Martin Amis on Maradona

Martin Amis in The Guardian, October 1, 2004
There is a truly terrifying photograph of Diego Armando Maradona, dating from 2000, the year of his first heart attack. He is wearing: a reversed baseball cap which reveals a squirt of hair, dyed the punk colour of baby shit; dark glasses; a drummer's sleeveless T-shirt, giving full play to the tattoo of Che Guevara on his right shoulder; and a defiant, slack-mouthed sneer. Then you come to the massive emplacement of the gut.
It would be hard to exaggerate the ubiquity of the diminutive (-ito, -ita) in Latin American Spanish, which originates from the extreme reverence and indulgence accorded to the young. You are always coming across grown men with nursery names- strapping Sergitos, hefty Hugitos (and I'm friends with a 60-year-old called, simply, Ito).
But it would choke you, these days, to call Maradona "Dieguito". The figure still frequently seen, on television, wobbling through airports or wedged into golfcarts, has his old hair-colour back, and is more soberly dressed; yet his bulk remains prodigious and unignorable. It visibly tortures him. And you can still glimpse Dieguito, walled up in his new carapace, pining, suffering - but unresisting.
Inside every fat man, they say, there is a thin man trying to get out. In the case of Maradona, it seems, there is an even fatter man trying to get in. Maradona's autobiography, El Diego, was about to bepublished, and there was talk, down here, of his giving an interview in BuenosAires (I happened to be in the neighbourhood: Uruguay).
When he suddenly decamped to Cuba, his second home (or sanatorium) since 2002, I blithely followed. Maradona had already had a drug-induced heart attack in April, true; but it was put out that this particular trip was routine - a dryout, or a decoking. A man describing himself as his agent, a Dieguito-shaped youngster called Gonzalo, received me at his hotel, and we seemed to be moving cautiously forward.
I got my answer the next day, on the news. The doctors - Fidel's doctors - at the Centro de Salud Mental were emphatic. The patient was wired uplike an astronaut, and would be seeing no one.
Maradona retired in 1997. In2001, he played (rather tubbily, I admit) in a televised football match. Now, in 2004, he needs medical permission to watch a televised football match. He is 43. Dieguito - where did he go?
In South America it is sometimes said, or alleged, that the key to the character of the Argentinians can be found in their assessment of Maradona's two goals in the 1986 World Cup. For the first goal, christened "the Hand of God" by its scorer, Maradona dramatically levitated for a ballooned cross and punched the ball home with a cleverly concealed left fist.
But the second goal, which came minutes later, was the one that [England manager] Bobby Robson called the "bloody miracle": collecting a pass from his own penalty area, Maradona, as if in expiation, put his head down and seemed to burrow his way through the entire England team before flooring Shilton with a dummy and stroking the ball into the net.
Well, in Argentina, the first goal, and not the second, is the one they really like. For the Argie macho (or so this slanderous generalisation runs) foul means are incomparably more satisfying than fair.
"It's the same in government and business. They don't just tolerate corruption. They worship corruption." It is a proclivity that extends into the sexual arena, with the high value assigned, in macho circles, to heterosexual sodomy - something noticed in his travels by VS Naipaul and, more surprisingly (this was in the 1920s), by Jorge Luis Borges, who thought it the essence of the cult of "taking advantage".
In Maradona's personal lexicon, the same word does duty for both goalscoring and fornication. (The word is "vaccinate": an odd choice, given that Diego was so often the pre-match recipient of the six-inch painkiller needle, driven into the inflamed kneecap, the supporating big toe.)
By this logic, the second goal against England was a languid, erotic epiphany; the first was a knee-trembler in a back alley; and each has its points.
More broadly, there is in this culture a humiliation, an abjectness, in always playing by the rules. By the time we reach the England game in El Diego, the reader is in any case wholly seduced by the story and by the turbulent naivety with which Maradona tells it.
To begin with, the passions involved were not merely ludic: "In the pre-match interview we had all said that football and politics shouldn't be confused, but that was a lie. We did nothing but think about that. Bollocks was it just another match!"
And it wasn't just the Malvinas, either: it was the revancha of a subjugated and immiserated population. So, having exulted at length in the second goal ("I wanted to put the whole sequence in stills, blown up really big, above the headboard of my bed"), Maradona turns his attention to the first: "I got a lot of pleasure from the other goal as well. Sometimes I think I almost enjoyed that one more."
