd places to make a play, or giving confidence by standing on second base and clapping his hands after hitting a double. He raised the entire team after the Chelsea captain, Terry, proved, once again, that he is unfit for leadership, or trust. Eventually, Drogba had to leave because of discomfort high in one leg. Fernando Torres came in and supplied the crushing goal as Chelsea moved on the final on May 19 in Munich. My guess is that Drogba will be there. After Tuesday, he should be wearing the captain's armband. Of course, I'm giving away the punch line.
This was at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, when a bunch of traveling American writers were in Florence to watch Our Lads get waxed. Searching for the press tribune, one of my colleagues spotted a man in a bright blue blazer standing in a portal. What with the blazer, he could have been an usher. "Excuse me," the reporter said, probably in slow, basic English, "but we're looking for the press section." "My name is Giorgio Chinaglia," the man in the bright blue blazer replied with a smile.. "And I believe it is right over there." My friend knew enough to be apologetic. Giorgio, who had what one might call a strong sense of self, thought it was funny. Giorgio knew that current soccer writers might not recognize him. But defenders and keepers (and his own coaches and general managers) would always remember him. Giorgio Chinaglia was one of those headstrong stars who came to New York in athletic middle age and could handle the pressure, much of it self-induced.
Think Reggie Jackson, Keith Hernandez, Mark Messier, Earl (the Pearl) Monroe. Giorgio had the chutzpah to stick his 6-foot-1 frame as close to the goal as he could, and defied anybody – keepers, defenders, referees or, for that matter, his own coaches – to dislodge him. Playing striker for the New York Cosmos from 1976 through 1983, he had the coraggio – translated more as gall or impudence than mere courage – to declare himself responsible for scoring goals. Anything else was somebody else’s job. Just put the ball near the No. 9 on his jersey, and he would do the job. He will always be the career leader in scoring for the North American Soccer League, inasmuch as the league is defunct. Giorgio died at home in Florida on Sunday, at 65, of a heart attack. A friend said he had distress earlier in the week but checked himself out of the hospital. That would be Giorgio. Why should he regard doctors be any differently than he did Hennes Weisweiler, his German coach with the Cosmos, whom he openly defied. “My job is to score goals,'' Chinaglia told me in 1981. “Other players may play both ends of the field, but they don't score as many goals. That is what the game is all about.” And he meant it. Giorgio was the first world-level player I got to know when I was discovering soccer in 1980. He had a vaguely sinister presence even on his own team because he had the ear of ownership, and more or less flaunted it. I saw him score two in a 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia Fury in 1980 – first on a header, and then with a shot out of the pivot with 18 minutes remaining. He faked to his left as if to use his power foot, his right, but then he swerved to his right to score at close range with his left foot. “Usually, he will set up for his right foot,'' keeper Bob Rigby of the Fury said about the second goal. “But you know Giorgio, he is an instinctive player. The great ones don't think. They just do it. He is more dangerous with his back to me because I can't tell what he will do. He has an uncanny sense for what is right. '' Giorgio just didn’t care what people thought. He was born in Tuscany, in Carrara, known for its marble, and in Italy was regarded as something of a straniero, an outsider, because his family had run a restaurant in Wales and he had come up through the pro club in Swansea. He later was a star for Lazio -- by now the tifosi called him Long John, because he was tall, and spoke English. He played for the underperforming national team in 1974, and when he moved to the Cosmos he was criticized by Italian fans for defecting. That was Giorgio. He went his own way. The Cosmos were made for him, the way New York was waiting for Reggie and Hernandez and Messier and Earl the Pearl. Later he did television in Italy and helped run Lazio and sometimes gave striker-like feints that he might be in the mix of leadership if the Cosmos ever truly materialized again. Instead his heart gave out. But never his gall. PS: Some serious soccer buffs might see this. Your own memories/tributes/critiques of Giorgio would be welcome right here: The United States is not going to the London Olympics this summer because of a crushing 3-3 draw with El Salvador in a regional qualifying match Monday night.
