The second week of the world football championship was noticeably more fun. She fit in a dozen matches in which the first sensations and regular scandals occurred. Izvestia chose four events that helped the football fan spend an unforgettable weekend.
Lace Argentina. Eight years after the match Argentina - Jamaica, which became the basis for a nationwide hit from the group "Chayf", South Americans threw new art to the world of art. The presence on the fan stand of Diego Maradona, holes in the opponent’s defense and the prospect of a carefree life in case of victory led to the fact that Argentina finished off Serbia and Montenegro, which had already fallen into two parts - 6: 0. The incredible lightness that the Pekerman team showed during a ruthless rout defeated it significantly in the eyes of the bookies. According to estimates by the William Hill office, the Argentinean chances of winning the championship are now only slightly inferior to the Brazilian ones.
Blood of the Americans. The most brutal match in the tournament was played by Italy and the USA. After spending the whole match in incredible tension, the teams earned three deletions for two by the 47th minute of the match. The violations that led to two of them looked truly frightening. The Italian De Rossi drove on MacBride's nose so that the American could not stop the bleeding for five minutes. For the teammate Mastroeni answered, with two legs drove into the ankle of the main Italian inventor Pirlo. Against the background of such violations, Pope’s second yellow card, seized immediately after the break, looked like a mere trifle.
Healing the stars. Messages about ailments that have befallen several stars of the current championship at once begin to slowly dissipate. In recent days, three players at once, without whom the skyline of the mundial would have looked significantly impoverished, have entered the field. Argentine conductor Leonel Messi participated in bullying of Serbia and Montenegro for 25 minutes - he scored a goal and made an assist. Healed Wayne Rooney spent more than half an hour on the field and helped the British squeeze stubborn colleagues from Trinidad and Tobago. Finally, having problems with the ankle, Genaro Gattuso entered the field in the first half: the massacre that happened in Italy and the USA could not have passed without the Chain Dog from Milan.
The misfortunes of the Slavs. When the group stage of the championship exceeded the equator, the statistics of Slavic teams playing in Germany looked horrific. Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic suffered nine painful defeats in nine matches, having once played in a draw and won only one victory with a goal difference of 3:17. The only success so far appears for the Czechs, who beat the Americans with a peremptory score of 3: 0.
Brazilians are sleeping, Ronaldo is drinking too much
Despite the boring football shown by the Brazilians in the first game against the Croats (yesterday's match with the Aussies ended after signing the issue in print), it is the Pentacamps who are unanimously considered as the main favorite of the tournament. Perhaps the expressionless game even spurred interest in the team of Carlos Alberto Parreira - about five hundred journalists came to their open training.
One of them was called Matteus, he is from São Paulo.
“You understand,” he explained to me, “Ronaldo and Adriana absolutely cannot play paired with each other.” Zero!
Ronaldo and Adriano at that moment stood apart from the whole group of players and juggled the ball, preventing it from falling to the ground.
“Ronaldo is slow, he plays only in the center, and Adrian needs a more active partner,” continued Matteus.
“They didn’t take Jo, now they bite their elbows,” I thought. Matteus, however, had other views of the Brazilian attack:
- Need Robinho. Then it will be two fast forwards that can play in all areas. But Parreira will put Ronaldo, look. This drunkard.
About Ronaldo, the German newspaper Bild wrote that on the day of arrival in Germany, when the Brazilians received a day of rest, the striker spent the whole night in the Berlin club "Gallery", where he scored drinks for more than 600 euros. Upon recognizing a celebrity, the owners of the club did not demand money from her - everything, they say, at the expense of the establishment. But then they gave journalists a photograph to check. That was two days before the game with the Croats. A day later, Ronaldo did not take part in the training, allegedly due to a jump in temperature (this was explained until the newspaper sniffed everything out). And then there was the match itself, and how Ronaldo spent it - everyone saw it well.
“So he really drinks a lot?” I asked Matteus.
“He loves me very much,” he answered. “But for Parreira, that doesn't matter.” Ronaldo is his favorite.
Parreira, meanwhile, was away from the training process. As a good leader, with whom everything has long been debugged, you can not come to work. If you don’t know in the face of the coach of the Brazilian national team, you would never have guessed that this man in a gray tracksuit, standing blankly at the edge, just whistle, and the best football players in the world will stop playing with the ball and run to him like greyhounds to the owner. Parreira, however, has never used the whistle in his entire workout.
Brazilians play 11 on 11, however, in one half of the field, putting the gate across. Thus, the density of the game increases. Even on an intuitive level, you feel that after such an activity on a regular site it will be easy and pleasant to play football. How nice it is to break out of a traffic jam onto a wide, free highway.
However, the Brazilians and the training lesson does not bother. They shout something and laugh, and scoring a goal, mark it according to all the rules of the genre. They play in the best clubs in the world, for the best team in the world, but so far they have not understood that football is not a game, but a job. And thank God that they did not understand. When the time allotted for the bilateral ends, the winners stand in the back of one another, each puts his hands on his shoulders in front of the standing one and walks around the field for two minutes, singing a song.
It is a pity that our coaches do not see this. One of them, who had worked with the national team at one time, looking at the tattoos of the players, reacted, they say, "Did you, with ..., get into the zone?" I wonder what would happen to him if his players on the field began to sing?
Chermen Dzgoev, Munich