Andthe reader can only assent, by now, to the contented urbanity of his conclusion:"They both had their own charm." In other words, all's fair - all's sweet - in love and war. And, for some reason, that's what football is, and those are the energies it calls upon: the energies of love and war.
It was a childhood without insulation, in all senses. If the society had its sicknesses, then nothing stood between them and Dieguito. "Everyone goes on about role models. Role models my arse! In Argentina we don't have a single living role model so stop breaking my balls about it."
The beautiful game was a way out of the slums, but it was hardly a beacon of probity for the growing boy. Football was as corrupt and rapacious as everything else. Here (it was well known) was a league where players had to bribe the manager to get on the team sheet - where Patrick Vieira, say, has to slip a bung to Arsène Wenger or else languish in the reserves. Maradona's Buenos Aires barrio was Villa Fiorita ("little bloom"), a festering wilderness in the 1960s (and, these days, a Saddam City of weaponised crime).
"My parents were humble working folk," he writes, but the stock phrase is barely adequate. All 10 Maradonas occupied a three-room lean-to where the only running water was the torrent that came through the roof ("you got wetter inside than out").
The obsession with football seems utterly innate; no memories precede it, and no other interests compete with it. When the infant Diego ran errands, he did so playing keepie-uppie with an orange. When he was three a cousin gave him his first leather ball ("I slept with it hugged to my chest").
And when he went for his first trial, aged nine, he was so advanced that the coach seriously suspected that he was a midget. He made the senior side at 15, and with his first wages he bought another pair of trousers, to supplement the turquoise cords with the big turn-ups. His ascendancy, thereafter, was perfectly designed to detach him from reality - and reality, then, included the Dirty War and the terror and the 30,000 desaparecidos [disappeared].
At the age most kids hear stories, read one headline, he hears ovations. Three months after his debut he was training with the national team, up against Daniel Passarella and Mario Kempes. At 18, after a win over US Cosmos, he swapped shirts with Franz Beckenbauer; at 19, he scored his 100th goal.
He was already the face of Coca-Cola, Puma, Agfa. Marginal and relatively impoverished, South American leagues act as a training and recruitment ground for the clubs of Europe, and in 1982 Maradona duly moved to Barcelona for $8m (£4.4m).
When he went to Napoli two years later he was on $7m a year, plus $3m from Italian television (there was also $5m from Hitachi). An International Management Group poll named him "the best known person in the world", and he was offered $100m for his "image rights"; he turned it down, for patriotic reasons (IMG wanted him to take out dual nationality).
1986 brought him his nationalist apotheosis: he captained Argentina in the World Cup, and they won it. He was 25.
El Diego is a transparent narrative, and you keep seeing in its interstices a startling innerchaos - acute and chronic flaws of character and judgment, and above all a self-knowledge that remains persistently absentee. When Maradona was 14 he fell under the sway of his first manager, an old mentor with the unencouraging name of Jorge Cyterszpiler.
You can see it coming when, early on, Maradona boasts that they "handled everything on the basis of friendship, not a single piece of paper was signed". Sure enough, when he arrives in Naples 10 years later he bewilderingly reveals that, "Cyterszpiler had had such bad luck with figures that I was down to zero". Or less than zero.
Cyterszpiler's bad luck with figures, his investments in Paraguayan bingo halls and the like, additionally devoured Maradona's slice of his transfer fee together with his 10-bedroom house in Barcelona. "What's done is done," shrugs Diego, insisting that every investment (every bingo hall) was the result of his own decisions. Much later on, when Maradona undertakes a fitness drive, he hires a trainer: Ben Johnson.
"Yes, Ben Johnson! The fastest man on earth, whatever anyone says." It is the same with the Camorra - the Mob - in Naples. "They offered me things but I never wanted to accept them: because of the old dictum that first they give and then they ask ... whenever I went to one of those clubs they gave me gold Rolexes, cars."
