CORNER KICKS
1Qualifying play for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa already is underway in Asia and Oceania, but things get more serious this weekend when South American giants Argentina and Brazil begin their campaigns.
Argentina is at home against Chile on Saturday and away to Venezuela three days later. Coach Alfio Basile this week strengthened his already formidable forward line by adding Indepediente striker German Denis.
Denis, 26, has scored 15 goals in 13 Argentine league games this season and joins fellow forwards Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona, Carlos Tevez of Manchester United, Javier Saviola of Real Madrid and Sergio Aguero of Atletico Madrid.
Brazil, meanwhile, opens on the road against Colombia in Bogota on Sunday and plays Ecuador in Rio de Janeiro three days later.
Brazil Coach Dunga has the tricky problem of whether to start striker Afonso Alves, who led the Dutch league with 34 goals last season. On Sunday. Alves, 26, scored seven goals in SC Heerenveen’s 9-0 rout of Heracles Almelo. It was the Dutch club’s largest margin of victory in its 87-year history.
Colombia Coach Jorge Luis Pinto already has made a similar decision. Pinto opted to leave striker Juan Pablo Angel of the New York Red Bulls off his roster entirely, even though Angel has scored 17 goals in 22 matches for New York this season.
2In an interview with FIFA.com on Monday, Mexico national team winger Andres Guardado, who was acquired from Atlas of Guadalajara this summer by Spain’s Deportivo La Coruna for $10-million, said “a series of errors” cost Mexico the Gold Cup final, which it lost, 2-1, to the United States.
“Football in the U.S. has improved a lot [and] Mexico are finding it very difficult to go there and win,” Guardado said. “Still, I believe that performance was not indicative of the level we’ve been achieving internationally, both at the Copa America and the World Cup.”
Mexico plays Nigeria in the border city of Juarez on Sunday (noon on Telemundo) before traveling to Los Angeles for an Oct. 17 friendly against Guatemala at the Coliseum.
3Bob Bradley, the U.S. national team coach, Tuesday named an almost entirely foreign-based roster of 21 players for the team’s Oct. 17 match against Switzerland in Basel.
The only three MLS players in the group were goalkeeper Chris Seitz and forward Robbie Findley, both of Real Salt Lake, and midfielder Maurice Edu of Toronto FC. Less familiar names called into camp included former San Diego State goalkeeper Tally Hall of Esbjerg in Denmark and former Cal defender Steve Purdy of 1860 Munich in Germany.
4Dynamo Kiev, a perennial power in Ukraine and in European competition, has stumbled out of the gate this season and Coach Josef Sabo has responded by placing his players in a remote training camp.
“I have taken them away from their women, from their wives,” Sabo said. “Women in football are a scourge. They do not understand that men need to work, that they have a hard job to do.”
5In Durban, South Africa, a FIFA inspection team today will conclude a three-day visit to four of the 2010 World Cup’s nine host cities, having visited Johannesburg, site of the opening match and final, as well as Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, where new stadiums are under construction.
Meanwhile, Trevor Malone, South Africa’s finance minister, has blasted soccer officials after the country’s Premier Soccer League (PSL) signed a five-year, $73-million sponsorship agreement with Absa bank, a Barclay’s subsidiary.
Malone said he had learned that more than $7 million was to be paid to five PSL figures on the committee that negotiated the deal, including Irvin Khoza, the millionaire owner of the Orlando Pirates and chairman of South Africa’s World Cup Organizing Committee.
“Making such an irregular payment is wrong, morally reprehensible and corrupt,” Malone said in an open letter to Absa, which denied that the negotiators would be receiving anything.
STAT OF THE WEEK
Here is one measuring stick for telling the difference between Major League Soccer and its Mexican counterpart: 19 of the players called up for South America’s World Cup qualifying games play in the Mexican league. Only one, D.C. united forward Jaime Moreno (above) of Bolivia, plays in MLS.
MAKING THEIR PITCH
James Lehmann, Arsenal goalkeeper, told Der Spiegel magazine about his rival Oliver Kahn of Bayern Munich: “He takes himself far too seriously and thinks he is very important. I don’t like it when someone glorifies himself.”
