Ramallets, Spanish goal keeper, lies on the ground after failing to prevent a goal by Jairzinho, Brazilian left insider, during the championship soccer matches in Rio De Janeiro. Brazil won, 6-1. Date: July 16, 1950. Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Image: Bettmann

Lakers' Steve Nash to try out for soccer tournament with Inter Milan

By Eric Pincus Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2013

Steve Nash will pursue his love of soccer this off-season, trying out for Inter Milan with hopes of joining the franchise for the Guinness International Champions Cup. "It's a dream come true to get a chance to try out, not just to try out but to take the field with Inter Milan, one of the great, storied franchises in professional sports," Nash said in an interview with the Associated Press. "I feel like a little kid." Tryouts will take place in New Jersey on Tuesday. The tournament will run through Aug. 7, ending in Miami Gardens, Fla. Nash is still working through the issues that kept him out late in the season (hamstring, hip and back) but is almost back to healthy. "I've had a really good summer of training and rehabilitating," Nash said. "I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty close. Good enough to go out there Tuesday. I'm thrilled I've had this time to build myself back up, and I believe I'll have a great year." Time Warner Cable SportsNet will air the All-Star guard's "Steve Nash Foundation's Showdown" on Tuesday. Nash recently held a charity soccer match in Los Angeles featuring NBA stars Jeremy Lin, Klay Thompson and Jared Dudley -- along with some of the top soccer players in the world (including Robbie Rogers, Carlo Cudicini and Robbie Keane). Proceeds from the event will work to benefit underserved children through Nash's foundation. This was the first event of its kind in Los Angeles -- Nash recently held his sixth annual Showdown in New York.

A Real Knock-Out Contest

By Ernst Bouwes (Archives) ESPN Soccer


The encounters between these countries have never been boring. There is always an edge, sometimes tense because of the scoreline (as at the tournaments in 1994 and 1998) or just for utter violence on the pitch.

At the 1974 World Cup, both sides met in Dortmund to play for a place in the final. It was in fact the third group game in the second round but, as both had gathered maximum points, it felt like a semi-final. With a superior goal difference, Netherlands only needed a draw, but in everyone's mind this match is remembered as a knock-out contest. It literally was. With 55 fouls in 90 minutes it was one of the most violent World Cup matches ever.

The Oranje had found many admirers during the tournament, while their South American opponents possessed a formidable reputation, having won the 1970 World Cup in such style. But the 1974 meeting will remembered for an incident that was not compatible with Brazil's reputation as football purists; Luis Pereira's violent kick on Johan Neeskens had little to do with 'the beautiful game'.

The viewers at home may have been lucky that 1974 did not have the extensive camera coverage we have today, because it was cruel. In the first-half, Neeskens was knocked unconscious, before Pereira's brutal second-half challenge resulted in a red card for the Brazil centre-back and an unseemly exchange with Dutch fans as he left the pitch.

The golden shirts associated with Brazil's World Cup success four years previous were absent as the team played completely in blue, while the Dutch wore white but certainly did not come in peace. Rinus Michels' side were not sure what their first real meeting with the world champions would bring them and so resorted to a less adventurous style than the games before.

But it seemed that someone lit a fuse on the Weststadion pitch, resulting in a fascinating evening of ruff'n'tumble. Aside from a minute of silence to honour Argentinian president Juan Peron who had died two days before, German referee Kurt Tschenscher failed to take control of the game. What should have been a festival of football between the guiding lights of the international game of that era turned into a sensational slugfest with players constantly battling behind the referee's back.

The 2010 version of this fixture could well go the same direction. Four years ago Holland showed their dark side in the second round match against Portugal, who were not unwilling to take up the fight themselves. With a similar background, the Brazilians will not be the ones to shy away when the going gets physical; they may even believe it could benefit them as it could derail the Dutch game.

Dutch legend Johan Cruyff highlighted the focus on defence this week, telling the Daily Mirror: "Brazil need to play with more intensity, more bite on the pitch, because they are not special. Always the fans want to enjoy Brazil, enjoy their fantasy at World Cups, but they do not have that this summer. They have talented players but they play in a way which is more defensive and is less exciting." He was not that impressed by the Dutch team either.

Meanwhile, the pitch in Port Elizabeth has suffered as a result of bad weather conditions, which could influence the flow of the game. It might not be a brilliant showpiece of formidable football on Friday, but the tension will certainly make up for that. Not only for the spectators and television viewers, but for the players as well.