He didn't "want" to accept them; but he accepted them. It is the same with fouls, and referees. When Maradona forms a judgment, you feel you are watching one his "mazy runs": "That bastard Luigi Agnolin, the Italian ref,wrongly overruled one of my goals. I never stamped on Bossio, no way. I beat him because I jumped over him. It was never an intentional stamp ... that Agnolin, he was a fucker. We tried to pressurise him from the start but the Italian wasn't a man to be intimidated ... He pushed Francescoli, he pushed him! He even elbowed Giusti. I liked Agnolin ..."
Maradona's anarchistic streak also reveals itself in his contempt - no, his disgust - for the law. On the occasions when he attracts the attention of the police he can barely bring himself to say why. "I was arrested, arrested!" he says, and briefly describes the ensuing "farce"; meanwhile, with a polite cough, a footnote steps in to divulge the charge (possession of cocaine).
Later, back in Argentina, after being incessantly doorstepped, "I reacted ... I reacted in the way anyone might. It was the episode with the air rifle, yeah, that's right."
And again the footnote, itself evasive, adds that this was the "affair" when Maradona fired an air rifle at congregated journalists, without adding that he hit four of them and receiveda suspended three-year sentence. Then, too, there are frequent glints of what one might call exceptionalism - or low-level megalomania.
Maradona routinely refers to himself in the third person, not just as Maradona ("We made him bigger than Maradona", "That's the most important thing Maradona can have", and,amusingly, "The drug trade is far too big for Maradona to stop it"), but also as El Diego: "Because I am El Diego. I too call myself that: El Diego"; "Let's see if we can get this point across once and for all: I am El Diego"; "I am the same as always. I'm me, Maradona. I am El Diego."
After a while it stops sounding like self-aggrandisement, and starts sounding like self-hypnosis. Passarella was "a good captain, yes", El Diego allows, but "the great captain, the true great captain, was, is and always will be me".
This form of words finds an echo,later on, in 1996, when Maradona launched a national anti-drugs campaign by saying, "I have been, am and always will be a drug addict."
The 12-stepper's mantra, usually a mock-humble boast of hard-won continence, feels in this case more like a statement of irreducible truth. Maradona has been using drugs for 20 years: it resulted in a 15-month ban (in Italy), ejection from the 1994 World Cup ("I was given [sic] ephedrine, and ephedrine is legal, or ought to be"), and a career-ending scandal on his swansong return to Boca Juniors in 1997.
The habit, after all, can no longer be described as recreational. This is a man who regularly snorts himself into a cardiac arrest. It seems that only a life-threatening debauch can recreate the intensities - the heart-bursting highs, the abysmal lows - of his vanished pomp.
This is an operatically emotional book, and also an exceptionally vivid one. The exoticisms of the Maradona idiolect are balanced by the oath-crammed cliches of football, which would appear to be universal ("the crowd went mental"; "that wanker"; "sorted"; and manager Carlos Bilardo's nicely implausible "Leave it out, Diego").
Butt here are intimations, too, of a stronger level of perception. Pre-match funk in the changing-room: "I felt a silence, too deep, too cold. I looked out at some faces and saw them pale, as if they were tired already."
A bad injury: "I sprinted after a lost ball and I heard the unmistakable sound of a muscle tearing, like a zip opening inside my leg." As for the emotion, Maradona cries himself a river on every other page. And the prose poems to his wife and to his family are all the more affecting because you know that he is now divorced, and estranged from both his brothers; and because you know that the ties of love have not been able to hold him in his orbit.
Many sportsmen claim to be champions of the people, but Maradona's populism is underwritten by his itinerary - the proletarian strongholds of Buenos Aires, Naples, and now Havana (and the only French club he flirted with, indicatively, was Marseille).
In BA, if you ask around, the response to Diego is always thoughtful, always sympathetic; and the Havanans, who have never known a non-decadent Maradona, seem to be unreserved worshippers ("I am Maradona fanatic").
Cuba is perfect for him; he can be a man of the people and a man of the president, hobnobbing with that other world-class scapegrace, Fidel Castro. The great player Jorge Valdano said a good thing about Maradona, and in the Latin high-style: "Poor old Diego. For so many years we have told him repeatedly, 'You're a god', 'You're a star' ... that we forgot to tell him the most important thing: 'You're a man'. "But we're not quite there yet. In Italy they used to tell him, "Ti amo piu che imiei figli" - I love you more than my own children. It's not as blasphemous as it sounds.
With his tantrums, his self-injuries, and his unassuageable sweettooth, Maradona has remained "El Pibe d'Oro", the child of Gold; he is still Dieguito.

