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Meta
Tag Archives: #Messi
Pele & Maradona: Contrasting Greatness
by Jimmy Burns Among the claims to football greatness, those of Pele and Maradona, who died within just over two years of each other, will endure as a contrast in character and iconography, defining between them the developing story of modern football. Pele’s emerged on the international scene as a skinny seventeen-year-old in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. He went on to straddle the transition of football from a game to a serious business venture, breaking cultural and racial boundaries , his true potential barely registered by the grey …
Messi is the greatest, so was Maradona
For fear or being accused of being a party popper, and in deference to my many Argentine friends who , as I write , are having the most joyous and extended party of their lives, let me first offer my heart-felt ‘felicidades’. Argentina has not only won two world cups as a democratic country, but each have been achieved thanks by the best player of his time, with a distinct personality and unique set of skills. No need to relegate the memory of the late Maradona to make way for …
Maradona’s World Cup
Maradona’s World Cup Story By Jimmy Burns With the World Cup in Qatar fast approaching this winter in the Northern hemisphere, one football legend will be missed, and notable by his absence , even for ever remembered, Diego Maradona who died two years ago on the 25th of November 2020. During his tempestuous life and career, Maradona played for top clubs in South America and Europe-including Boca Juniors, FC Barcelona and most notably Napoli where he became an adored hero and adopted son. He was the Player of the …
The shame of Argentine Football
In the Paraguayan Capital of Asuncion , hardly an icon of historic accountability, a group of South American football executives will meet tomorrow (Tuesday) to decide when and how, if at all, the second leg of the continent’s club championship Copa Libertadores final between River Plate and Boca Juniors of Argentina will be played. This is no routine meeting. It comes after the match initially scheduled for last Saturday was cancelled twice over the weekend as a result of a violent attack in Buenos Aires on the Boca team bus …
Messi fails to ignite
Argentina went into their first World Cup game against Iceland rather like they invaded the Falklands, thinking it would be a walk-over. Instead they walked away with their tail between their legs, just scraping a 1-1 draw with tournament rank outsiders Iceland. Whatever the Icelanders were they were certainly not minnows. “They are Vikings”, an Argentine friend commented as we watched the game along with several of his compatriots, long-time residents of Catalonia, part of a not insignificant community along the coastal belt just south of Barcelona, which includes Leo …
Messi & Catalonia
So eat your hat all you illuminated Catalan nationalists who thought Lionel Messi would be your standard bearer all the way to independence and beyond. FC Barcelona had tried its best to keep details on his thoughts on the matter from public scrutiny-but the truth is now out. As reported in the Spanish and Catalan media the Argentine’s latest contract with the club has a specific clause stating that player will be free to leave the club in the event of Catalan independence having Barca excluded from any major European …
Tomorrow’s unmissable El Clasico
Doubt it not – today’s El Clasico – Real Madrid ‘s Spanish league encounter with FC Barcelona is already much more than a football game. With the star studded teams in two of the best clubs led by the two best players in the world-Messi and Ronaldo- and followed by billions of viewers around the world , this is anticipated as one of the great unmissable sporting spectacles of the year. But this historically politically charged occasion between two great rivals is likely to be played with added drama and …
Messi’s Number 10
Of the several images of a memorable El Clasico last Sunday few will endure with such iconographic intensity as that of Lionel Messi, holding up his number 10 Barca shirt to the Bernabeu stadium after scoring the defining goal against Real Madrid in the last minute of extra time. Real Madrid fans who occupied the bulk of the stadium are an exacting crowd. They expect and demand the best from their star players as they do in the city’s nearby bullring of the country’s best matadors, not least in the …