Schadenfreude Wet Spot

I fear that I have been granted indirect superhero powers over inconsequential people and things. I sports hated on the anti-American leftist druggie Maradona and within one month; he has one of the worst coaching performances in World Cup history, humiliates Argentina's leftist president, visits with his 2nd favorite dictator who is actually having a worse month than Maradona given that his support of FARC was exposed at a recent OAS meeting -- see Vargas Llosa article -- was dumped as Argentina's coach and now, in the most predictable ugly ending since one of Rev. Wright's parishioners declared his candidacy for the presidency, Maradona has turned on those who gave him the opportunity for which he was not qualified and did not deserve.

Dear Maradona,

You're traveling through another dimension; a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead [thanks to the ADA Act of 1990, signposts are now enano-friendly], your next stop, ... the Quinque-Cocal drug treatment center, in Holguin, 470 miles (750 km) east of Havana.

So who or what to focus on next? Dear Marlins ownership....

ESPN article referenced is copied in full at end of post.

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Chronicle of a death foretold - by Sam Kelly
Thursday, July 29, 2010

On the 26th July, workers from all walks of life took to the streets of Buenos Aires for a political march to mark the 58th anniversary of the death of María Eva Duarte de Perón, better known outside Argentina as Evita. It was fitting, in a way, that the same date was ultimately the day that sealed the fate of one of the few Argentines who can match (or exceed) Evita for popular mass appeal. Diego Maradona's reign as Argentina manager officially ended on Tuesday the 27th, but the damage was done the day before.

Julio Grondona, the president of the Argentine FA, engineered the decision to suit his own ends, having finally lost patience with Maradona's turbulent managerial style. Whether the news has been reported in your part of the world as Maradona quitting, Maradona being sacked, or whatever, make no bones about it; he was pushed. And there's no better boss in the world at pushing his staff out than Julio Humberto Grondona. In thirty-one years in charge Grondona has been the only public official of any description in Argentina to remain in office through military dictatorships and the change to democracy which brought governments of all colours to power. What's more, he's remained close to all of them. And he's done so without ever sacking a manager.

Diego Maradona's contract expired on the 30th June. That his contract talks only happened on Monday was partly his own fault. Whilst AFA directors were unimpressed with the World Cup campaign, Grondona wanted to renew Maradona's contract even against the wishes of his own board. Next year the elections for the presidency of the organisation are coming up, and Grondona seemed afraid of the political fallout should he be the man to sack the greatest and most adored figure in the history of Argentine football.

The events of the last week or so have changed Grondona's opinion somewhat, though. One reason for the delay in the meeting to discuss Maradona's new contract was that Diego took a flight to Venezuela to meet his good friend Hugo Chávez, rather than stay at home to talk. During the delay, though, he did help some form of "dialogue" along. He phoned up a TV chat show, and made his position clear; "If they even touch the kit man," he told the panel, "I'll walk." According to Maradona himself, Grondona's opening gambit in the contract talks when the two met a couple of days later was, "first of all, the kit man's got to go".

Maradona has somewhat hoist himself by his own petard in many ways, then. It wasn't only his words on that chat show - El Show Del Fútbol - that helped his bosses get rid of him. A prominent panellist on the show is Oscar Ruggeri, a man who'd never been a TV personality before this year. Ruggeri was the man Maradona had wanted as his assistant, but whom Grondona put his foot down over and wouldn't allow onto the technical team. His solution? Ruggeri got a job as a TV "journalist" and, when he travelled to South Africa in that capacity, was the only journalist Maradona allowed in to "watch" the squad train.

Not only that, but the network Ruggeri works for - and therefore the network Maradona phoned to give his exclusive bargaining plea to - is TyC Sports, the cable company. Some readers might remember them from this time last year, when the Argentine championship was delayed by a week as Grondona, backed by the government, tore up the TV contract with TyC in order to re-sell the broadcasting rights to the state-owned channels. Ever since, TyC have been heavily critical of the AFA. Maradona's choice of media outlet seemed calculated to irritate his employers.

