Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Pato: I Nearly Lost A Limb To Cancer

The Brazilian starlet has revealed that he narrowly avoided amputation at a young age.

Milan young gun Alexandre Pato has been a revelation since making his debut for the club in January 2008, when he scored in the Rossoneri’s convincing 5-2 triumph over Napoli at the San Siro stadium.

Since then he has gone on to make a name for himself as one of the world’s top talents, with a number of dazzling displays for both his club and country.

However, during a recent television program broadcast in Brazil, Pato sensationally confessed that his life may not have been as it is today had it not been for the doctors who identified that he had cancer at a young age.

“At the age of 11, before joining Internacional, I had broken my left arm twice in the same place, and required some examinations to determine the extent of the injury,” Pato affirmed in the program ‘Esporte Espetacular’.

“The investigations however had identified a tumour in the arm, and immediately it was feared that I would need to have my arm amputated.

“Thankfully I managed to have surgery to have it removed, and it was a success.”

At the age of just 19, the Brazilian has already proven his potential for the future, and that he has all the credentials at this stage to become one of the game's greats.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/10/italy/2009/03/31/1183719/milans-pato-admits-he-risked-amputation-as-a-child

Kaka ready to play for Brazil

In his six days with the physical trainers of Brazil's national soccer team, Kaka claimed on Monday that he recuperated faster than in the past five weeks with his Italian team of Milan.

Suffering from a left foot injury, the midfielder has been limited in play with pain and discomfort. However, after Monday's team practice, Kaka says that he is ready to return to the field.

"After today's scrimmage, I proved that I am ready to play. I just don't know how long I can play for. I would love to start the game. I always fight for a starting position. However, Dunga is the only one who will decide that," revealed Kaka.

Kaka stayed behind in Brazil while the rest of the national team went to face Ecuador last Sunday.

In a 1-1 tie, Brazil returned satisfied with the result, claiming it is always difficult to play in areas of high altitude.

On Wednesday, April 1, Brazil will host Peru in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the next round of South American qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup.

Coach Dunga considers the match as an "obligation" to win at home.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/31/content_11104638.htm

Monday, March 30, 2009

Brazilian footballer: At Barcelona's heart, the soccer stadium

You've been to Barcelona. So what? Unless you've experienced a match in Camp Nou, the home of FC Barcelona, the national football team of Catalonia, you haven't really been to Barcelona.

Catalonia? What? Barcelona is in Spain, right?

If you say so. Just don't ask a local.

Barcelona pulsates with history. You can feel it as you stroll the Bari Gotic (Gothic Quarter) or ping-pong off people during the Festival of Santa Lucia. It's the city of Gaudi and his improbable edifices and the dark, narrow contrast of Barceloneta, or Little Barcelona. It's beautiful, friendly people, scammers and getting your pocket picked on La Rambla. It's great food, museums and xocolata (a molten chocolate drink).

But for me it was a football vacation--one week and two matches. The city and all its glories were a go-with, because you can't spend all day at Camp Nou.

Though you could. There's the stadium tour (including museum), a grounds tour and the FC Barcelona Megastore, where you can buy everything from pens to baby blankets, skivvies to cuff links.

But you don't because you're traveling with civilians.

And then we got lucky, because a Barcelona family--Genis Sanchez, his wife, MariCruz, and mother, Montserrat, whom I met through a Barca football blog--took a Sunday to show us their Barcelona. So you get lunch at the Four Cats and buy a caganer statuette. You visit a beautiful abbey cloister and get a history lesson at almost every corner.

Then you get knocked on your butt.

There is a pockmarked wall in a church courtyard at Placa de Sant Filip Neri, a wall the city hasn't repaired. The marks were made by bullets during the Spanish Civil War. But there's no signage. You have to know, or someone has to tell you. Then when you tell your gracious hosts that you're planning to visit Montjuic Castle, mother and son exchange a look and he says, "We don't go there."

And the "Montjuic est molt Montjuic" (Montjuic is more than Montjuic [Castle]) signs make sense. Because you do your homework and realize that executions went on there during the war, including that of iconic Catalan nationalist Lluis Companys.

And you don't go.

Which is fine, because there is so much to do in Barcelona when you aren't watching football. Like Paris, Barcelona is a city of small museums, from art collections of former Formula One drivers to a small-but-mighty Egyptian museum.

But it was still all about the football.

You're wondering whether a football team is worth a trip to Barcelona? People vacation to visit baseball stadiums, the Super Bowl or World Series, and they aren't even in Barcelona. Nor is there the history, the reality that if you don't know any better, you can visit Barcelona and think that it's in Spain. Because it is. Technically. But not spiritually.

