Offside and Off the Wall to Boot
This game they call soccer gets more bizarre by the day. Other sports have their peculiar people, but soccer seems to go out of its way to find odd characters and curious quirks.
Here are a few of the more strange goings-on that have attracted headlines around the world so far this year:
* The Spanish club Deportivo La Coruna got more than it bargained for when it signed Uruguayan striker Sebastian “El Loco” Abreu, and perhaps his nickname should have been a tip-off.
Within a month of joining the club, Abreu had taught his teammates a new dance to celebrate his goals, had appeared in several magazines decked out like a band member from Kiss and had staged a Lazarus-like act in the middle of a league game.
About to be substituted in a match against Mallorca, Abreu collapsed. The stretcher came out and he was loaded aboard. As he was being carried off the field, Abreu grinned broadly and waved to fans. It had all been an act.
* Croatian sportswriter Pero Livajic is being more careful about his selections as player of the game these days. A fan disapproved of one of his recent picks, hit him and knocked out three teeth.
* Because a shipment of nuclear waste across the country required the attention of thousands of additional police to handle anti-nuclear protesters, eight games in the German Bundesliga had to be postponed in March because security could not be provided.
* Striker Gabriel Batistuta, who plays for Fiorentina in Italy, owns a 30,000-acre cattle ranch near his hometown of Reconquista in Argentina. One of his sponsors decided to film a television commercial featuring Batistuta working at a slaughterhouse.
The idea was to show what might have become of Argentina’s all-time leading goal scorer (yes, ahead of Diego Maradona) had he failed to hold his own as a soccer player.
But just when filming was about to begin in the Tuscany town of Borgo di San Lorenzo, it was cut short. It seems Batistuta’s agent realized that filming his client in front of a bunch of dead Italian cows might upset another of Batistuta’s sponsors--the Argentine Beef Assn.
* The London club West Ham United spent $3.8 million to sign 16-year-old goalkeeper Stephen Bywater. Why? Because of his genes. Bywater’s great-grandfather was a goalkeeper for Aston Villa, his grandfather was a keeper for Rochdale and his father played in goal for Halifax.
* Another 16-year-old, Vicente Rodriguez Guillen of the Spanish second-division team Levante, has had a world-record $200-million price tag placed on him to prevent his being lured away by Real Madrid. At 16, Guillen earns $45,000 a year playing for Levante’s junior team.
* When Clydebank of the Scottish second division announced it wanted to move to Dublin in Ireland, the repercussions were not what the team expected.
In the middle of a game against rival Livingston, all six ballboys walked out in protest, leaving the team’s bench players to fetch balls kicked out of bounds. Worse yet, half the team’s fans followed suit, as did the stadium announcer, who tossed aside his microphone and stomped off.
The plan to move is being reconsidered.
* In the Albanian village of Toshkez, masked men used the cover of darkness to stop a team bus carrying players and coaches of the Tomori Berat club home from a match. Several were struck and all were relieved of money and jewelry before the robbers fled.
* One of the more interesting games on the English calendar will take place May 11 at Wembley. That’s when a team made up of Scottish members of Britain’s Parliament will play a squad made up of English, Welsh and Irish parliamentarians.
The Scots have two things going for them. Their ranks include two former professionals--Scottish Office Minister Henry McLeish, who played for East Fife and Leeds United, and Ian Gibson, who was a St. Mirren player.
Also in their favor is the fact that Craig Brown, Scotland’s World Cup coach, will coach them. His rules seem quite fair.
“Alcohol 72 hours before the event is forbidden. We just take that for granted,” Brown said. “But that excludes whiskey.”
* Soccer rivalry in Brazil can get downright nasty. When Vasco de Gama played Gremio not long ago, it complained that there was a strange smell of paint in its locker room that made some of its players ill.
* When Jamie Redknapp was 17, a Liverpool fan named Alex Robb bet $419 at 200-to-1 odds that Redknapp would be captain of England’s national team on or before February 1, 2001. Redknapp, now 24, played for England against Switzerland in March. All Redknapp needs now is the captain’s armband and Robb will be $83,700 richer.
* Bartomeu Bestard is a director of the Spanish first-division team Mallorca and the U.S. consular agent on the Mediterranean holiday island. But his plan to transport 13,000 fans to the Spanish Cup Final in Valencia on April 29 has failed. The U.S. 6th Fleet politely turned down his request.
WORLD CUP WATCH
Bora Milutinovic has banned Nigeria’s players from having sex during the World Cup. “The players’ wives or girlfriends could come to boost the players’ morale and nothing more than that,” he said. . . . Cameroon named Frenchman Claude Le Roy as its World Cup coach and demoted Jean Manga Onguene to assistant. . . . Mexico’s World Cup hopes were dented when it lost, 3-1, to the Argentine club Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. . . . Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla might miss the World Cup because of a leg muscle injury. . . . Argentina’s coach, Daniel Passarella, said he probably will stay in Europe after France ’98 to coach a club. . . . Paris Saint Germain has decided not to move from the Parc des Princes to the new Stade de France, leaving Paris’ showpiece $210-million World Cup stadium without a home team.
Paraguay’s goalkeeper and captain, Jose Luis Chilavert, said he will refuse to play in the World Cup if Julio Cesar Romero is included on the team. Romero, who once played for the New York Cosmos, is 40. . . . According to the Washington Post, Major League Soccer has offered to make U.S. national team defender Eddie Pope of D.C. United one of its highest-paid players to prevent his joining a team in Europe after the World Cup. Pope is being offered the league maximum of $236,750, more than triple what he will make this season.