It would also have irritated the Argentine government. Like the governments of Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay (all of whom enjoyed much better than expected World Cup campaigns), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Argentine president, invited her national team's manager and any players who were still in the country to attend a function at the presidential residence in Buenos Aires for a photo opportunity. After the side had been welcomed back to the country with an outpouring of support, it seemed a great chance for her to pick up a few votes by gladhanding. But her invitation was flatly ignored by Maradona, and instead Chávez was the first president he met after the World Cup.

After supporting him publicly for so long, Cristina suddenly began to feel that Maradona perhaps wasn't such a great vote-grabber after all. With Grondona also tiring of him, this was only a matter of time. And following Maradona's televised declarations, the job became simple for Grondona; ever the Godfather figure, when he finally got Maradona at the meeting on Monday, he simply made him an offer he knew he couldn't...um...accept.

So what next? Favourite for the job is Estudiantes manager (and former Sheffield United and Leeds playmaker) Alejandro Sabella, but if he stays with his club then Diego Simeone, Miguel Angel Russo, or youth team coach Sergio Batista could all come into play. Maradona, meanwhile, has offers on the table from the Mexican national team and Napoli, if rumours are to be believed. Whilst Grondona hasn't come out of this looking all that good, Maradona has at least remained true to himself; a press conference on Tuesday evening saw him continue to defend his back room staff to the hilt.

The quote on all the t-shirts that'll be on sale in central Buenos Aires by Wednesday afternoon was this: "Grondona lied to me, [national team co-ordinator Carlos] Bilardo betrayed me." Maradona's looked out of his depth a lot of the time, but the men running the side might yet find that their biggest mistake, in the long run, was putting themselves in a situation which pitched them against one of the greatest folk heroes their country has ever known. And we're not talking about Evita.
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What Gordon Solie Could Teach Major Scobie

Reading Henry Graham Greene, I get the feeling of watching someone trying to wrestle with God. His main characters bring the admirable intensity of a Dan Gable to the match, but lack the perspective of a Gordon Solie. I am an agnostic when it comes to characterizing the Soliesque perspective as either appreciating the absurd or just a professional weariness, but I know a healthy balance when I see it.

In Greene's perfectly titled novel, The Heart of The Matter - characters seem to do nothing but get to the heart of matters [the third of his four major Catholic novels] - his introspective thoughts are given voice mainly through his protagonist, Chief of Police Major Henry Scobie. Late in the novel, Greene gives us a clue as to why he wrote those type of novels.

She sat there, reading poetry, and she was a thousand miles away from the torment that shook his hand and dried his mouth. She would understand, he thought, if I were in a book, but would I understand her if she were just a character? I don't read that sort of book.

You get the idea that Greene wrote books that he wished others would write, thereby sparing himself the work. Characters who gave voice to moral concerns and reflections. After reading Greene, it's easy to see why he 'didn't read those sort of books.' How could they compare to the thoughts running through his fascinatingly descriptive, rational and decidedly unhappy mind? Just a few of the many interesting thoughts from the novel:

Why ... do I love this place [Haiti] so much? It is because here human nature hasn't had to time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you don't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man be carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed out first major sin a at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old death-bed?

He had no sense of responsibility towards the beautiful and the graceful and the intelligent. They could find their own way. It was the face for which nobody would go out of his way, the face that would never catch the covert look, the face which would soon be used to rebuffs and indifference that demanded their allegiance. The word 'pity' is used loosely as the word 'love': the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.

While rarely does Greene share happy thoughts, they do bring pleasure. The type of pleasure that survives beyond the moment of exposure. So while few if any of Greene's thoughts run the risk of being uttered by anyone looking to sell you something or entertain you beyond the written word, they rang true to this reader.

As a way of savoring the book, I've gathered my favorite Greene thoughts into three categories at the end of the post.

• Killer Sentences
• Masters of the Universe, Beware
• Wrestling with God

The excerpts may not mean as much to those who have yet to read the book, but are still worth reading. You understand? It's what Major Scobie could not, sah.