You may even wonder, during your touristy Camp Nou visit, why the signs are in Catalan, English, then Spanish. And why there are hardly any Spanish flags around town. Because Barcelona is in Catalonia, and its denizens are Catalan, even though they pay taxes to Spain and have Spanish passports. They speak and read Catalan, even though you can get along just fine in Barcelona speaking Spanish.

If you're devoted enough to FC Barcelona to become a soci (voting and supporting member of the club), the preceding paragraph sits firmly in the "Duh" category.

Because FC Barcelona, like the Catalan language, is an integral part of the city and the people. Catalonia used to be an empire, and the people have never forgotten. For almost four decades--during the Franco regime--the language was outlawed. The club's motto is mes que un club (more than a club), which is true. It's Catalan iconography. And even if Catalonia is a separate country in the minds of many of its residents, it is officially an autonomous community. But Catalonia feels it's a nation.

As you learn more it becomes clear that FC Barcelona is an institution, one that gets into your heart in a way that makes you fly thousands of miles to see two matches.

We arrived on a Friday and staggered around like lagged, fatigue-sotted drunks. So the first day was sort of a waste, noteworthy mostly for the gleeful discovery of finding a restaurant less than a block away that was excellent and willing to serve us dinner before 9 p.m.

But on the next day, I fell in love.

In Barcelona, there is a drink (a Mexican import) called xocolata, molten chocolate in a cup. In my ignorance, basic hot chocolate was the expectation, but the first cup was almost pornographic and went down faster than a Brazilian footballer when a defender touches him.

And we walked. And walked. And walked some more. We hit museums, but all I was thinking about was sitting in my seat that Saturday night--the first match. My friend Bill and I decided to walk to the stadium, a task made easy even if you are lost, by following the throngs togged out in bits of FC Barcelona finery.

Each match has a ritual path that begins with the Himno, the stirring, martial fight song of FC Barcelona. Then player introductions, with the same clipped cheer after each home player's name, followed by the buzz of anticipation. Camp Nou hums with history on a match night, and anybody who is a football fan and anywhere near Barcelona on a home match day will try to get a ticket. But matches are such an integral part of Barcelona life that you haven't really experienced the city until you've witnessed one, preferably one that matters, so that you can see more than 90,000 people become a country supporting its soldiers clad in the famous blaugrana (blue and burgundy) shirt.

And at the end of 90 minutes you realize that win or lose, a football vacation makes sense because you've gained a much better understanding of a city, a people and vibrant, pulsating history. Then the Himno makes sense, and you sing:

Tot el camp/Es un clam/Som la gent blaugrana/Tant se val d'on venim ...

The whole stadium/Loudly cheers/We're the blue and claret supporters/It matters not where we hail from.

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/sns-trvmain3-wk3-mar22

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Brazil Soccer: World Cup Debate: Do Brazil Really Need Ronaldo?

R9’s return to goalscoring form has lead to fresh calls for him to be reinstated to the Selecao. But Goal.com’s KS Leong asks, do Brazil need him to come back?

As Ronaldo announced that he is comtemplating the idea of an early retirement next year, the question running through everyone’s mind is whether will he be granted one last recall to the Selecao, or one final appearance in the World Cup, before he hangs up his boots?

An overwhelming majority of Goal.com readers have backed O Fenomeno to fight his way back into the ultra-competitive Brazilian national team. But the country’s former World Cup winning captain, Carlos Alberto Torres, doesn’t believe that he should feature in Dunga’s long-term plans. And he has good reason for thinking that.

Brazil simply do not require Ronaldo’s services in this phase of their history. They have more than enough talented forwards at their disposal: Luis Fabiano, Adriano, Robinho and Alexandre Pato. That they are not scoring regularly and consistently has more to do with the coach and his tactics, than it does with the players' natural abilities.

Risky Business

It’s not that Ronaldo is no longer good enough to don the verde-amarela, or that he’s too old. Make no mistake, he is not past it by any means. He has already scored four goals in five games for Corinthians and did so almost immediately after returning from a year long injury. It’s the kind of conversion rate reminiscent of his astonishing ratio back in the 90’s: 42 goals in 45 games for PSV and 34 goals in 37 games for Barcelona. If he can continue in this form, he certainly warrants a return to the Canarinho.

But taking the 32-year-old to the 2010 World Cup, for example, is a risk. While he may be guaranteed to provide goals, there will always be a lingering question mark around his fragile condition, especially his knees. Sometimes at 50%, he can perform better than most strikers at 100%. But there are also times when his 50% looks more like most other players at 10%. In other words, his unpredictable fitness makes him… well, too unpredictable.

