Global Soccer: Academy for Brazilians on the Fields of Italy

Before a ball was kicked in the Serie A season, the national coach, Marcello Lippi, expressed the wish that the Italian league would make the world sit up and notice its quality before the World Cup in 2010.

Maybe it will. But it might not be the Italians doing it.

The eye-catching performances in AC Milan’s 2-1 victory in Siena on Saturday night were Alexandre Pato and Ronaldinho in the attack and Alessandro Nesta and Thiago Silva in defense. Three of the four are Brazilians who are hoping the Italian league makes their national coach, Carlos Dunga, sit up and notice them.

The other, certainly, is pure Italian, Roman in fact. But Nesta, classy defender though he could once claim to be, is 33 and coming back gingerly from a back injury that many feared might finish his career.

In the hot and humid late summer Tuscan night, the dovetailing of Nesta and Thiago was exactly what Milan needed after the retirement of the club captain, Paolo Maldini.

“Thiago helps him, Nesta guides him,” Leonardo, the new Milan coach, said on television after the game. “They complete each other.

“Sandro had the possibility of not playing anymore. This gave him an incredible motivation to return the same player as before.”

Thiago, almost a decade younger, tall and strong but also quick because he started his career as a winger with Fluminense, is, of course, a Brazilian, like his new coach.

Before Saturday, Leonardo had never coached in competitive sports. Now he is entrusted by Silvio Berlusconi, Milan’s president and Italy’s prime minister, to take care of his team. A player at the highest level, a World Cup winner with Brazil, but, before this summer, more of an aide, a talent scout to the president, Leonardo has replaced Carlo Ancelotti who had five years as a Milan player and eight as its coach.

The first player Ancelotti tried to take with him when he decamped to Chelsea in June was Milan’s “baby,” another Brazilian, Pato. Ancelotti had called Pato a phenomenon of youth — swift, with a powerful shot, superb balance and, something that nobody can coach, that extra sense of where the goals are.

Berlusconi said yes to selling Kaká, his Brazilian playmaker, to Real Madrid soon after Ancelotti left. He said no, at any price, to letting Pato go.

Those who have followed this remarkable youngster can sense why. But he looks a youth no longer. His birth certificate says he was born in Pato Branco, in the south of Brazil, 19 years ago, but the growth of beard, the possibly still-growing stature, the sometimes almost calloused expression, makes him a man before his time.

Pato, whose real name is Alexandre Rodrigues da Silva, slipped back to Brazil to marry the actress Sthefany Brito last month. Their honeymoon was short; Milan, like many a top European club, had scheduled a summer tour to make dollars in the United States.

It had lost eight out of 10 matches leading up to the Serie A start on Saturday. Leonardo claimed he was little troubled by that because he had seen the form and the pride being primed by his players for the real thing.

“I’m in the role now of thinking about others’ emotions, not mine,” said the coach. “My rapport with Berlusconi is very good. Berlusconi is in love with Ronaldinho. He thinks he has a pearl at home that needs to be used at its best.

“I have known Ronaldinho forever. I know his story, I played for years with his brother, I’m Brazilian. With Ronaldinho, it’s now or never with Milan and with the national team. Pato is an incredible talent who must affirm himself in the national team. I think they and Thiago will soon return to Brazil’s lineup.”

They are not on the squad named for the Sept. 5 crunch qualifying match in Rosario, Argentina. But five Serie A players are on the squad, as are Kaká and Adriano, who recently left AC Milan and Inter. As Lippi wished, the Italian league is being noticed, if only as a major part of a Brazilian renaissance.

What illuminated the tough opening fixture in Siena on Saturday was hugely Brazilian. Ronaldinho, pulling the strings of imagination behind the running of Pato and Marco Borriello, has some way to go to recapture the magical Ronaldinho of three or four seasons ago with Barcelona.

But little by little, the passes of Ronaldinho, the timing, the spontaneity split Siena’s rugged, he-man back line. There were men there who tried to kick Pato from the thighs down, but Ronaldinho knew where to put the ball, in places where those pack dogs would not snap at the younger Brazilian.

Each goal that Pato scored and at least four other chances emanated from Ronaldinho’s exact passes and Pato’s intuitive running. Add to that Borriello’s willingness to be the selfless foil and the pace of Marek Jankulovski down the left, and the two goals might well have been five.