This is a huge disappointment for a nation that aspires to be a top-15 contender in the world, based on GNP and population than on expertise. The junior edition of the national team coughed up a chance to advance toward London in the final seconds Monday night when the defense allowed a hard 20-yard shot and the keeper let it get through him – a disaster all around. But really the game got away a few minutes earlier when Caleb Porter, the new coach of the Under-23 squad, removed Freddy Adu. Oh, sure, take out your best player in a must-win match. Adu was a man among boys in the second half, making two deft assists on clutch goals, and controlling the ball with the feints and dribbling and passes that he demonstrated as a child. Freddy is still only 22, but he has been around forever, and looked it on Monday. However, the new coach took him off in the third minute of an announced four-minute added time. To be fair, Porter had valid reasons for the move. One is that a substitution can kill more than the 30 seconds the ref will add to his stopwatch. The other is that Adu had just been shown a yellow card for doing absolutely nothing to a desperate Salvadoran player, and Porter did not want to take a chance of Adu getting another yellow and missing the next game. But it was a bad move as soon as Adu started to trudge off the field (to kill seconds, as any professional will do.) I second-guessed the coach while it happened. Don't do it. Freddy was the indispensable player on that sparse team. Now there will not be a next match. Salvador and Canada are moving on to the semifinal round. The U.S. will not be in London. This is a jolt to a country that seems to be poaching players from the fringe of the German youth system, young men with an American parent. After decades of youth programs, this is where the U.S. is? The paucity of talent (and smarts, and desire) on the field Monday is a condemnation of the club system in the U.S. – players coming up through local programs, always doing what Coach tells them, without developing a mean streak. That willingness to do anything – throw sneak elbows, flop dramatically, claw for the ball – two Yanks said they were bitten on Monday – was evident in the Salvador players. They have played street soccer; they have played empty-field soccer. They go for blood. They may also go to London. The U.S. team showed no experience while flubbing possessions in the final minutes. As a result, keeper Sean Johnson, in the match only because of injury, had to field a hard last-gasp shot that took a nasty bounce and handcuffed him. Anybody watching the match in person or on the tube might have cringed at Johnson's utter failure, and felt sorry for him. But keep in mind, keepers are only supposed to be the last resort. Many goals are not their fault. In such a low-scoring sport, if the ball is near the goal, other things have gone wrong on defense, first. Back to the latest development program. Freddy Adu, once over-hyped as the great Ghanaian-born hope, could have avoided all that horror with one possession, one time-wasting maneuver, one chip into the far end of the field. But Freddy was on the bench. And now, so is the United States. End it. I don’t know any other sport so beloved by the people who play it, or the people who watch it. Even we grumps in the press tribune appreciate the possibilities, buy into the mystique of joga bonito, the beautiful sport. Everybody in the stadium understands that at any given moment something amazing can happen, out of nothing. I don’t know any other sport like that. I mean, in American football or basketball or baseball, people expect touchdowns or dunks or home runs. In world football, you just never know. There is always the possibility of being surprised. Turn away and you will be sorry. Arrive late and you will hate yourself. (This is why I screamed at some idiot chauffeur who stepped in front of reporters during a goal in the 1998 World Cup semifinal in Marseilles; all I could see was the back of his stupid cap.) When something gorgeous happens, players and fans and even writers like myself shake their heads and say, yes, that is football. For me, it happened four times in the past week – twice on the television, once on the web, and once on a cold, damp Sunday morning under a bridge in New York. 1. Let’s take the Champions League first. Arsenal needed to erase a four-goal deficit in the home leg against AC Milan on Tuesday. I couldn’t get to the tube until the second half, by which time Arsenal had scored three times. What I saw next was 30 of the most furious minutes of soccer – the best players in the world stretching to keep up with each other, Arsenal at home, frantic, attacking while they still had juice in their legs, forcing Milan to get back, make desperate dives and lunges, and then daring Milan to go on the counter-attack. It was breathtaking to watch these players test each other. Ultimately, Robin Van Persie missed a gimme in goal mouth, and AC Milan was able to stagger home with a 4-3 aggregate victory. But what an effort. And that is the essence of the sport. We are all drama critics or dance critics, every bloke and blokette in the stands. We have high standards. And both sides earned our respect that day. 2. The next day was Barcelona against Bayer Leverkusen. Lionel Messi made it totally irrelevant with two goals in the first half – and three more in the second half – for a 7-1 aggregate victory. All right, the little feller is the best player in the world, no point going over that. But with all due respect, Messi is also the hit man for the most beautiful soccer being played on this planet. Forget about uniforms and faces and numbers; the style of Barcelona is interchangeable with the World Cup champion, Spain. That is not news, since many of them are the same players. Because they play together so often, to watch Barça move the ball is to watch the Bolshoi Ballet, choreography at the highest. They have been playing this way so long in this generation that it no longer requires thinking. American fans observe Our Lads pausing, deliberating whether their teammate will actually be there if they propel the ball into that open space, but the Barça players know. Human pinball. Thump. Off Pique’s instep. Plock. Off Iniesta’s chest. Ping. Off Xavi’s toes. And there goes Messi, chipping home a goal at full stride. 