In all fairness, Ronaldo has always demonstrated his remarkable resilience and tenacity. Not only has he bounced back from several career-threatening injuries, but also from a twilight-zone World Cup final, some highly publicised broken relationships, yo-yo weight problems and countless off-field scandals.

The one thing he hasn’t been able to shed, though, is his over-indulgent lifestyle and his excessive partying.

It is something that the Brazilian team can do without at the moment, especially in light of more recent stories about Adriano and Robinho’s 12-hour merrymaking escapade and especially with South Africa 2010 fast approaching.

The no-nonsense disciplinarian Dunga, the Brazilian equivalent of Fabio Capello, was brought in to keep a tight leash on his players, clean up the squad and disband any group of egotistical celebrities and superstars. It was something that played a big part in the nation’s downfall in the 2006 World Cup in Germany when, for the first time since Italia ’90, they failed to get past the quarter-final stage as their ‘Magic Quartet’ flopped miserably.

Ronaldo has already earned and cemented his legendary status in the history books of world football, although according to the notorious IFFHS polls, he ranks no higher than 9th in the list of the best Brazilian players in the 20th century.

Yet, he has already been through and achieved more on the international stage than most players can even dream of. He’s gone all the way to the final of a World Cup three times in succession, won two of them, although he didn’t play at all at USA ’94 as a 17-year-old; he’s overtaken the great Gerd Muller as the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer with 15 goals; he won the tournament’s Golden Shoe in 2002 and the Golden Ball in 1998 and he’s one of only two players to have ever won the FIFA World Player of the Year three times.

Let The Kids In

With 62 international goals to his name, perhaps the only thing left for Ronaldo to do is chase down Pele’s 77-goal mark to become the country’s all-time top scorer. While almost every football fanatic would love to see that happen, the truth is that it’s time for him to move over and let the next generation of young, aspiring Fenomenos to begin their own fairytale journey to superstardom. And there are plenty of them.

The one player who could suffer most if Ronaldo were to return to A Selecao is Pato, who has just started to inch his way into Dunga’s plans. The Milan striker has gone from being this gawky looking, pimple-faced teenager to becoming a world class footballing teenager in the space of just a few years. And in a few years more, he will join the very top echelon of the megastars of today. But his international progress could be hampered if in the next year or two, if he falls down the pecking order to make room for R9.

There’s also Douglas Costa who, although not a forward, is an outrageously talented attacking midfielder in the Ronaldinho mould. He’s already proven himself in Brazil’s Sub-20 squad in the recent South American Youth Championships but to move up to the next step, he needs the exposure in the senior squad and at the moment there is just no way of squeezing him in there, much less so if another attacking spot is reserved for Ronaldo.

But one particular young sensation everyone wants to see in the Esquadrao de Ouro is Keirrison. Wonderfully nicknamed K9, he is the one Brazilian who is in red-hot form at present: 16 goals in 14 games for Palmeiras. And at 20 years of age, he is primed and ready to step onto the big stage, although he may be too skinny for Dunga’s liking. But a potential move to one of Europe’s superpowers in the near future will force him to beef up and fast-track his international debut.

And the latest kid to emerge is, of course, Neymar, anointed by none other than Pele himself as the next big thing to come out of Brazil. And Santos. He may only have just turned 17 years old a month-and-a-half ago, but, lest we forget, that’s how old both Pele and Ronaldo were when they had their very first World Cup experience.

No-one would begrudge the opportunity the see Ronaldo in full fitness and in full flight as he rips apart opposing defences like he did in the good old days. And just like any professional footballer, he still harbours the burning desire to pull on his country’s colours and sing the national anthem before the start of every game.

Dunga has said he is more than willing to take the striker back, should an opportunity present itself. But the truth is that Brazil and Dunga are not in any particular dire need of his services. And Ronaldo himself isn’t exactly dying for more international recognition or success, or more unnecessary exertion on his knees. You just feel that one more injury and the curtains will really have to come down.

It would be sad sight indeed to see him forced to end his playing career with tears soaking his famous yellow jersey, clutching his knee as he is carried off the field in a stretcher, watched by millions.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/editorial/2009/03/28/1179430/world-cup-debate-do-brazil-really-need-ronaldo

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Brazil looks to overcome Ecuador hoodoo

Brazil will attempt to score their first FIFA World Cup™ qualifying goal in Ecuador when the teams meet at high altitude in Quito on Sunday.

The five-time world champions, second in the ten-team South American group, have a dismal record in the Andean country, having failed to hit the target in three previous qualifying visits. A 0-0 draw in tropical Guayaquil in 1993 was followed by 1-0 defeats in Quito in 2001 and again in 2004.