Milan, despite six players missing through injury and its new striker, Klass-Jan Huntelaar, suspended, did just enough to win. Siena leveled after Pato’s first goal, but never looked likely to do so twice.

Pato turns 20 next month. He was sadly, almost comically, pursued by a pack of Siena players angry with him for teasing and wasting time at the end — but Pato has been upsetting older players since he was 3.

That is when he was spotted, and he then played futsal, indoor soccer. By 11 he had moved in with 83 boys and youths in the training academy of Internacional in Porto Alegre. After 10 games for that club, Pato, then 17, was sold to Milan.

Italy has been preparing him for Brazil ever since.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/sports/soccer/24iht-SOCCER.html

Vasco da Gama loses in first game of state tournament

In their first game of the Rio de Janeiro state tournament, the Vasco da Gama soccer team lost on Saturday to Americano by a score of 2-0.

Despite the negative result, the team's head coach, Dorival Junior believes that the game was full of positive results. Critics of the team say that the team will only begin to be competitive in the fourth or fifth round of the state competition.

"In my opinion, I saw more good things than bad things in today's game," said the head coach. "I was disappointed with the result, but I am happy with the team's performance.

"The players played to the best of their ability and made some great individual plays. We played much better in the second half. However, I want my players ready for a long and hard year, rather than a walk in the park."

The club is not distraught with their loss.

Dorival Junior considers the state tournament as a warm up for the 2009 season. He plans on having a great year and hopes to raise the team from the second division of the Brazilian soccer championship. They fell to the second division in 2008 after having placed among the worst four of the tournament.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/25/content_10716384.htm

Soccer chief wants to 'adopt' poor Brazilian team

Norway’s national soccer coach Åge Hareide, currently on a visit to South America, thinks Norway’s national team should "adopt" a youth team from the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

Norway soccer chief Åge Hareide thinks Norwegians should be more humble and take some lessons from the Brazilians.

Hareide, a long-time fan of Brazilian soccer, says the Europeans have a lot to learn from the kids playing on the beaches of Brazil.

He complains that Norwegian soccer players lack much of the technique and speed found in their Brazilian counterparts.

The coach says he's fed up with the Norwegian attitude that Norwegians are always best. "We have to get out there and learn, not least, how to be a little humbler, and perhaps admit that we are not the world champions," Hareide told Aftenposten.

His idea to adopt a Brazilian team from the slums is not only aimed at helping the Brazilians, but also at learning from them, he says.

"We can learn something all the time," he said. "And soccer today demands an unbelievable amount from both the players and the leaders."

Norway’s national soccer team is next scheduled to play against Wales on February 6.

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/sports/article2189598.ece

Brazilians take different paths to top of soccer world

Marta, Kaka regularly show why they are best players in world

You may not recognize the name Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, even though he is officially the best soccer player on the planet. The same may be true of Marta Viera da Silva, although her name does include a giveaway.

On Dec. 17, the world's leading soccer organization, FIFA, brought these two Brazilians to the Zurich Opera House so they could sing their praises as the best male and female players on the planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iba7RiOuvEQ&feature=related

It is very difficult to argue with the results of this competition, which relies on votes from the coaches and captains of 165 nations whose choices were so overwhelming. The male champion collected more than double the vote of second-place Lionel Messi and the best female was close to twice as popular as German Birgit Prinz.

Allow me let you in on a few secrets about Kaka and Marta. Ladies first.

Anyone who saw the two goals Marta scored to help crush the United States in last year's World Cup semi-finals will understand why she is considered the best player in the women's game. For the first goal she beat six -- yes, six -- players before scoring low and hard. For the second, she picked up the ball wide left, cut inside, beat a defender by back-heeling the ball to the right, raced round the player to pick up her own pass, beat another transfixed defender, took two strides and crashed the ball into the corner of the net. Unstoppable, both times.

Dazzling onlookers, terrifying opponents and winning difficult battles is what Marta has been doing ever since she decided she wanted to be a professional player in a country that barely recognized female players. She was seven.

Brazilian women were banned from playing the game by law until 1979 and the game was barely open to them 14 years later when Marta was fighting to play with boys.

Typical of so many rags-to-riches soccer stories that come out of Brazil, Marta came from an impoverished family. Her father, a barber, abandoned the family when Marta was young, so the fruitless effort to stop her playing with boys was left to her brother.