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The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene - excerpts

Killer Sentences

He lifted the moist hand and kissed the palm: he was bound by the pathos of her unattractiveness.

There was something defenseless, it seemed to Scobie, in his whole attitude: he stood there waiting for people to be friendly or unfriendly - he didn't seem to expect one reaction more than another. He was like a dog.

He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger's life, the interest the young mistake for love [ouch].

He had the sense of an animal which had been chased to its hole.

'Oh, is that all?' she asked with immense relief, and irritation at her ignorance moved like hatred unfairly in his brain.

He read somewhere that love had been invented in the eleventh century by troubadors. Why had they not left us with lust?

But if romance is what one lives by, one must never be cured of it. The world has too many spoilt priests of this faith or that: better surely to pretend a belief than wander in that vicious vacuum of cruelty and despair.

Sometimes his eyes strayed to the walls seeking a cockroach, but you couldn't have everything.

Honesty was a double-edged weapon, but intelligence looked after number one [picture a young Dyer making notes here].

It was like having a box of chocolates in a bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.

'Your work is more important to you than I am,' Helen said, and the banality of the phrase, read in how many bad novels, wrung his heart.

He felt as though he had exiled himself so deeply in the desert that his skin had taken on the colour of the sand.

The soda hissed in the glasses and Yousef drank greedily.

Masters of the Universe, Beware

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war [hear that Heat fans], but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

They had been corrupted by money, he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was more dangerous, because you couldn't name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.

He had no sense of responsibility towards the beautiful and the graceful and the intelligent. They could find their own way. It was the face for which nobody would go out of his way, the face that would never catch the covert look, the face which would soon be used to rebuffs and indifference that demanded their allegiance. The word 'pity' is used loosely as the word 'love': the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.

What an absurd thing it was to expect happiness in a world so full of misery. ... Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, evil - or else absolute ignorance [insert Ari Gold, 'boom' here].

Wrestling with God

Why ... do I love this place [Haiti] so much? It is because here human nature hasn't had to time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you don't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.

She was crying. He felt an enormous tiredness, bracing himself to comfort her. 'Darling,' he said, 'I love you.' It was how he always began. Comfort, like the act of sex, developed a routine.

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man be carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed out first major sin a at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old death-bed?

The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

It was a formality, not because he felt himself free from serious sin but because it had never occurred to him that his life was important enough one way or another. He didn't drink, he didn't fornicate, he didn't even lie, but he never regarded this absence of sin as virtue. When he thought about it all, he regarded himself as a man in the ranks, the member of an awkward squad, who had no opportunity to break more serious military rules.

It seemed to him for a moment that God was too accessible. There was no difficulty in approaching Him. Like a popular demagogue He was open to the least of His followers at any hour. Looking up at the cross he thought, He even suffers in public. [All pause and insert a Klymaxx-type rap about how Greene's too gu-gu-good].

She said furiously, 'I don't want your pity.' But it was not a question of whether she wanted it - she had it. Pity smouldered like decay at his heart. He would never rid himself of it. He knew from experience how passion died away and how love went, but pity always stayed. Nothing ever diminished pity. The conditions of life nurtured it. There was a single person in the world who was unpitiable, oneself.

O God, give me death before I give them unhappiness.

The priests told one that it was the unforgivable sin, the final expression of an unrepentant despair, and of course one accepted the Church's teaching. But they taught also that God had sometimes broken his own laws, and was it less possible for him to put out a hand of forgiveness into the suicidal darkness than to have woken himself in the tomb, behind the stone? Christ had not been murdered - you couldn't murder God. Christ had killed himself: he had hung himself on the Cross ...

How often, he thought, lack of faith helps one to see more clearly than faith.

He thought: pious people, I suppose, would call this the devil speaking, but he knew that evil never spoke in these crude answerable terms: this was innocence.

The words of the Mass were like an indictment.

Innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men.

