A Soccer Miscellany compiled By MARY HANNIGAN
What's in a name? With baby Zlatan, it's unclear
Two goals in three games, including that rather splendid one against France, wasn’t an unreasonable return for Zlatan Ibrahimovic in Euro 2012, but they counted for nothing in the end with Sweden heading home early.
If he needs a pick-me-up after that disappointment he will, surely, have received one on hearing that a Brazilian man has named his newborn son, well, Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic Lima da Silva’s Da is a fanatical supporter of Brazilian Campeonato side Santa Cruz, according to Yahoo’s Dirty Tackle blog, and after the side’s recent title win he “promised to bury little Zlatan’s umbilical cord underneath its Arruda stadium”.
We’re clinging to the hope that Dirty Tackle was jesting, but part of us fears it wasn’t. Why did the father name his son after the Swede and not, say, Edson Arantes do Nascimento? It’s not clear. Neither is it clear why the father goes by the name of, eh, Franz Beckenbauer.
Portuguese see red over choice of referee: Lisbon less than delighted at Turkish official
Conspiracy theory of the week: Portuguese paper A Bola is a touch unhappy with the choice of referee for tonight’s semi-final against Spain, their headline yesterday reading: “Portugal outraged: the appointment of Turkey’s Cakir rings alarm bells.”
Whats the problem? According to AFP, “the newspaper pointed out that the president of Uefa’s refereeing committee, Angel Villar, was also the head of the Spanish football federation and his vice-president, Senes Erzik, is Turkish and a friend of Barcelona and Unicef.
“He still works for Unicef and he would have been involved in sponsorship negotiations between the UN child rights agency and Barcelona.”
It could, of course, be a case of getting your excuses in early, but you get the sense A Bola will be watching poor old Cuneyt Cakir more closely than they will Cristiano Ronaldo.
Italy’s Daniele De Rossi produced, perhaps, the finest reaction to that Panenka-esque penalty in the shoot-out against England: “Pirlo. Mamma Mia!”
What was a little puzzling, though, about his reflections on the game was the bit where he chatted about his swirly screamer that hit the post:
“I still have to discover if I’m right or left-footed. I risked sending that shot into the stands, but it went fairly well – apart from the upright.”
He’s 28 and he still doesn’t know if he’s right- or left-footed? Take your time, Daniele. Mind you, both of them seem to work fairly well.
After Russia’s football association chief executive Sergei Fursenko stepped down from his position this week, the former head of their FA, Vyacheslav Koloskov, expressed some surprise. “I have a feeling there is more to his resignation. Just three or four days ago he said he was looking for a new coach, meaning he had no plans to resign. Something must have happened that made him change his mind,” he said.
What happened? Hard to know, although the resignation came after Koloskov’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Nothing to say there was any connection, though.
Score settled: Domenech castigates his old charges
So, how did former French coach Raymond Domenech react to the team’s less than sparkling Euro 2012 exit?
Was he gracious, keen not to look as though he was revelling in their demise in light of the unhappy experience he had with the squad at the 2012 World Cup, or, well . . .
“A major tournament reveals the strength of a group, a generation,” he wrote in his column for newspaper Ouest-France. “Euro 2012 showed the full extent of France’s weaknesses, the most glaring being their inability to see anything other than their navel.”
Okay. How about the strength of the squad? “Finally, the substitutes. They either strengthen the team or they destroy it: Jeremy Menez can start a demolition company, he will make a fortune.”
Sympathetic, then.