Designs on the football!

By Alice Rawsthorn /International Herald Tribune
Things did not bode well. The German goalkeeper Jens Lehmann complained it was "unpredictable." His counterpart from England's team, Paul Robinson, dismissed it as "goalkeeper unfriendly."
Brazil's strikers found it so tricky that they scheduled extra training sessions. Even before the World Cup had started, players were voicing concerns about the official ball, Adidas's multimillion dollar +Teamgeist.
Burdened by a pompous name (the German word for team spirit) with a silly + as a prefix and Adidas's lofty claims that it was the smoothest, roundest and most accurate soccer ball ever, the +Teamgeist seemed set to become the joke of the 2006 World Cup.
Its prospects were not helped by the fact that many of the correspondents flocking to Germany remembered that Adidas made startlingly similar statements four years ago when it unveiled the Fevernova ball for the2002 tournament.
How has the +Teamgeist performed since the World Cup started? Is it living up to Adidas's claims? Or fulfilling the players' fears?
Goalies are still grumbling, but to the surprise of cynics, the new ball does seem to be livening up the game. "It's always tempting to dismiss innovations in ball design as marketing hype, but this one is creating more excitement," said Jack Huckel, director of museum and archives at the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, New York. "It can be shot from longer distances with greater impact and bent at greater speed. You see it exploding off the players' feet. I've tried it out and you feel the difference. Though, as a former goalkeeper, I understand why they don't like it."
The commercial importance of the World Cup ball to Adidas is obvious. How many other products are launched as part of one of the world's most popular events to a global television audience of hundreds of millions of enthralled fans?
Adidas pays millions of dollars to be the official ball supplier to the World Cup in the hope of creating a bestseller. Having sold a record six million of the Fevernova ball of 2002, it has even higher expectations of the +Teamgeist.
It is harder to understand why designing a soccer ball should be so daunting. After all, it is a ball. How hard can it be to design a round object of a specific size and weight?
The challenge the sports industry's designers, engineers and scientists have struggled with for decadesis to produce a ball in so robust a form that it enhances, rather than inhibits, the quality of play by behaving in exactly the same way wherever and whenever it is kicked.
From the late 1800s to 1970, soccer balls consisted of 18 hand-stitched brown leather panels. During the 1966 World Cup, viewers complained they could not follow the ball on their black-and-white television screens, and FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, commissioned Adidas to design a television-friendly alternative. The result was the Telstar with 32leather panels - 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons.
Launched at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, it has been the default design for soccer balls ever since. Adidas has since developed a new ball for every World Cup with varying degreesof success. A notable flop was the Tango España of 1982 with rubber inlaid over the seams.
The rubber rubbed off when the ball was kicked, and each ball had tobe replaced during the match.
More successful was the Questra of 1994, whose polyurethane foam coating made it faster in flight. All of these balls adopted the 32-panel format, as did the Fevernova. "After so many years of 32 panels,we decided to try something completely different for 2006, and chose a 14-panel structure," said Hans-Peter Nürnberg, who led the +Teamgeist design team for Adidas as senior development engineer.
"By reducing the number of panels and the length of seams, we made it rounder, better balanced and therefore more accurate." The new ball has two layers, inner and outer, with a new thermal bonding technology used to create a seamless surface. Adidas's rationale is that this makes the ball more consistent because the impact of the player's foot will be the same wherever it strikes the surface.
As there are no seams, the ball does not absorb moisture during the game and thereby stays the same weight. The +Teamgeist is slightly heavier than an unused Fevernova but weighs less than a Fevernova that has been used for a whole match, as it has not retained water. This too ensures that it behaves in the same way throughout the game.
Adidas subjected the +Teamgeist to intensive laboratory and field tests before putting the ball into production last July. Nürnberg said it exceeded expectations in the tests, which included repeated kicking by a robotic leg to replicate the 2,000 kicks it would endure in a typical World Cup match and rotating the ball 250 times under water.
Even so, the toughest test for a soccer ball is its performance in a match. After the first stage of the World Cup, observers are convinced that the +Teamgeist can be kicked more powerfully from longer distances. Torsten Frings's goal for Germany against Costa Rica was an example, as was Tomas Rosicky's first goal for the Czech Republic against the UnitedStates.
Similarly, the swerve of the ball is accentuated as it bends to the left or right. "The bend is more dramatic," affirmed David James of Sheffield Hallam University's sports engineering department. "This ball is great for players like David Beckham, at least it should be."
Another factor, analyzed by his colleagues at the University of Sheffield, is the +Teamgeist's tendency to swerve from side to side before hitting the back of the net when it is kickedstraight without spin. All of this makes life tougher for goalkeepers, as they face stronger shots and unexpected swerves. As matches progress, these problemsare aggravated by the +Teamgeist's lightness, which makes it harder to catch.
"It's so light that it slips out of your hands," Huckel noted. "That's why we see more goalkeepers thumping the ball away rather than trying to catch it."
The +Teamgeist also has a tendency to confuse goalies by wavering as it hurtles towards them. James attributes this to the aerodynamic complexity of its shape. "We're at the cutting edge of science here because we understand more about the aerodynamics of airplanes and Formula One cars than of spheres," he said. "A perfect sphere moves through the air with considerable difficulty, which is why sports balls tend to have rough surfaces. The felt on tennis balls and dimples on golf balls improves their aerodynamics and helps them to move faster."
The seams on the old 32-panel soccer balls had the same effect, whereas the seamless +Teamgeist bobs about disconcertingly, like a milder version of a knuckleball in baseball.
Despite the goalies' grumbles, the +Teamgeist has proved even more popular than Adidas expected, setting a new sales record of 15 million balls so far.
Nürnberg's design team is already working on its successor. "We need to erase the imperfections in its structure," he said. "Although we can't expect toproduce something as revolutionary as the +Teamgeist for every World Cup."

What is football anyway?