When he was young, he had thought that love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty and pity.

She sat there, reading poetry, and she was a thousand miles away from the torment that shook his hand and dried his mouth. She would understand, he thought, if I were in a book, but would I understand her if she were just a character? I don't read that sort of book.

This was what human love had done to him - it had robbed him of love for eternity. It was no use pretending, as a young man might, that the price was worth while.

All you have to do now is ring a bell, go into a box, confess ... the repentance is already there, straining at your heart. it's not repentance you lack, just a few simple actions ...

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The Meeting That Made The Decision Possible

DISSOLVE TO: A garden, somewhere outside Schenectady:

PAT O’RILEY
So ... Reinsdorf will move against you first. He'll set up a meeting with someone that you absolutely trust ... guaranteeing your ability to speak freely. And at that meeting, you'll be setup over this whole tampering business [Pat drinks from a glass of wine as Dwyane watches him]. I like to drink wine more than I used to, anyways, I'm drinking more....

DWYANE
It's good for you, Pat.

PAT O’RILEY (after a long pause)
I hope you don't mind the way I ... I keep going over this Reinsdorf business...

DWYANE
No, not at all....

PAT O’RILEY
Oh well, eh ... I want you to arrange to have a man check all the tweets that go in and out of your account because....

DWYANE
I did it already, Pat.

PAT O’RILEY
Oh, that's right ... I forgot.

DWYANE
What's the matter? What's bothering you? [Then, after the Pat doesn't answer.] I'll handle it. I told you I can handle it, I'll handle it.

PAT O’RILEY (as he stands)
I knew that James was going to have to go through all this. And Bosh, well, [he sits besides Dwyane], Bosh was, well.... But I never, ... I never wanted this ... sharing the spotlight for you. I work my whole post-LA & NY life, I don't apologize, to take care of the Arison's. And I've refused ... to be a fool [Beasley pick aside] ... dancing on the string, held by all those -- capologists. I don't apologize ... that's my life ... but I thought that ... that when it was your time ... that ... that you would be the one to hold the strings. Mutiple-MVP's Wade, first owner-player Wade, or ... something ...

DWYANE
A Lebron succeeding in Cleveland ...

PAT O’RILEY
... or a Tiger without the missing windshield ... there just weren't enough bad GM's, Dwyane. Just weren't enough bad GM's ...

DWYANE
We'll get there, Pat, ... we'll get there....

PAT O’RILEY
Uh... Now listen, whoever comes to you with this Reinsdorf meeting ... he's the traitor. Don't forget that.

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The Circus Clowns Mocking The Dancing Bears

Guest blogger, Wichi, weighs-in.

The sport media reached heretofore unthought of lows on the Lebron decision/announcement. First they fell all over themselves tweeting, commenting, rumoring, etc. Then, like jealous hyena’s forced to watch the carcass being enjoyed by a pride of lions, they screeched in unison about the pomposity of it all, the lack of tact, the hype, all of it. The very creators of the 'over-hype' (hyper-hype?) now are wondering aloud how it all got started.... Give me a break. How is James’ 60 minute special in ANY way less dignified than these journalists obsession with the chance to be 'the man' who got the scoop?

Then the hoops pundits spent most of yesterday aghast that LBJ didn’t choose THEIR pre-ordained landing spot - Chicago. Jon Barry most of all looked like he put $25k in Vegas on Chicago and lost. These experts are mocking the idea of this team being able to co-exist, win, excel, etc. Sour grapes to me. Here’s a question, How’d Team USA do in the 2008 Olympics? Exactly.

Mike Wilbon (whom I respect generally) pontificates that this "new school" athlete doesn’t stay in one place like they used in 'his day' and comments that no matter what, LBJ should have stayed with "his guys" and simply worked and worked until they won. Really? Fine. A couple questions for Wilbon; Mike, who was your first employer in the media world? Why didn’t you simply stay there and made it work? Why did you take the better jobs, the ESPN gig? Why?