3. Sometimes the brilliance arrives via the Web, the whole world taking pride in what somebody did on some other continent. On Wednesday, Neymar, the 20-year-old prodigy for Santos of Brazil, took off on a spontaneous run that must have been 70 meters long, a mixture of Olympic sprint and tailback initiative. The difference was that nobody called his play or directed him to the starting blocks. The ball arrived in his vicinity and Neymar took off, just to see if anybody could keep up with him. He shed defenders as he pushed the ball, and then he split two more defenders, muscling them at high speed, before beating the keeper on the run. Joga bonito in its home country. Two questions: when will Neymar move to Europe? (Three questions, really; might Champions League defenses slow him down?) And might Neymar help win a World Cup at home in 2014 – before Messi ever wins one? That kind of speculation was on everybody’s mind as the whole world watched the video of Neymar’s run. 4. People love the sport on every level. On Sunday morning I went to watch my grand-daughter play for a very good and well-drilled squad from central Pennsylvania, in an early-bird outdoor tournament in New York. The games were played on multiple fields on Randall's Island under the bridge that, with all due respect to Robert F. Kennedy, I plan to continue to call the Triborough Bridge. (For the same reason, the Jackie Robinson Parkway, re-named for another hero, will always be the Inta-Boro, in New York-ese.) The other team in the Under-12 competition was from World Class FC. I know nothing about youth soccer, but then again, this was not youth soccer, this was joga bonito. The New York team swung the ball wide, tested the defenses, swung it to the other side, and attacked. Welcome to Fun City. Sometimes routs can be instructive. World Class was so, well, so world-class that it could probe defenses on the run. At the age of twelve. They were all good, but No. 10 would deliver the ball to the right to No. 4, who could turn the corner on anybody, on the run. Or somebody would find No. 13 on a fleet diagonal near the goal. It was a treat to watch, although probably not for my grand-daughter who held her own in midfield. (At one point she flat-out got annoyed at the proceedings and physically stripped the ball the way Michelle Akers used to do.) I think the score was 4-0. World Class was so smart, alert and clean. At the end we applauded both sides, in the best fashion of youth soccer, and I felt the need to personally tell the families from World Class that their team is terrific. That’s the way we feel about world football – from Europe or Latin America or under the Triborough. It’s our sport, and when it is played well, we appreciate it. I don’t know any other sport that inspires this possessiveness, this sense of pride. The United States did beat Italy, 1-0, in Genoa on Wednesday. However, that was not the Italy of four World Cup championships, and it probably was not the Italy that will play in the European championships in June.
If it had been Italy – you could say – the home team would have found some resourceful and maybe even nasty way to take the air out of the Americans’ tires to salvage at least a tie. But the Italians could not get that done. Therefore, logic dictates, that was not quite Italy out there, even with Andrea Pirlo chipping exquisite passes to all kinds of forwards. Still, the Yanks were able to create the one sturdy goal that gave them the first victory ever against Italy, in 82 years of competition. The Americans had lost seven and drawn three until Wednesday. Probably the best part of the victory was that Jozy Altidore did what he was not able to accomplish in 2010 in the World Cup in South Africa – that is, hunker down near the goal, control a neat centering pass from Fabian Johnson, and hold off the Italian defenders while Clint Dempsey slipped into position to take a pass and knock in the goal. Altidore and the U.S. are still capable of playing stinkers in more important matches, as proven in the 2010 World Cup when after drawing with England they were held to a draw by Slovenia, barely survived with a last-minute victory over Algeria, and then were outplayed by Ghana in the knockout round. It was good to see the stalwarts like Tim Howard, Steve Cherundolo, Michael Bradley, Carlos Bocanegra and Dempsey play solid ball with a lead. Jurgen Klinsmann’s trio of German-born recruits – Danny Williams, Terence Boyd and Johnson – displayed the depth of soccer in German, or rather the lack of widespread development in the U.S. There have been revolutionary victories before – over Spain in the Confederations Cup in 2009, for example, and over Mexico in the 2002 World Cup, still probably the most important victory by the U.S. in half a century. In the post-match interview Wednesday, Dempsey called the victory “ a confidence builder,” and he called the team “a work in progress.” He was right. Been there before. Our lads – well, our German lads -- are in Genoa, about to play Italy. Why am I not in Genoa? I would find the hotel along the Ligurian Sea where I once interviewed Ruud Gullit. Best shrimp risotto I ever had, on one of the most beautiful afternoons I can remember, warm breeze along the sea.