After the game against Slovakia, coach Bert van Marwijk had to control a sudden bushfire between Wesley Sneijder and Robin van Persie. The Arsenal player had a frustrating afternoon up front - the latest victim of that isolated position - but did not appreciate his substitution at all. Dutch lipreaders said that he told his coach that he should have taken off Sneijder, whom he apparently blamed for his own poor showing. Van Marwijk nipped the trouble in the bud, though he must notice that his striker is rather ineffective at the moment.

In order to break down the Brazilians, maybe Van Persie should learn a lesson from Cruyff. In the early seventies, Cruyff drifted away from the striker position at Ajax to avoid being kicked by central defenders. The goals were then made by anyone who surged into the box, supplied by perfect Cruyff assists.

The AS Roma of Luciano Spalletti employed similar tactics very successfully a few years ago with Francesco Totti, masquerading as a striker, but mainly playing from midfield. Spalletti confessed to have copied it from Cruyff's Ajax.

"Fast, free-flowing attacks in which offensive side midfielders make darting runs past the lone striker in possession outside the box, amid quick interchanges of accurate passes. When it works well, players swap roles and position with beautiful fluidity. It makes them unpredictable and disorientates defenders," Spaletti told Champions Magazine in an interview in May 2008. You can imagine Van Persie doing the same.

Dirk Kuyt and Arjen Robben may be the perfect players to move into the space he leaves behind, but the fluidity will rely on Van Persie and Sneijder burying their differences. If they manage to make their partnership work, there might be a surprise in store. Although it may not be pretty.

Underdogs Uruguay Hunt Third Cup

By Vladimir Hernandez
BBC Mundo

If Uruguay emerge victorious in the World Cup final at Johannesburg's Soccer City on 11 July, it will not be the biggest surprise in the country's sporting history.

For that you have to go back 60 years, when the Uruguayans shocked the world by beating hosts Brazil to win the 1950 tournament.

Uruguay were one of the planet's big football powers but the Brazilians were the clear favourites going into the game, especially with a home crowd of approaching 200,000 cheering them on.

It is said that there has never been more people inside a football ground to watch a match than there were in Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium on 16 July 1950 and once Brazil went in front in the second half of that game, everyone thought the result was no longer in doubt.

At home, people always expect us to win the World Cup every time we come to this competition


Legend has it that the Fifa president of the time, Jules Rimet, even went into the changing rooms to prepare his congratulatory speech for the hosts.

But Uruguay, the ultimate underdog, turned the game around in dramatic fashion, winning with a goal 11 minutes from time.

The ground went absolutely silent at the final whistle. There were even reports of suicides and Brazil never wore its "unlucky" white top again, adopting a yellow and green one instead.

That success came 20 years after Uruguay won the inaugural World Cup at a time they were considered the best team around, having won Olympic goldin 1924 and 1928 - both competitions considered a World Cup for "amateurs".

The current team is not expected to make it a hat-trick of triumphs by those outside the South American country but it would not be a shock to their countrymen if they were to come out on top.

"At home, people always expect us to win the World Cup every time we come to this competition," said captain Diego Lugano.

Since their unexpected victory in 1950, they have not exactly been blowing teams away. Their last semi-final appearance came in 1970, when they lost 3-1 to Brazil.

"We don't think about that," Diego Forlan, one of Uruguay's star players, told the BBC. "We need to keep working and take things step by step."

Forlan and fellow striker Luis Suarez have given the team something it has lacked in decades: two forwards capable of scaring defences and scoring goals.

Both players were among the top scorers in European football last season, with Forlan's goals helping Atletico Madrid win the Europa League.

But Uruguay are not only an attacking side. The work rate of the whole team has been outstanding in South Africa.

Oscar Tabarez's team did not concede a goal until they played South Korea in the last 16 and won their group with a draw against France and wins over Mexico and hosts South Africa.

This helped them avoid a clash with Argentina and provided - at least on paper - an easier route to the semi-finals, with Brazil and Spain in the other half of the draw, though they refuse to be complacent.

"We cannot think less of anyone. Sometimes the teams that seem less tough are the ones that give you a bigger fight," midfielder Alvaro Pereira told the BBC.

Ghana will prove a tougher rival than South Korea in Friday's quarter-final. As the only African team left, Milovan Rajevac's side will probably have the majority of a packed Soccer City behind them.

The Ghanaians will also have noticed the way Uruguay's stamina seemed to suffer in the second half of their last-16 match against the South Koreans. It was only a moment of brilliance from striker Suarez that sent them through.

The Africans have proved to be a much more physical side than many in this tournament - and they will present a big challenge to the South Americans on Friday.

If Uruguay come through that test, a possible encounter with Brazil beckons and another opportunity for an upset.