But her passion for the game was beginning to show. Simply put, she was better than the boys and would not be denied.

She was the best when she played on the streets with rolled-up plastic bags for a ball. She was the best when she played on a boy's indoor team. That's why one opponent refused to play against a girl and she was asked to leave.

From there, she played with a girl's team until it was disbanded and any soccer future looked bleak for this 14-year-old. It was then that a local soccer organizer persuaded her to take a three-day bus trip to Rio de Janeiro to try out for a team there. A tough decision for a backwoods girl. She came, they saw and she conquered.

Three years later, she was picked for the 2003 World Cup. Brazil did not shine that time. But Marta did.

Among those startled at her skills, her strength and her speed was Roland Arnquist, coach of Umea IK, a Swedish women's pro team. Marta was about to earn her first soccer paycheque.

Even that was a tough transition.

She had never seen snow before and Umea is just 240 kilometres from the Arctic Circle. She had never trained seriously, but now it was 10 practices a week. She had never seen the inside of a gym but when she was asked for 10 pushups she did double, when official practice stopped, she continued. And she couldn't understand a word of Swedish.

Today she is Umea IK's star, one of those very few players, man or woman, who has fans on the edge of their seats whenever they get the ball. When Marta has it, something is about to set us gasping.

Last summer came the ultimate Brazilian accolade. Marta became the first woman to imprint her foot in wet concrete on the Soccer Walk of Fame at Maracana Stadium, the Mecca of Brazilian soccer.

Here is a young man who had all the advantages of a comfortable middle-class Brazilian life. No poverty struggles for this young man. However, there was little to suggest he would be the world's best player, despite his remarkable skill levels. There are hatfuls of exquisitely skilful Brazilian soccer stars.

Kaka was a scrawny kid - thin as a rake you might say. So much so he needed hormone treatments to help his growth. He was unsure whether or not he wanted to make soccer his career until he was 15. Three years later he fractured a vertebra in his spine in a pool accident. He was lucky to recover.

His career was now travelling at great speed. In 2001, he was playing for Sao Paulo youth team. A year later he was with the seniors and in the same year he won a spot on the Brazilian squad.

Then it was off to Milan with his family in tow. He has already won a Serie A title and a Champions League medal.

So here they are, two Brazilians with totally different backgrounds

capable of electrifying fans with their twists and turns, there extraordinary talent. They make the game worth watching.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/sports/story.html?id=5e003f40-c859-4eac-a262-da02b9c50932&p=2

Soccer coach returns to Iraq to provide expertise

BRAZIL OF THE MIDDLE EAST

"I've always said that Iraq is the Brazil of the Middle East. We have beautiful skill in this country, we have treasures walking on the ground that we must develop, not just below the ground in the form of oil," he said.

"More focus has to be put on this sport but Iraqi soccer needs organisation that begins at grass-roots level."

Iraq's national team shocked the sporting world last July when they won their first Asian Cup in emphatic fashion despite a lack of time to train, poor facilities and violence affecting squad members and their relatives.
The wildly celebrated victory became an inspiration for a country struggling to quell bloodshed and sectarian violence, encouraging youths seeking to emulate their heroes.
Jasim Hasan coaches an under-15s team in Baghdad's northwestern Shi'ite slum of Shula. He says Wohali's qualities are experience and his effective communication with children.
"The course was very good and he brings good experience with him from England. In Iraq, we are born to play soccer but we need to learn more of the technical side of the game," he said.
The daily 4-hour sessions involve children performing dribbles, as well as other physical exercises.

Youngster Hamza Hasan from Sadr City's under-13s said the new methods were a lot of fun.
"We've really enjoyed the training. He's a good coach and he makes us understand the game more with his encouragement, unlike the coaches here who are aggressive," he said, shortly before running off to join his team-mates running around cones.

Wohali, who holds a Football Association coaching licence and FA certificates, says he will return to England in two weeks and hopes to return again for a broader, more extensive course.
"A few days is not enough to qualify a coach. He needs to go into many courses to learn more. It's not enough but at least it's a start." (Writing by Mussab Al-Khairalla)

http://football.guardian.co.uk/breakingnews/feedstory/0,,-7202555,00.html