One wonders if all 3 of these guys had gone to NYC if the spin wouldn't be, 'this is marvelous! This is great for the NBA, for the Mecca of basketball,' blah blah blah.... I think it would. We are seeing a subtle hoops elitism, in that only 'select' cities/franchises deserve this type of luck, dynasty or star power. Who are those select, pre-ordained children of the gods? Why LA, Boston , NYC, Chicago of course. What arrogance. What pathetic fear is now crawling through the NBA elite and media. There’s a new, very big, strong, and focused sheriff in town, and he ain’t your friend. We have heard this all before. During UM’s long dominance of college football and in 1997 when the media tried to cheapen the Marlins World Series win, e.g. too young a franchise, they bought the best players, it's not a baseball town, etc.

The saddest clown of all, Dan Gilbert. No more pathetic, desperate, whiny sports person in memory. Terribly worded letter. "Cowardly betrayal?" Oh, so if you’d wooed Wade to Cleveland you were OK with THAT betrayal since its not YOUR guy leaving? Oh, OK.... The same team that tried to get Bosh there - and thus not to stay in Toronto - is whimpering like the scorned one-night stand. Have SOME dignity Cleveland and stop acting, well, like Cleveland.

And that is the crux of it, THEY hate US. Miami is hated they way NY used to be; because of our diversity, our rise, our attitude. We saw it first with the UM Hurricanes, and in more subtle ways when the national media reports on events here. They do not think we have paid our dues.

Yes, we here in Miami aren’t classically loyal or true” or even deserving in the truest sense of the word. We have been spoiled, to tell the truth. The Marlins win a WS in their 5th year; Dolphins win a Super bowl in their 7th year; Panthers are in a Stanley freaking Cup Final after 3 years; the Hurricanes rule college football for an 18-year span (1984 -2002); We got another World Series win, another SB win, and an NBA title.

Wanna know our secret? The unspoken deal we make with our teams? We aren’t to be trifled with. We are not blindly loyal. We don’t appreciate half-assed efforts (hear that Mr. Loria?). We have a healthy balance to our sports. We don’t spend money supporting bad or average teams. Pat Riley gets it. Win or be forgotten is the mantra here. Sorry if that doesn’t meet the standards of a Cleveland / Cubs / Bills fan waiting in the cold to see a crappy team. I get it. WE get it. You’re 'tougher' than us in that sense. OK, so we’re soft, immature front-runners.

But we’re smarter.

And better.

And you simply don’t like it.

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Miami Heat and Ron Rothstein

This won't feel right unless Miami Senior High Hall of Famer Udonis Haslem stays with the Heat. But that aside, there are a few things we can be certain of today.

1. It's a mistake to compare what the Heat have done in the NBA salary cap environment to what MLB teams [Yankees and Red Sox] do when they routinely outspend competitors. Pat Riley and the Miami Heat organization's accomplishment was not clearing cap space, heck even the Knicks can do that. Their achievement involved salesmanship and professional credibility. That is much different than adding a zero to contract offers.
2. This generation of Cleveland sports fans will produce better writers than this generation of Miami sport fans. Sports-type suffering will do that.
3. Dan Gilbert is the right man to lead a hostile takeover of under performing and inefficient botánicas under the holding company, Changó's Rack. [Overheard at Changó board meetings, "do we or do we not stand behind our curses people?"]
4. This Miami Heat team will be gearing up for their 2nd year in the playoffs as the new Miami Marlins stadium opens in my Little Havana neighborhood in April 2012. Wow.
5. There may be other communities as deserving as the City of Miami for this sports-related good fortune, but none more. A little reminder of where things stood back in early 1989. This from the Sports Illustrated vault:

Life at the bottom of the Midwest Division was especially trying last week for Ron Rothstein, coach of the 4-32 Heat. After riots in Miami's Overtown section caused the postponement of the Heat's game with the Suns, Rothstein suffered a blowout just a few blocks from the disturbances. Police helped Rothstein change the tire, but the next night nobody could help Miami stop the Bulls' Michael Jordan, who flattened Rothstein's team, scoring 34 points and leading Chicago to a 112-108 victory.