By Marcela Mora y Araujo
July 7 /Guardian
"The World Cup has nothing to do with football," César Luis Menotti,the man who managed Argentina to its first World Cup victory in 1978, once told me. It was early 1994 and we were discussing whether the USA was an apt host nation for the forthcoming WC. After all, it's not really a footballing nation.
But what is a footballing nation? What is football anyway?
Menotti meant that the USA as host nation would not have any adverse impact on
the game since the World Cup is no more than "a big business venture orchestrated by Fifa". Hard to argue with that. The USA was as good a stage as any in that respect - some might say, better than most.
Menotti's view of football is a romantic notion of the "beautiful game", a form of artistic expression meant to delight and entertain performers and consumers. Others believe it to be a zero sum competition whose value is quantified by results - a discussion which has cropped up a lot on this blog in recent weeks.
Both views are valid. The problem with the World Cup is that it attracts a much broader audience than regular leagues.
Clearly, some long-suffering fans who have put the hours in come rain or shine, who have learnt formations and memorised scorelines, who have experienced the range of emotions dealt by the cruel hand of fate and followed the ball since time began find the notion of fairweather fans enjoying the show only once every four years somehow offensive.
The World Cup has become so successful a business venture that, in the words of Julio
Grondona, an eminent active member of Fifa for the better part of 50 years, "when it happens it focuses the attention of most people in the world to the detriment of other events".
Like most of the world I have watched the World Cup on TV, but I did go to the stadium a couple of times. Last week I went to Berlin's Olympiastadion, an eerie construction that blends modernism with history, much in the way the whole city does.
On my way to the game I saw a man with a rather cool T-shirt bearing the legend: "Der Ball ist rund" and a picture of a leather ball. Beautiful, strong leather with coarse stitching, not a sportswear brand in sight.
I recognised the phrase but wasn't sure from where. At the stadium I met a well-dressed German man with a VIP accreditation. He was furious with gate attendants who sent us off on a 10 to 15-minute walk past many other possible points of entry where we were repeatedly denied access.
We chatted, in the way fans do, and walked around a stadium surrounded by uniformed
officials, much in the way one would at any ground. During our peregrination he told me he was a film-maker. I immediately thought of German cinema, of Fitzcarraldo and Run Lola Run. Then I remembered: Der Ball ist rund.
Perhaps this is in part what Menotti feels makes the World Cup removed from football:
the tunnels up to the terraces are crammed with filmmakers and celebrities. The tickets are prohibitively expensive. There is no smell of rancid urine. The surrounding areas, instead of offering hats, flags and headbands or hotdogs and sugary coffee - or whatever stadiums round the world sell, these are just the ones I'm familiar with - are lined with white tents in which marketing companies host "hospitality events".
You've a good chance of bumping into an Argentinian rock star, Baddiel and Skinner, or a corporate lawyer. But a true fan? A regular bloke who has been there every home game since his dad took him there as an eight-year-old? Unlikely at a World Cup stadium.
Maybe controversially, I don't think this makes the World Cup less about football. For me, going to the stadium in Germany put me in touch with a slice of German footballing history and a slice of German contemporary culture - football is part of all that.
Of course it's clouded in marketing strategies and we have to perform sacrilegious actions such as the Mexican Wave, or buy a Valderrama wig (thankfully a fad that seems to be dying down). And of course those having the biggest laugh are the manufacturers of the white and black "Teamgeist" ball, who have sold close to 15 million worldwide since the tournament began, and not the quirky Philosophy Football outfit who make the T-shirt that caught my eye.
But it isn't just that.
Football in its purest form has been present throughout the tournament. Or can you really tell me that the suspense of the semi-final between Germany and Italy - that certainty shared by millions that after 118 minutes of athletic prowess we were in for penalties and then the sudden plot twist, the goal, changing everything - is not football?
Klinsmann's hurried look as Italy celebrated,thinking there are still a couple of minutes, we can turn it round again, urging his men not to give up.
Del Piero's impatient run "to make his appointment with the ball" as my Italian friend so eloquently put it - that's not football?
And Zidane's calm, cool, collected penalty in the semi-final against Portugal, determined, confident - is that not football? The debatable nature of the penalty itself, the arguably boring quality of the game, the impossible task of the referee, the reprehensible anger of Felipao - that's not football?
And it's not just the goals either: the infinite dissection of every move, every decision, every gesture (the wink, the dive, the hug, the shrug); the impossibility of any agreement over an image we have all seen repeatedly (is that a punch or a careless arm-stretch? Did he stamp on his testicles or merely take a gentle step backwards? Was there any contact before he fell?).
Even the debate about whether or not it's scoring goals that matters, that old aesthetic versus result discussion, permeates every preview and every post-match analysis.
What's more, all the traditional tribal enmities come to the surface. Hand in hand with the defence and support of our team comes derision of the other. The danger here is the team's equation with nationality. As a Boca fan, I know I can make swiping statements about River supporters which would never be taken as any more than an expression of the irrational licence that football grants us to vent negative feelings.
Somehow, when it comes to being an Argentinian making a statement about Brazilians, caution is of the upmost importance. Football nationality has nothing to do with real nationality, a leading Scottish-born sportswriter who lives in England said to me last week. Because football is not real, he added.
But some of the exchanges ignited by the event feel real. As one person commentated on an earlier blog of mine, the discord among us is worthy of an Edgar Reitz epic.
Football has everything to do with territoriality. Football is mine, we all feel; I am the one who really knows this game, I understand it in a way that 'others' don't. Football is all about "us" and "them", a battle for territory and possession, and a sense of belonging for individuals through a common objective. Football belongs to all of us, we all have an expert opinion and a personal history and a bundle of shared memories and hopes.
Football is about strategy and poetry. In the words of JB Priestley, Art and Conflict for a shilling.

Dirty and dishonest still they are the best!