Vuvuzela 'inventor' set to relaese an album of tunes

By Christian Gysin, Daily Mail/UK


The South African who has taken responsibility for inventing the vuvuzela is preparing to offer the world his next gift - an entire album of songs played on the tuneless trumpet.

South African Freddie Maake, 55, recorded the 18 track CD last year near his home in Johannesburg.

The dedicated football fan said he did so to show the versatility of the three foot horn, which he claims to have created in 1965.

And he is now hoping to cash in on his invention's newfound notoriety by selling the album to football fans during the World Cup.

Freddie said: 'I have been blowing my vuvuzela for more than 30 years so I know what it can do.

'People criticise the horn because of the sound it makes, but when it is played properly it can add something quite beautiful to a song.'

Freddie, a father of nine, said he had the idea for the vuvuzela aged 15 when he was given a bicycle horn for his birthday.

The schoolboy removed the rubber pump from the end and use his lips to produce a ear-splitting sound.

He blasted the horn for years while watching his beloved Kazier Chiefs play in Soweto.
And he said he developed the distinctive shape used by fans today in 1989 after approaching a friend who owned a plastics factory.

Since then Freddie has travelled the world representing South Africa's Football Association.

He blasted his vuvuzela at the 1998 World Cup in France, the 2002 tournament in Japan and Korea and during the last World Cup in Germany.

Now the event has hit his home country he said the time was right to release his music.

The studio album contains renditions of African tunes including South Africa's national anthem and other famous songs from the host nation.

Among the tracks is Shosholoza, a classic South African song traditionally sung by workers which has become one of the tunes of the World Cup.

Freddie has also penned some tracks of his own.

They include one in which he praises the beauty of Johannesburg's main stadium Soccer City, and another about South African and West Ham striker Benni McCarthy.

On all songs Freddie can be heard blasting the vuvuzela as a percussion instrument, sometimes beneath melodies provided by keyboard or organ.

Today the entrepreneur said he hoped the CD would help people around the world appreciate the instrument's charm.

The keen musician, who lives in the Tembisa township east of Johannesburg, added: 'My CD is about Africa, the people who live here and the friendships that can be made.

'The vuvuzela is now part of our culture, and it can bring people together.

'My album is a celebration of the joy that can be brought by fine music and friendship.

'The World Cup is a great chance for everyone to come together and party.

'I hope that fans enjoy my music so they can have the perfect soundtrack to the tournament.'

Soccer Returns to Its Roots in Africa

By Christopher Clarey/New York Times

Cameroon’s Roger Milla eluded the Colombian goalkeeper, René Higuita, to score in the 1990 World Cup, where Cameroon became the first African team to reach the quarterfinals. Agence France -- Presse

CAPE TOWN — As the 2010 World Cup arrives at last in Africa, it might come as a surprise that soccer is not merely plowing new ground but also — in some manner — returning to its roots.

The first documented soccer games played on the African continent were staged in the future World Cup cities of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth in 1862. That was one year before the rules of association football were codified in England in an attempt to facilitate competition by bringing uniformity to the emerging sport.

“You can make an argument that the history of the game in Africa is as old as the game itself,” said Peter Alegi, a professor of African history at Michigan State University and author of “African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game.”

There is even the possibility that the history of the game is much older than the game itself. Paintings from ancient Egypt show people throwing and catching balls. Who can be certain they weren’t already using their feet, too?

There is no doubt, however, that the Europeans — both visitors and settlers — provided the initial spark for the early development of the modern game in Africa. Those games in 1862, which took place in what was then known as the Cape Colony, involved military men and other white civil servants for the British colonial government. So it went in other coastal African cities in the years that followed.

But the white monopoly on the club game would not last out the century. In 1896, Mahatma Gandhi, then a young lawyer in South Africa, was among a group of Indian men who helped found the Transvaal Indian Football Association. Alegi considers it “most likely the first organized football group on the continent that was not run by whites."

Gandhi would not be the last future leader to use soccer as a training ground. And the black communities and other indigenous people in Africa would gradually take control of the ball and the phenomenon, embracing the imported game, even sometimes — as in Algeria and South Africa — using it as a tool against their oppressors. Along the way, soccer would grow into a pan-African obsession, perhaps the closest thing to a common currency that this vast and vastly diverse continent possesses.

“If anything can be salvaged from the harsh and unequal encounter between Western and African cultures, then the list must include the arrival of football,” David Goldblatt wrote in “The Ball Is Round,” his global history of soccer. “Western medical care, though dismissive of local healing traditions, is a universal demand in Africa. Christianity’s legacy is more complex, its relationship with indigenous practice more hybrid, but it has become the faith of just under half the continent.”