My brother Fernando and I rarely missed a minute -- my cousin Ramiro once caused me to miss a first quarter [it cost us the game, check it out] against Milwaukee back in 1993, but I'm almost over it now -- let alone a game during the first six years of the Heat. Current Heat assistant, Ron Rothstein, was the coach in the beginning and we remain big fans of his. I would describe Rothstein as old school, except that term seems too hip for him. Again, like Udonis, this wouldn't feel right if he wasn't part of the Heat's future. From the sidelines, here are lineups Rothstein has and could ... witness [sorry my bad].


How can this be any better for Miami Heat fans?

The New York Knicks free agency period is being described as an "utter disaster." Bill Simmons - of whom I am a fan, but who is clearly in despair over the Heat's ascendancy - wrote [before the Lebron decision] about that franchise:

I ruled out the Knicks last week after details trickled out about LeBron's comical New York meeting, which sounded like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch because of Donnie Walsh being in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace (he just had neck surgery), and James Dolan being James Dolan. Now the Knicks are gaining momentum thanks to the "He's coming!" buzz that drove MSG's stock price up 6.5 percent Wednesday. Where did this buzz come from? As far as I can tell, nowhere. But there's buzzing. You have to believe me. My BlackBerry practically blew up yesterday with e-mails from sports-industry friends with "KNICKS???" in the subject heading.

If he spurns them, then suddenly we're looking at the most disastrous decade in the history of New York sports -- first the Layden Era, then the Isiah Era, then Walsh spending two years gutting the team so he could spend $100 million on a guy with a bad knee and a bad eye who hasn't played defense in six years. Do you realize the Knicks will have given away top-10 lottery picks in 2004, '06, '07, '09, '10 and, potentially, '11 and '12 without making the playoffs or landing one superstar? How is that even possible?

(Important note: The fact that David Stern stuck Rod Thorn in New Jersey, Walsh in New York, David Kahn in Minnesota and Stu Jackson in Vancouver has to be added to his Wikipedia page. Like, right now. He's the Pied Piper for putrid GMs.)

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Hey Hey LBJHow Many Franchises Did You Kill Today

Hey, how many anti-Vietnam war chants can I realistically invoke on this blog.

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Maradona and Schadenfreude

Does anyone know how to contact the equivalent of the DEA in South Africa? I got one hell of a tip for them tonight.

Argentina was slaughtered in their World Cup quarterfinal match on Saturday. They surrendered -- the French are thrilled this sentence can now be written to include another country -- to the Germans, 4-0. A quick review of World Cup championship matches [including 3rd place vs 4th place finishers] with a four goal differential since 1930, yielded only one other loss of that magnitude. However, that loss by Bulgaria came at the hands of Sweden in 1994, a team seen as much superior. While this match was only a quarterfinal, both teams were considered legitimate contenders to win the Cup. If anything, Argentina's team featured more established talent - including the world's top player in Lionel Messi - while Germany's talent was considered too young before the tournament began.

So the Argentine team cracked in a historic manner on Saturday. Speaking of crack, Argentina is coached by Diego Maradona, an anti-American druggie whose urgent need for the limelight resembles a dog who continues to lick the part of the sofa where a sugary substance once resided. The dog must know it's gone, but he acts determined to bring it back, even if it means that his tongue is sacrificed in the process. In this case, Argentina's World Cup chances were the item being sacrificed so that Maradona could lick the spotlight one more time before he relapses.

This from an Argentinian fan blog before the game:

The time has come to discuss about a quarter final that is very special to all of us. The past is still very fresh and painful, and us, argentinos expect nothing else than a victory from our magnificent players.

In order to beat Germany, the coaching staff will have to calm down (Maradona), analyze and think about some important issues.

