|
Zinedine Zidane rediscovered his game in Germany, while Ronaldinho left his in Barcelona. Fans behaved on the streets, yet referees couldn't cope with on-the-field cheats.
This was a World Cup full of surprises and disappointments that did little to improve the game's battered image. Although it had its highs, the lows won easily. Fans were full of hopes when the World Cup kicked off June 9. Defending champion Brazil would captivate them with "samba soccer"; the United States and the African and Asian nations would continue to emerge; and England would prove itself a genuine title contender after 40 years without a sniff of the trophy. Instead, the Europeans turned the World Cup into a private party. Italy and France made the final, with host Germany and Portugal also in the last four. Whoever wins the title, reaching the final is a major achievement for the entire Italian team and for France midfielder Zidane. The Italians have been distracted by a match-fixing scandal that threatens to end with the demotion of top teams Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio. More than half of the Italian squad plays for those clubs, but the players have managed to concentrate on winning games. Their semifinal performance against host Germany, a team that improved each game, was the best of the tournament. Both teams played high-quality soccer and the Germans were expecting their second penalty shootout in a row when Fabio Grosso and Alessandro Del Piero scored goals in the last two minutes of extra time. All season, Zidane had looked a shadow of the man who was the world's best player five years ago. At 34 and with retirement only one game away, he shrugged off his weary Real Madrid form and produced the best World Cup moments on the ball with his trademark touches and sublime passes. By contrast, Ronaldinho was the World Cup's biggest flop. Pravda - www.pravda.ru
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.