CORNER KICKS
1 One of the most intriguing club matches to be played in South America in many a year takes place in Rio de Janeiro today, when Brazil’s Fluminense attempts to climb out of the hole it dug itself on an Andean mountaintop.
That happened last Wednesday, in the first leg of the Copa Libertadores final that will send the winner to the FIFA Club World Championship in Japan. Fluminense was stunned, 4-2, in Quito, Ecuador, by unheralded Liga Deportiva Universitaria, better known as LDU.
Fluminense has never won the Copa Libertadores, a 48-year-old tournament that is the continent’s equivalent of the European Champions League, nor has LDU, Ecuador’s league champion.
Both teams scored significant semifinal victories, with Fluminense knocking out defending champion Boca Juniors of Argentina and LDU defeating Club America of Mexico.
Whichever team prevails will make soccer history, but the Brazilians need to win by three goals to overcome last week’s loss, so their task at giant Maracana stadium is more challenging.
Then comes Japan and, if the annual Club World Championship in December follows its usual pattern of pitting South America against Europe in the final, tonight’s winner will play Manchester United in Yokohama for the world championship.
2 The hot rumor from Mexico these days is that there are officials from the Saudi Arabian soccer federation wandering around Mexico City with satchels full of gold, seeking Hugo Sanchez.
Yes, Mexico’s greatest player but not-so-greatest former coach is being targeted as the next coach of the Saudi national team. No word yet on what sort of money is being offered, but it’s unlikely to be small change.
3 Costa Rica, which last week fired former national team star Hernan Medford as its coach, on Thursday will appoint Rodrigo Kenton in his place.
Kenton, 53, coached Costa Rica’s team at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and was an assistant under Bora Milutinovic when Milutinovic coached the Ticos to the second round of the 1990 World Cup in Italy and also when Milutinovic took Nigeria to the second round of the ’98 World Cup in France.
In between those gigs, of course, Milutinovic coached the U.S. to the second round of World Cup ’94.
4 Even though the next World Cup isn’t for two more years, Asia’s qualifying has moved into its two-group final phase.
Group A will feature Australia, Bahrain, Japan, Qatar and Uzbekistan, and Group B will feature Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
The top two teams in each group will qualify for the World Cup, while the third-place finishers will play off for the right to play the Oceania winner for a place in South Africa.
5 This is what Danny Jordaan, the head of South Africa’s World Cup Organizing Committee, said last week about the possibility of the 2010 tournament being moved:
“I think it was a misconception in the world that there was a so-called Plan B. It was just not real. I think it’s a lack of understanding. I think it’s ignorance, frankly.”
And this is what Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, the president of FIFA, said on Sunday:
“I would be a very negligent president if I hadn’t put away in a drawer somewhere a Plan B. However, only a natural catastrophe would change things. If we had to activate the Plan B, we would take our decision after the Confederations Cup.”
The U.S. which qualified for Confederations Cup by winning the Gold Cup last summer, has a three-in-seven chance of playing new European champion Spain in the eight-team event in South Africa next June.