By John Cheeran
Italy have the looks of the World Cup champions.
Amazing, isn't it?
In India we have a fancy for the system. We blame all our football ills on the lack of a perfect system. The naive must be having a picture of a football factory that puts together the likes of Zidanes and Ronaldinhos and Riquelmes.
We blame corrupt and incompetent officials for Indian football not making enough progress. But never blame the players!
Even in cricket, India's inability in not regaining the World Cup has been put down to the flaws in the system.
Flaws in the system? Italian football is in the midst of its worst crisis.
A club as illustrious as Juventus is starting at relegation. Club officials and match officials together with others were part of a corrupt system which saw improper selection of referees and others. The match officials are being investigated for behaving less than impartially on the field. Former executives at Juventus are alleged to be at the centre and Fiorentina and AC Milan and Lazio are the other clubs involved.
A report in Financial Times said: It is a scandal of hitherto unknown middlemen, whose actions have not been traced definitively either up to the top or down to the players.
The point is that the miasma of the match-fixing scandal has not affected Italy's performance on the biggest stage of football, the World Cup.
How such a rotten system can inspire footballers?
Does the dishonesty that led to the fixing of matches not leave any impression on the players and the national team?
May be with the noose tightening around those who are involved in the scandal and with the Sports Tribunal delaying its verdict to get the World Cup out of its way, players are giving all they have, to prove that they are the best in the world.
You can be dirty, dishonest and yet you can be the best. That's the secret of sport.
There should not be any dichotomy in this. Football itself has become a field for trickery by players and error-laden decisions by referees. So where does honesty figure in this? No where.
Football is not about being honest, but winning.
World Cup is not a test for the system but for players and their skills.Winning depends on players; not in having a clean system and administration to run the game. It takes guts and gumption to survive the 90 or 120 minutes of madness, beauty and brutality.
And winners take it all. Fix the rivals, the Italians must be barking.

Brazilian soccer made simple!