That’s the first thing that comes to mind while waiting for the friendly at 2:30 PM on Wednesday. I have no idea what to expect from this latest makeshift lineup from Jurgen Klinsmann. He is looking at potential players; this is why they play friendlies. Meantime, the mind wanders. Mine wanders back to 1993, when I scored a trip to Milan to watch Italy qualify for the 1994 World Cup, and arranged an interview with Gullit, who was playing for Sampdoria during their brief glory days. But I screwed up, and took the slow train from Milan, and arrived at the Sampdoria grounds after Gullit had left. I remember Gianluca Pagliuca would not talk to me when I asked if he knew where Gullit lives, but my taxi driver extracted from his colleagues that Gullit lived in a villa in a suburb just south of Genoa. He took off down the hill and spotted the right villa and we knocked on the door and Gullit poked his jangly dreadlocks out the window and told me to have lunch at the team hotel across the street, and he would join me after his family’s lunch. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes wondering if I tipped the driver enough. The aforementioned risotto was tremendous, and Gullit, true to his word, popped over from his villa. Heads turned in the restaurant as we chatted for an hour. The item I remember most from the interview was that in 1993, already an international celebrity, Gullit had never visited the United States. I guess I exhibited chauvinistic surprise, because he quickly said, “But I have met Nelson Mandela.” That pretty much shut me up. When Gullit scooted home, the hotel manager was evidently so impressed that he invited me for an elegant coffee in his office, and we chatted for half an hour – in Italian. This is why I love Italians: they let me speak their language, in however wretched a fashion. Then I took a stroll along the sea, mid-November, people out for a stroll on one of those bonus autumn afternoons that you know you will remember all your life. Then I took the light rail to the Genoa station and headed back to Milan. Haven’t been back since. This is what I wrote back in 1993: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/26/sports/soccer-gullit-finds-his-separate-peace.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Now we will get a glimpse of Genoa, or at least its soccer stadium. Via good old ESPN2, we will watch our latest recruits from the academies and reserve teams and rosters of the Bundesliga. But no shrimp risotto. I will always be grateful that Harry Keough came out for lunch last May. He sat next to me in a neighborhood Italian place in St. Louis, wearing a green jacket, the sweetest, friendliest man in the world.
He was soccer royalty. I knew that from his history -- playing fullback the day the United States stunned England, 1-0, in the World Cup in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, June 29, 1950. That amazing accomplishment glowed from him for the rest of his life, which ended on Feb. 7, at the age of 84. There was no need for me to prod Harry to recall the upset because it has been documented in so many books and films and newspaper stories. It was quite good enough to sit around a raucous table in what just might be the best soccer city in the country, yet one that constantly falls short of joining Major League Soccer. What a glorious past, all the ethnic clubs that sprung up when St. Louis was a top-ten American city early in the Twentieth Century. And Harry Keough was from that tradition, playing his way into the rudimentary national program after World War Two. He was shipped off to Brazil with a makeshift team in 1950. Newspapers could not believe early reports of a 1-0 Yank victory; some edited it into an English victory. But it really happened, after a virtual outsider, Joe Gaetjens out of Haiti, flicked the loose ball past the English keeper, still one of the great upsets in World Cup history. Then Harry Keough came home to live a full life as family man, coach and father of the American player and broadcaster, Ty Keough. Harry continued to play into his 30’s…and 40’s…and 50’s….His full-time job was as a postman. In between he coached junior college, and then he won five national titles at St. Louis University. What really ticked his players was that Harry was still the best player on the field. Bill McDermott, another major St. Louis soccer guy, player and broadcaster, said it used to annoy him that Harry, twice his age, could nudge varsity players off the ball, take control of it, distribute it upfield. Harry had been a pioneer as a fullback. Up to then, fullbacks had been content to blast the ball upfield, theoretically out of danger. He preferred to deliver the ball to a teammate. He dominated the game – as the coach, just filling in during practice. Disheartening, McDermott said. Harry mostly smiled at our lunch. The lovely obituary in the Post-Dispatch by my friend Tom Timmerman – definitely worth reading -- said Harry had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, but it didn’t show at lunch in May. Harry just enjoyed being out with his people. When I heard Harry had passed, I e-mailed Ty to send my condolences. “You know the saying: ‘He who dies with the most toys wins,’” Ty wrote back. “For my Dad it was: ‘He who dies with the best stories wins.’ BIG Winner, my Dad was.” The stories are out there. Now only Walter Bahr and Frank Borghi, the keeper, remain from that 1950 team. I’ll remember a powerful man with a sweet smile, who hardly needed to say a word, because we all knew what he and his mates had done. The Chelsea-Manchester United match from frigid London put us in the mood for a taste of home.
We drove out to to the House of Dosas in the Indian enclave in Hicksville. Nobody was wearing Giant or Patriot gear. My wife waved at a little girl at the next table. She waved back, with a gold bracelet glittering on her tiny wrist. We had bhel puri, eggplant curry and rice, plus poori and potato masala, and my wife had spiced tea afterward. The waiter confided that they had just sent out for their own lunch – pizza, for a change of pace, he said with a laugh. We were now fortified for the long evening ahead. What a country. |
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