Beckham is no lock for England
Don’t count Fabio Capello as part of Beckham mania.
While being introduced as England’s new soccer coach Monday, Capello was noncommittal about whether English soccer star David Beckham has a future with the national team.
Capello previously coached Beckham at the Spanish club Real Madrid. He stopped playing Beckham after the player’s much-ballyhooed announcement in January that he would play for the Galaxy of Major League Soccer. Beckham later was reinstated and helped Real Madrid win the Spanish League title before joining the Galaxy.
“I had a thorny relationship with David at Madrid, but he showed himself to be a great player and a great man,” Capello, speaking mostly in his native Italian, said at a news conference.
“I think Beckham, when he sets himself to something, he will achieve it,” Capello said. “But I will have to make choices. I believe that Beckham is an important player for England and I will take him in serious consideration.”
Beckham, a former captain of the English team, already has made 99 appearances for the national club. He hopes to reach the 100 mark and play for the team in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Trivia time
When was the MLS established in the United States, and how many teams are in the league?
Road trip
Just ask the Buffalo Bills about the glamorous lifestyle of NFL players.
On Sunday, the team had to slog through blizzard-like conditions in Cleveland, only to lose to the Browns, 8-0.
Then the Bills couldn’t leave Cleveland that night because the heavy snow canceled their flight.
They still couldn’t fly out Monday morning, because their chartered jetliner got stuck in the mud at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
So the team boarded five charter buses for the drive back to Buffalo.
Wish fulfilled
Richard Desrosiers’ lifelong dream was to see, in person, his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers play just one game at home. He never made it before dying of brain cancer in March.
So his wife, Kathleen, fulfilled his wish in death.
Kathleen Desrosiers brought a sealed miniature urn with some of her late husband’s ashes, along with his ring and two pictures of him, to Sunday’s Steelers game against Jacksonville at Heinz Field. “I couldn’t take the tumor away. I couldn’t take the pain away. But I can do this,” she told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Amy Litterini, who counseled the couple during Richard’s battle with cancer, arranged for Kathleen’s game tickets and raised hotel money for Kathleen and one of her sons, who live in Exeter, N.H.
They braved biting cold and the Steelers’ 29-22 loss to the Jaguars, but Kathleen called it “an overwhelming experience.”
“It’s sad to think that [Richard] got here in death,” she said, but added: “I got to be with him one last time while he did something he wanted more than anything else in the whole wide world.”
Open seating
The Florida Marlins threw open Dolphin Stadium for the team’s annual “Select a Seat” day, when fans can choose their season tickets for next season.
Except fewer than 50 people showed up in the first two hours of the four-hour event Saturday, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Even the opportunity to meet Manager Fredi Gonzalez and pitcher Scott Olsen wasn’t enough to prompt a surge in advance sales.
It probably didn’t help that Florida was 71-91 this season, leaving them last in the NL East, or that the team traded two of its most recognizable players, Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, to Detroit for six young players.
Never a doubt
Even as a gangly but talented 15-year-old growing up in Kalamazoo, Mich., Derek Jeter knew where he was headed.
“He had this New York Yankees gold necklace,” one of his youth coaches, Mike Hinga, recalled during Jeter’s induction Saturday into the Kalamazoo Central High Athletic Hall of Fame.
“Most of us would go, ‘Yeah, right. That’s pretty funny. It’s good to have that dream, kid, but come on, be real,’ ” Hinga told the Kalamazoo Gazette.
But with Jeter, Hinga added, “there was no doubt in his mind he was going to be a New York Yankee.”
Trivia answer
Major League Soccer was started in 1996, after the U.S. hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup, and it has 13 teams.
And finally
Carolina’s 13-10 win over Seattle on Sunday lifted the Panthers to only 6-8 this season in the NFC South. But Carolina has beaten every team in the NFC West this year: Seattle, Arizona, San Francisco and St. Louis.
--
