Real Madrid’s Jose Mourinho won’t shrink away
Far from retreating into the shadows to lick his wounds in the wake of Real Madrid’s recent 5-0 demolition by rival Barcelona, Jose Mourinho emerged fighting.
The club’s president, Florentino Perez, called it “the worst game in the [108-year] history of Real Madrid,” but to Mourinho it was nothing more than a speed bump in the road.
Shrugging off the loss, the Portuguese coach, who last season led Inter Milan to a trio of titles, including the European Champions League, before moving to Madrid, lashed out at UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, after it banned him for two Champions League games.
Mourinho, it seems, had been caught instructing Real Madrid players Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos to intentionally get ejected from a Champions League game against Ajax Amsterdam so that they could serve suspensions now and therefore have a clean slate going into next year’s knockout phase of the competition.
“I see the punishment as a medal,” Mourinho said. “I’m not going to change. My grandmother died a long time ago, but I remember what she told me as a child: ‘If they are envious of you, you should be happy.’”
The ban was subsequently reduced to one game, which Real Madrid won last week while Mourinho watched from the stands, and all is well again at the Spanish club.
The Mourinho legend, meanwhile, keeps growing.
“They talk about Mourinho as though he invented football,” Barcelona and Brazil fullback Dani Alves told Spain’s Marca newspaper. “It seems as though he wins every game from the bench.
“He’s a great coach, but he has been working with a lot of very good players.”
That dive is no ‘10’
Sticking with the Iberian connection for a moment, it was fascinating to see the comments made last week by Danish referee Claus Bo Larsen.
Larsen, who retired Wednesday after blowing a whistle for 22 years, told Denmark’s Ekstra Bladet newspaper that Real Madrid’s Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo was “the most irritating player” he had ever encountered and was known for diving.
“He is always out to get cheap free kicks, especially at home,” Larsen said, adding that referees recognized the fact.
“We tended to talk in the referees’ room about how he would go down easily,” Larsen said. “We know not to be biased, but we have to be prepared.
“When he would lie down after failing to win a free kick, he would smile at me because he knew I didn’t fall for his stunts.”
Best in the world
Britain’s FourFourTwo magazine has an online poll going in which it asks readers to select the best player in the world from among five nominees.
Not surprisingly, Barcelona’s Argentine wizard Lionel Messi leads the field by a country mile with 60% of the vote.
That Tottenham Hotspur winger Gareth Bale is second with 13% and Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta wasn’t even included on the list of five suggests the exercise should not be taken too seriously.
Iniesta, who scored the goal that won Spain the World Cup, is the odds-on favorite to be named the world’s player of the year for 2010. Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport claims it has inside information that Iniesta will win.
If true — the announcement will not come until the gala ceremony in Zurich on Jan. 10 — it would mean yet another honor for a player who already has won everything in sight, including:
The World Cup and the European Championship with Spain, as well as the Club World Cup, the European Champions League (twice), the UEFA Super Cup, the Spanish La Liga title (four times), the Spanish Super Cup (four times) and the Copa del Rey, all with Barcelona.
Iniesta, incidentally, is only 26.
The puppet knows
According to a joke making the rounds in England and first heard on BBC 3’s “Special 1 TV” program — whose star is a Mourinho puppet — the computerized FIFA video game isn’t working too well “because the file is corrupt.”
FIFA corrupt, get it?
There might not be much to laugh about in international soccer at the moment, but “Special 1 TV” is the exception. Google for a giggle.
Iran isn’t laughing
On another humorous note, it seems that Iran might very briefly have considered asking Diego Armando Maradona to be its next national team coach.
The Tehran Times reported that “Maradona, who is a fan of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” was coming to town to meet Iranian soccer officials.
Within days, however, the notion had been swatted.
“There are too many newspapers in Iran, and they like to make things up,” Abbas Torabian, who handles recruitment for Iran’s soccer federation, told Eurosport.
Not to worry, though, Iran has a new target on its radar: former England, Mexico and Ivory Coast national coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, the puppet target of many a “Special 1 TV” joke.
Or, as the show’s saying goes, “Shut up, Sven.”
“We would be very happy if we got Mr. Eriksson,” Torabian said.
The local angle? The coach Iran chooses will replace Afshin Ghotbi, late of the Galaxy and Rancho Santa Margarita, when Ghotbi steps down after the 2011 Asian Cup.