“Football’s contribution is more unambiguous,” he continued. “It is without competitor Africa’s game.”

This has often not been a blessing, considering the despots, like Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire or General Sani Abacha of Nigeria, who tried to use soccer as a political tool, or the toll in too many disasters, like the one last year that left 19 people crushed to death and scores more injured in a stadium in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Even if soccer is “Africa’s game,” that does not mean that Africans are unambiguously focused on African soccer. In the age of the satellite dish and globalization, they are increasingly likely to be watching Manchester United or F.C. Barcelona on television or in a makeshift video shack than to be cheering on their local clubs in domestic league play.

But if the writer Ian Hawkey’s estimate that close to 2,000 African players are now playing or training professionally for European clubs is true, there is a much better chance that there will be some Africans in the mix during those Champions League or Premier League broadcasts. They include Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, who plays for Chelsea, and Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, who plays for Inter Milan.

The exodus — dubbed “the brawn drain” in some circles — represents a major shift, considering that in 1990 there were fewer than 100 Africans playing at the elite professional level in Europe. But that was the same year that Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions and their 38-year-old striker Roger Milla grabbed the World Cup by the tail and gave it an extended shake by defeating Argentina, the defending champion, in their opening game and then becoming the first African team to reach the quarterfinals.

Africa had arrived in earnest as a soccer power, but the game was already playing a powerful role in Cameroon. A nation of close to 200 ethnic groups, Cameroon is rife with linguistic and religious divides but has found a shared passion in the national soccer team. That has been a benefit to its president, Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982 and who pushed to include Milla in the 1990 World Cup team.

In Nigeria, Cameroon’s neighbor to the north, the national team, the Super Eagles, also plays a federative role (when it is not frustrating its supporters by underachieving).

“Africa is a huge continent, and soccer is one of the few areas of popular culture that really binds people together, but it is a very short-term thing,” Alegi said. “You talk to any Nigerian, and it’s hard to see what they all have in common, but for the 90 minutes that the Super Eagles are playing, there is a Nigeria.”

Algeria team in crisis after captain Yazid Mansouri is axed for Group C Slovenia start

By BEN LYTTLETON/DAILY MAIL UK


Algeria's quest to sabotage England's World Cup dream is being wrecked by an astonishing dressing-room row which almost saw their captain walk out.
The north Africans, who play Fabio Capello's men in Durban on Thursday, are in disarray on the eve of their Group C opener against Slovenia.

The upheaval started last Wednesday when captain Yazid Mansouri was told by coach Rabah Saadane that he would not be in the team to play Slovenia - and he furiously threatened to quit the team.

The 32-year-old midfielder stormed off to his hotel room and was packing his bags before desperate team officials managed to persuade him to rethink his decision after an hour of heated chat.

'It's hard to accept the decision,' said Mansouri. 'I've been in this side for 10 years and that is why I'm struggling to digest the news.' Saadane's decision was also greeted with dismay by Mansouri's team-mates. Portsmouth defender Nadir Belhadj said: 'It will be difficult for us without Yazid because we listen to him all the time.'
The bust-up comes at a terrible time for the North Africans but is music to the ears of England players and supporters.

Mansouri, meanwhile, has vowed to stay and fight for his place. The one-time Coventry player said: 'I am not used to sitting on the bench for Algeria, especially since I have been captain for several years. That's why I am confused. But the coach has made up his mind. I just have to accept it. It has hurt me a lot, that's true, but I will fight to regain my place in the other two games. I want to play at least one game in this tournament.'

An unrepentant Saadane said: 'It was difficult for Mansouri because he is such an important player in this team. But I am at the World Cup and I have to make a decision based on tactics and football. He is not the best at the moment.'
The spat comes at the end of a difficult few months for Algeria, who were shock qualifiers for the finals after beating bitter rivals Egypt last November.
Then came a traumatic African Nations Cup campaign which ended in three players getting red cards, including Belhadj, in a woeful 4-0 demolition by Egypt.

Their build-up for the finals was also below expectations - a 3-0 hammering in Dublin against Ireland was the low point - and Mansouri was among several players who were jeered by frustrated fans.

But Belhadj said: 'We have been waiting 24 years for this moment and now we have nothing to lose.

'I hope the African fans show solidarity with us as we won't have many fans there, but this is the first time our group of players have been at a World Cup and we are all hungry for some success.'

Saabane has sprung another surprise by dropping striker Abdelkader Ghezzal against the Slovenians, who aim to punish the lack of harmony in the Algerian camp.

Coach Matjaz Kek said: 'It would be unfair to talk about Algeria's weaknesses. I can say my staff and I have detected them and we are confident that we can chalk up three much-needed points.'