By Larry Rohter in Rio de Janeiro / NYT
How does Brazil do it?
Year after year, World Cup after World Cup, soccer stars seem to roll out of here like cars off a factory assembly line. First came the generation of Pelé, Garrincha, Tostão and Rivelino, followed by Zico, Falcão and Socrates.
Since the mid-1990's, Romário, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and now Kaká, Adriano and Robinho have further burnished Brazil's reputation for unmatched excellence. To the average fan around the world, Brazilian soccer appears to be a powerful, well-oiled machine.
But those who know it best are aware that the reality is far more complicated, that the country's record five World Cup championships are more a result of popular passion for the beautiful game, as it is often called here, than of any organized apparatus that methodically finds and develops players.
"There is no system in Brazil," said Carlos Roberto de Oliveira, who, playing as Roberto Dinamite, was a member of the Brazilian national team in the 1970's and early 1980's. "Everything happens on a random, haphazard basis."
To hear Brazilians tell it, organized professional soccer here is chaotic, corrupt and in perpetual disarray. But the game itself is so deeply ingrained in daily life - and in Brazilian identity and self-esteem - that its strength at the grass roots more than compensates for those deficiencies at the top.
Familiarity with soccer begins early, producing a bottomless pool of talent. By age 3, a boy has probably learned how to dribble the ball, and by 7 he is playing the informal sandlot version of the game with his pals in any open space they can find - a clearing in the jungle, an empty lot in a large city, a pasture or on the beach - and may be sleeping with the ball, if he is fortunate enough to afford one. Despite the considerable economic advances it has made over the last generation, Brazil is still a country with millions of poor among its 185 million people.
And it is the poor who have traditionally seen success in soccer as their fastest ticket to prosperity and prestige.
Of the 23 players on the national squad competing in Germany this month, only three come from a background that would be considered middle class here. Most of the players, whether they were born in cities or in the countryside, come from families that are humble, the preferred term for poverty here.
Their success breeds only more success, especially now that the globalization of soccer has made Brazilian players increasingly in demand for teams all over the world. When a poor boy sees that a player like Ronaldinho, considered the best in the world going into the World Cup, can earn 28 millioneuros (about $35 million) a year, it encourages him to aim high and devote himself to the game.
"There are now so many role models, and no glass ceiling," said Alex Bellos, the author of "Futebol: Soccer, the Brazilian Way." "Go into any shanty town or urban center, and you're sure to find someone who had a mate at school who played with Ronaldo or knows someone else who is a pro footballer. The idea is more than a dream, it's a reality."
That hunger for success, however, does not explain the extraordinary inventiveness and fluidity with which Brazilians play the game. Some of the country's most knowledgeable analysts see that skill as a response to the confusion and unpredictability of daily life here, which has made Brazilians adept at what is called dribbling around rules and barriers.
"We Brazilians are accustomed to having to improvise, to being creative when we are in a tight spot," said Tostão, now a popular commentator whose real name is Eduardo Gonçalves de Andrade.
"It's the foundation of our music and art, too, and that intuitive ability to sidestep the rules and improvise on the spot is what distinguishes the great player from the excellent." As Brazil urbanizes and as it becomes harder to find open spaces, the game is also moving indoors, to gymnasiums in a form known as futsal.
Ronaldinho and Robinho came out of that setting - the soccer equivalent of arena football in the in the United States. "Futsal teaches players a capacity to create in a small space," said Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil's most influential and outspoken soccer commentators.
"Then, when they get to play on the grass, on that larger stage, they can glory in really having room to create."
Traditionally, the path of a Brazilian player was clearly defined from the moment he was spotted playing sandlot ball, usually by an amateur scout who was often a fan of a local team. He was signedby that team as a teenager, passed on to a larger regional club if he showed promise, sold to one of the 20 or so teams with large national followings, and finally, if he was very lucky, ended his playing days in Europe.
Throughout his career, however long it lasted, a player was little more than a piece of merchandise. If he offended management or wanted too much money, he could easilybe replaced because he had few contractual rights and there was always more talent waiting in the pipeline.
But when Pelé, the country's greatest player, became sports minister in the mid-1990's, he made an effort to change the system. Using his prestige, he managed to push legislation through the Brazilian legislature that was meant to reduce the power of clubs and give players more control of their careers. The so-called Pelé Law has weakened the clubs, commentators agree, but it has also ended up benefiting agents more than the players.
The agents, or impresarios, as they are known, have increasingly assumed responsibility for finding promising players, who are signed to personal management contracts and parked at clubs willing to showcase them until their value increases and they can be sold to a European club, sometimes while still teenagers.
"In the last decade, this has become an industry," Tostão said. "The clubs don't have as many scouts out there as they once did, people who will call out of love for a club and tell them they have to see a kid. Today, it's all the impresarios and their personal networks of scouts, which I think is a bad thing because they grab the kids and put them under their personal control."
In hopes of getting an early look at future stars, teams in Italy, England, Spain and Belgium have either bought pieces of Brazilian clubs or signed development dealswith them. They are also bypassing the clubs and the player agents by sending their own scouts to scour the backlands and the urban slums for exportable talent, as Major League Baseball teams do in places like the Dominican Republicand Venezuela.
Brazilian law and international rules forbid teams to sign players who have barely entered their teens. But to get around that restriction, European teams are now offering jobs as drivers or cooks to the parents of promising young players, who are then taken to Europe and enrolled on their junior squads. Private soccer schools are also growing in importance as sources of players.
These operate independently of clubs and for the most part do not receive support from the Ministry of Sports or the Brazilian national confederation. The confederation has a $165 million contract with Nike, but is widely criticized for contributing little to development programs for Brazilian youth.
Roberto Dinamite is one of several former players who operate such academies. Born and reared in Duque de Caxias, a working-class suburb of Rio, he has established the headquarters of his Roberto Dinamite Institute across the street from the rutted field where he was first spotted at age 10 by a scout for the Vasco da Gama club. His school in his old neighborhood has functioned for little more than a decade.
But it has produced one player who is on the Brazilian national junior team, another who plays for PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands and two who are signed to teams in Rio. More than 150 boys, ages 7 through 16, participate in the program.
On a cool and windy afternoon the day before Brazil's debut in the Cup, a group of 13-year-olds was going through a drill that required them to run a zigzag among a row of traffic cones, then take a pass with the right foot, dribble and finally kick the ball with the leftfoot.
"All of these kids know how to play, and every one of them wants to be the next Ronaldinho," Roberto Dinamite said. "But if there is even half a Ronaldinho here, or at some other school like this, then Brazil is going to remain atop the heap."