Coach Dunga said the chance to improve Brazil's poor record in Ecuador was an added incentive. "Every time there is a taboo to be broken or something to be conquered, it adds a little extra," he said. "We're going to play to win and gain points to help us qualify. It's always good to know the statistics, but we have to do our job."

Although Brazil are second in the South American group and well-placed to qualify, they are six points adrift of leaders Paraguay and have looked far from impressive in the qualifiers. They have been held 0-0 by Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia in successive home matches and went into the five-month break in the competition at a low ebb last October.

Since then, a 6-2 win over Portugal and an impressive 2-0 defeat of Italy in friendlies have lifted the pressure on Dunga. Playmaker Kaka is doubtful with a foot injury and striker Adriano has an ankle problem.

Ecuador, who had never played at a FIFA World Cup before qualifying in 2002 and 2006, are sixth in the table with 12 points, one behind fifth-placed Uruguay. Key midfielders Edison Mendez and Antonio Valencia have both been passed fit for the game which is crucial to their hopes of a third successive appearance.

Ecuador, who have depended heavily on their form in Quito in the past, have already dropped four points in home games and cannot afford another slip-up. The top four teams qualify for South Africa 2010 and the fifth play off with the fourth side from CONCACAF for another place.

Coach Sixto Vizuete is in confident mood, having said his team are stronger collectively than Brazil and that their opponents are afraid of playing at altitude.

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/newsid=1041661.html#brazil+looks+overcome+ecuador+hoodoo

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Brazil soccer: World Cup, NCAA Style

What if FIFA replicated the NCAA basketball model and expanded the World Cup finals to 64 teams -- well, 65 if you'd like a play-in game in Dayton or, say, Dortmund -- and essentially seeded the entire field instead of relying on imbalanced groups? We're talking about one match at a neutral site, winner advances, loser goes home.

We've got power conferences (Europe and South America) and mid-majors (Africa, CONCACAF and Asia). Sorry Oceania, but with Australia playing in Asia, you are going to the NIT. Seeds are based on FIFA rankings -- flawed, I know, but the NCAA selection committee isn't perfect either. I've also taken the liberty of moving Brazil into the top four seeds to avoid European domination. So your regional favorites are: Spain (South), Germany (East), Netherlands (Midwest) and Brazil (West).

The first round will play out with eight games per day, today through Thursday. The second round, sweet 16, regional finals and final four will be held next week.

Teams advance based on your votes. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your co-workers! Jump to the continuation of this thread to make your first four South Region picks. (The other four will be available later today.)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/soccerinsider/2009/03/world_cup_ncaa_style.html?wprss=soccerinsider

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Pato: Defenders out to get me

AC Milan favourite Alexandre Pato has admitted that he is a marked man in the tough and physical world of Serie A.

The Samba starlet is enjoying a stellar season for the Rossoneri having already bagged 15 goals for Carlo Ancelotti's men.

But despite his heroics, Milan are struggling to stay with league leaders and bitter rivals Inter and have already been knocked out of this season's UEFA Cup competition.

Pato was on target during Milan's 2-1 defeat at Sampdoria last weekend, a game that, once again, saw the 19-year-old receive more than his fair share of tough tackles.

"Defenders have become harder on me," Pato explained to Milan's official television channel.

"They have decided not to let me run, but often, they don't get the ball, they get me!"

With the pressure on Milan to improve, Pato is determined to keep on scoring, a task he believes is made easier thanks to the class that exists within the Milanese club's ranks.
"It's easy to score at Milan, with so many good players who know where to put the ball so I can score," he said.

"I am also learning tricks from [Andriy] Shevchenko and [Pippo] Inzaghi.

"David Beckham is also a great guy, and not just on the pitch. He has helped me a lot, and when we play together, I know, if I ask him for a pass, he knows where I want the ball."

http://www.espnstar.com/football/serie-a/news/detail/item217213/Pato:-Defenders-out-to-get-me/

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Pato: I really want Beckham to stay

Alexandre Pato has welcomed news that David Beckham is set to stay with AC Milan.

A loan extension from LA Galaxy is expected to be confirmed over the weekend and Pato said: “I really want Beckham to stay.

“He is a great player and not just in a match situation. Off the field he’s a lovely guy who always helps me if I need something.

“On the pitch if I ask him for the ball in a certain position, he puts it in exactly the right spot.”

Pato always said that Ronaldo was his hero, so he must be pleased to see his former teammate return to the sport after a long injury lay-off in Brazil.

“We are friends and often chat, so of course I’m happy he is playing again. Now I would love him to get back to the Ronaldo we all knew – Il Fenomeno.”

http://www.tribalfootball.com/ac-milans-pato-i-really-want-beckham-stay-231316