Continental Drift Widens This Gap
There were two goalkeepers and two forwards in the news last week, but the gulf between what Fabien Barthez and Gabriel Batistuta did in Europe and what Tony Meola and Ante Razov did in the United States is so vast as to be unbridgeable.
In soccer terms, there continues to be a yawning chasm between the continents that is unlikely ever to be spanned.
We begin with the keepers.
THE BALD TRUTH
Manchester United’s coffers are so overflowing that the English champion can pretty much buy any player it wants, within reason.
Lately, it has been searching for a goalkeeper to replace Australian Mark Bosnich, who never has really lived up to expectations, so-so Dutchman Raimond Van der Gouw and Italian Massimo Taibi, who was such a failure that England’s tabloid press cruelly dubbed him the “Blind Venetian.”
For eight years, the man in the nets for ManU was the giant Dane, Peter Schmeichel, who became something of a folk hero in Manchester before heading for a warmer climate last year with Sporting Lisbon in Portugal. Now, the team finally has found a player to live up to Schmeichel’s reputation.
On Wednesday, it signed France’s World Cup-winning goalkeeper, Barthez, from AS Monaco for a reported $11.68 million. He has a six-year contract and will earn a weekly salary of $67,380.
According to Reuters, Barthez’s immense popularity in France can best be judged this way: “Only the issues of Paris Match magazine dedicated to the deaths of former president Francois Mitterrand and Princess Diana sold more than the 1.1 million copies with the shaven-headed Barthez on the cover.”
The 28-year-old, whose girlfriend is supermodel Linda Evangelista, can even take her to see a wax statue of himself at the Grevin museum in Paris should he care to do so.
“Apart from his obvious goalkeeping skills, he has the personality to play on the biggest stage,” Manchester United Coach Alex Ferguson said.
MEANWHILE IN KANSAS CITY
Meola has a personality too, but no wax statue and no big stage. He does, however, have a new contract.
But because he plays in Major League Soccer, no one but he and his agent know how long it’s for or what it’s worth. MLS policy is to not disclose anything that might be remotely of interest to fans.
Meola is the best keeper in MLS by a country mile. He holds just about every imaginable league goalkeeping record.
Obviously, Meola will be fortunate to earn in a year what Barthez makes in a month, but $250,000 is nothing to sniff at. The league’s policy is simply paranoid.
It wants to avoid looking small-time compared to Europe but ends up looking exactly that.
THE ARCHANGEL CASHES IN
They call him “The Archangel” and “Batigol,” but what Argentine striker Batistuta really needs is not another nickname but a train to haul away all the money he has just been handed in Rome.
For the past nine years, Batistuta has plied his trade for Fiorentina, up the road in Florence. There, he was such a hit that fans erected a bronze statue of him at one end of the stadium.
He scored an Italian league-record 168 goals in 269 games for Fiorentina, all the while becoming Argentina’s all-time leading goal scorer.
Finally, it was time to move on, and AS Roma lured him south for a vast amount. It paid Fiorentina $33.8 million and will pay Batistuta a salary of $7.15 million a year for three years.
“I’m surprised and feel proud that they’re paying so much money for me, I’m 31 . . . but they bought my goals and I hope to deliver what they contracted me for,” Batistuta said.
PUT UP OR SHUT UP
Chicago Fire and former UCLA forward Razov has yet to approach the kind of goal-scoring totals Batistuta has racked up. But if he were as quick with his feet as he is with his mouth, the U.S. national team might not be in such dire need of a true goal scorer.
Just last week, Razov was jabbering again about how he is unappreciated in MLS and how he intends to head to Europe as soon as the season ends. Supposedly, there are clubs in Germany and Spain that are willing to at least take a look at the forward who leads MLS with 11 goals this season.
“MLS obviously doesn’t think too much about me,” Razov, 26, told the Washington Post. “What I have heard [from the league regarding a new contract], I’m not even going to discuss it with them.”
Fine. But before burning the bridge beneath him, Razov has three games for the U.S. in which to break his scoring drought. In six games, he has yet to score for the national team.
“At the MLS level, he looks and smells like a forward,” U.S. Coach Bruce Arena said.
At the international level, well . . . Razov has the opportunity against Ireland and Mexico in the U.S. Cup. Razov played 20 minutes Saturday as the U.S. opened the competition with a 4-0 victory over South Africa in Washington. If he fails, perhaps he will realize that he is not quite the finished--or finishing--product he thinks he is.
Not ready to cross that gulf between the continents, anyway.