Which system to use? In my previous thread opening, I’ve mentioned some important tactical problems related to the 4-3-1-2. A system that we all obviously know very well, so it’s easy to understand what isn’t working. Against Mexico, Corea and Greece, we all noticed that:

- Germany perfectly know how to beat 4-3-1-2. They perfectly know that once they pass the Tevez-Messi-Higuain line, it won’t come back, and that the best way to beat us is to attack from the wings and use the space left on purpose by our 7-men-midfield to cross and find Klose. This is the tactical reason why we conceded one of the most hurting gol ever (2006).

Calm down? Mr Lopez [the blogger], do you understand what you are asking? A medical perspective:

"Typically, patients with cocaine overdoses in the emergency room are treated with nitroglycerin, sedatives such as Valium, and some blood-pressure medications such as calcium channel blockers and some beta blockers," Dr. Vongpatanasin said. "However, the standard treatments don’t alleviate all of the adverse effects of cocaine on the heart, blood pressure and central nervous system."

Argentina put it's World Cup hopes on Humpty Dumpty. Watch Castro and Chavez try and put him back together again.

Sensing the prospects of a collapse, I wanted to enjoy it among other World Cup fans so my day started at Fritz & Franz Bierhaus in Coral Gables. Great atmosphere for the match, but not nearly enough space for the large crowd. Thankfully, Germany scored very early on and I was surprised at how quiet the Argentina fans got for the rest of the half. I feel for the Germany fans. They seemingly root with a handicap, they mustn't be too angry or organized in their cheering.

Spreading my enjoyment, I saw the 2nd half at the Italian Sports Grill in the Fountainbleau area. I figured it was my best chance for a pro-Germany crowd. No crowds there, which was just as well. I was able to thoroughly enjoy the beating being administered to Maradona's club - 'enjoy' entails shouting insults every time the bearded midget appeared onscreen - with impunity.

Again, South African DEA, call me [making hand motion while extending thumb and little finger, curling the base and middle knuckles of the other 3 fingers].

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When Irish Eyes Are Wailing

Maybe it was the whole Eamon de Valera thing. So while I've come late to the game, I feel as though I'm getting my Irish on lately, except for the whole fighting, drinking and gregariousness thing. If Mangan's good enough for James Joyce and Graham Greene, who am I to rain on their bipolar parade. Please avoid reading the poem while alone or sober.

The Nameless One by James Clarence Mangan - 1803-1849

ROLL forth, my song, like the rushing river,
That sweeps along to the mighty sea;
God will inspire me while I deliver
My soul of thee!

Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening
Amid the last homes of youth and eld,
That once there was one whose veins ran lightning
No eye beheld.

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour,
How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,
No star of all heaven sends to light our
Path to the tomb.

Roll on, my song, and to after ages
Tell how, disdaining all earth can give,
He would have taught men, from wisdom's pages,
The way to live.

And tell how trampled, derided, hated,
And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,
He fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song.

--With song which alway, sublime or vapid,
Flow'd like a rill in the morning beam,
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid--
A mountain stream.

Tell how this Nameless, condemn'd for years long
To herd with demons from hell beneath,
Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long
For even death.

Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,
Betray'd in friendship, befool'd in love,
With spirit shipwreck'd, and young hopes blasted,
He still, still strove;

Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others
(And some whose hands should have wrought for him,
If children live not for sires and mothers),
His mind grew dim;

And he fell far through that pit abysmal,
The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns,
And pawn'd his soul for the devil's dismal
Stock of returns.

But yet redeem'd it in days of darkness,
And shapes and signs of the final wrath,
When death, in hideous and ghastly starkness,
Stood on his path.

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow,
And want, and sickness, and houseless nights,
He bides in calmness the silent morrow,
That no ray lights.

And lives he still, then? Yes! Old and hoary
At thirty-nine, from despair and woe,
He lives, enduring what future story
Will never know.

Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble,
Deep in your bosoms: there let him dwell!
He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble,
Here and in hell.

Those strike me as the words of a man who understands his very Irish Catholic faith. I'm guessing this poem won't make it onto a Joel Osteen PowerPoint presentation anytime soon.

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