"Stan is the only other person who follows soccer, so I figured anything I wrote here would be to myself."

That never stopped me.

The guy who said it knows soccer very well, and I think it has some credibility.  Their work together as a team is considered in a class of its own.  Teamwork is much more important in soccer than it is in baseball, so I think your analogy doesn't work that well.  The individual talent of, say, the Brazilian national squad, might eclipse that of Barcelona, but the Brazilians, in particular, are famous for not playing well together as a team.

you and i have been through this before.  as my brazilian friend put it to me, brazilians themselves feel their players do not play well together as a team, but that if they did, they'd probably win the world cup almost every time. 

i claim no great knowledge of soccer, but often live and work among fanatics, so I pick up some of the public discourse.  the current discourse revolves around barcelona's one touch passing, which seems to be a concept so novel to soccer that alex ferguson is calling this the greatest soccer team he has ever seen.

It would be a difficult challenge to adequately present. If Barcelona plays Argentina, where's Messi go? How much of the World Cup champion Spanish national team is in Barcelona?

In a friendly, I'll agree that Barcelona has a team that could beat a lot of national clubs. In a World Cup level match where the national teams have 18 months to get together, prepare, and play? I don't know that I can make the same statement.

Oops. And I forgot about Fabregas. Which is kind of like me forgetting to include Pujols when I'm referencing the Dominican Republic's baseball team.

alz wrote:

I hate to sound like a typical American, but the only two members of Spain's national team I know by name is Xavi Xavi (odd name, stuck with me) and Christiano Ronaldo who doesn't play for Barcelona.

It's confusing. There's Xavi Hernandez, who goes by "Xavi" (prounced "Xabi") and plays for Barca, and Xabi Alonso who plays for Real Madrid. They're both Spanish nationals.
The Ronaldo you're thinking of is Cristiano Ronaldo, who is Portuguese and just finished his second year with Real, after his transfer from Manchester United. He and Messi are the generally recognized as the top two players in the world right now.
There were also Brazilians named Ronaldo and Ronaldinho who were both on the '02 team that won the WC. Ronaldo played for RM and briefly for Barca. I think he went back to his Brazilian club team and may have just retired. Ronaldihno played mostly in Europe with Barca and then transferred to Inter Milan. I think he's also back in Brazil.
None of them are to be confused with Rivaldo, who was also on the '02 team and a played for Barca, not to be confused with Romario, who was playing for Barca when Brazil won the WC in '94 ...

Last edited by artie_fufkin (5/31/2011 1:58 pm)

alz wrote:

Cristiano Ronaldo is from Portugal? Oops! Shit I always thought he was playing for Spain for some reason.

I was thinking of Xavi Hernandez, the midfielder.

I know both the Brazilians (Ronaldo and Ronaldinho), don't remember Romario, or much of anyone non-American from the 1994 world cup. That was when Lalas and Meola were playing right? I'm sure Klinsman was probably in Germany then, but not Ballack or Klose.

It's fuzzy going back that far!

All of it is correct. Romario and Bebeto were Brazil's two strikers in '94, and Klinsmann was Germany's best scoring threat.
I hate the fact that I'm recommending something produced by ESPN, but its 30-for-30 segment about "The Two Escobars" is worth a couple hours of your time. I don't know if Colombian soccer is ever going to recover from that loss to the U.S. in '94.

"I think I just figured out a way to make a soccer game exciting.

"Let's turn things over to today's play-by-play announcer, Mike Shannon."

Rec. But Shannon would have to call these guys by their given names:

"Here's Pele, also known as Edson Arantes Do Nascimento ... pass me another Bud, John ... I think I sprained my tongue ..."

Last edited by artie_fufkin (5/31/2011 5:41 pm)

"was that the one where the guy scored an own goal, and then got shot to death on the street?"

Yeah, Andres Escobar. Athletes who die at an early age at tend to get martyred beyond reality (there may still be people who think Len Bias would be scoring 20 points a night for the Celtics), but according to everything I've read and seen, Escobar was as good a defender as there was in the world at the time.

alz wrote:

I remember that. Couldn't believe they killed him for it. That was right around the time Maradonna got his ass kicked out of soccer too.

I read that Uday Hussein used to torture the Iraqi national team if they didn't perform well. Kicking concrete balls in 130 degree heat, beaten, shocked with electricity, insane fitness and training drills that lasted 12 hours...

I love soccer. I was sad when the US lost to Ghana, I felt we had a great shot to do better there, and just didn't do it. Nothing like the above cases ever crossed my mind though.

Colombia's entire soccer network was controlled by their drug lords - hence the "Two Escobars," the other being Pablo. When they got rid of the drug dealers, they didn't have enough money to run a good league.

Uday was a piece of work.

Humanity is a messed up species.  We think America is screwed because we have raised a generation of bankers and financiers who think it is their right to rip off anybody and everybody.  But get out to other countries and the elite really run haywire. 

A certain adult child of a certain former 'democractically elected' ex-general turned president recently won a $1.46 million civil suit against the national airlines in a certain SE asian nation because the english translation of one of the articles in their inflight magazine claimed that said adult child spent time in jail for murdering a judge who had convicted him.  in fact, he hired a guy to kill the judge.  [he spent a total of four years 'in jail' (he was frequently reported to be outside of the jail) out of the fifteen year sentence.]  so now the national airline has to pay him $1.46 million.  pretty messed up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Suharto