The inexorable logic of Italian web

Roger Cohen /IHT
Nobody in Dortmund's wonderful Westfalenstadion will forget Italy's dramatic 2-0 victory over Germany. Like Italy's 4-3 semi-finalwin against Germany in Mexico in 1970 -- also clinched in extra-time -- this one will enter the realm of legend.
It was a tremendous struggle, fought to the last with everything the players had, and in the end the stronger side prevailed. The 119th and 121st minute goals from Fabio Grosso and Alessandro Del Piero were daggers to the German heart; some of the valiant "Klinsmanner" (coach Jurgen Klinsmann's men) sank to their knees at the final whistle.
The ending was cruel, but it has to be said that footballing justice was done.
Germany kept coming at Italy, but the waves of attacks foundering on an Italian wall could not disguise the fact that the Azzurri always seemed to have the tactical edge.
The game was won in midfield. Andrea Pirlo of AC Milan had a majestic game, capped with a moment of fatigue-defying lucidity that set up the first Italian goal. How, after almost two hours of football played at a relentless pace, he was able to control the ball, make as if to shoot, then move right and slip a gorgeous little pass through to Grosso,must remain a mystery to lesser mortals.
Michael Ballack, the German captain, never achieved Pirlo's lucidity. And there, in essence, the match was won and lost. Marcello Lippi, the Italian coach, also played a role. To the last, he went for victory, refusing to accept the lottery of penalties, even with the great Gianluigi Buffon in the Italian goal. All three of his substitutions brought on strikers: Alberto Gilardino, Vincenzo Iaquinta and, in extra time, Alessandro Del Piero.
The coach's gamble paid off as Italy finished stronger and Gilardino and Del Piero combined to deliver the second goal. It is striking how the physical condition of this Italian side, which had appeared suspect early in the tournament, has improved and, on the night, was as good as that of the Germans.
Poor Klinsmann! How he suffered on a hot Dortmund night in a stadium that was a cauldron of the fervent German hopes he had raised. It has to be said that trying to find a way past this Italian defense marshaled by Fabio Cannavaro can drive anyone crazy. Buffon has conceded just one goal in six games at the World Cup, and that was an unstoppable own goal.
Germany had chances -- particularly the disappointing Bernd Schneider in the first half and Lukas Podolski late in the game -- but fell short at the last.
Neither Ballack nor anyone else could deliver the decisive pass. The power of the suspended Torsten Frings in midfield was certainly missed; he might have muted Pirlo and freed Ballack to think more about creation than covering. But, for all their skill, the Germans lacked the spark of "fantasia" they needed to find a way past Cannavaro and company.
We were left to admire the guts of this side, the deadly acceleration of Mirloslav Klose, the weaving Philipp Lahm at left back, and much else in a young team that will only get better. A word on Klose, who is top scorer at the tournament with five goals, the same number he grabbed at the 2002 World Cup. I said in an earlier post that Germany had one-and-a-half world-class players here: Ballack and Lahm.
That was unfair. They had two-and-a-half. Klose is world-class. He pounces like a cat and his finishing is clean. His speed on the ball is extraordinary. He passes well. A shy man, he has not made the impact on the global footballing imagination that he deserves.
A word, also, for the referee, Benito Archundia, 40, of Mexico. Bravo! There has been much criticism of refereeing on this blog; a lot of it has been justified. Archundia gave a fine demonstration of how to keep a game flowing by using the whistle -- and cards --with moderation.
So Italy moves on to its sixth World Cup final. The Italians have won three of those. There is an arresting cohesion to the current side, perhaps born of the fact that the players all come from a handful of Italian clubs. They know each other inside out. Their football, led by Pirlo, may not have the extravagant wonder of Brazil or Argentina at their best, but it is beautiful in its economy, speed, discipline and intuition.
I have told you how I think this tournament will end; I'm not going to repeat myself. Suffice to say that any side that wants to beat Italy will have to deliver an extraordinary performance. Germany, roared on by a huge crowd, came close, but was caught in the end by the inexorable logic of the Italian web.

Two outsiders in Berlin

By John Cheeran
Two outsiders have move moved into the final of the World Cup, France and Italy.
Before the World Cup began Brazil and Argentina were the clear favourites to clash in the final from two opposite halves of the draw.
When the group stage matches began, suddenly an aggressive Germany rose in the charts. Those who were banking a team like Italy with an illustrious past were disillusioned by their stuttering shows. Since winning the World Cup in 1998, France had done little to excite their supporters. Italy and France survived anxious moments to make it to the second round. Then everything changed around them.
Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Spain, England and that tiny little empire, Portugal, have fallen by the side.
Italy have lifted their game just when it mattered; they got past Australia in the second round with a dubious, last minute penalty in the injury time. They had the weakest opponents in Ukraine in the quarterfinal.
But when the time arrived they put the daggers into the German breasts and twisted it twice with shootout only three minutes away.
To give credit to Italy and France, they have won their last six games. It matters little now whether they played as we wished or not. Italy and France won their decisive games against Germany and Brazil, the biggest stumbling blocks on their path to the final.
Moral of the story is this: it is not how many opportunities you create that matters, but how many you can benefit from.
Coach Phil Scolari may have taught Portugal boys the art of war; but he forgot the essentials; the shooting!

On elegance

By Roger Cohen /IHT
There are lots of footballing qualities: skill, acceleration,control, vision, focus, power and flair come to mind. But I have a soft spot for one attribute that is among the most rare and distinctive on the field: elegance.
What makes a footballer elegant?
It's the gift of composure, which is linked of course to confidence, and allows the elegant player to give the apparently effortless impression of having more time than everyone else. More time to think, more time to create, more time to take apart the opponent, more time to dictate the pattern of the game.
Watching an elegant player, you think: Why is everyone else scurrying around to so little effect when it's really this easy?
Franz Beckenbauer, the imperious German defender and sweeper, was elegant. He never seemed to break a sweat as he alternately marshaled his defense and swept upfield. Bobby Moore, England's captain in its 1966 World Cup triumph, was also elegant. He read the game so well he was always one step ahead.
Socrates - or more completely Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de SouzaVieira de Oliveira - of Brazil was elegant, a towering figure, as befit his name. Marco van Basten, the Dutch striker and now the Dutch coach, was all elegant class as he took defenses apart.
Italy, as you would expect in the land of Ferragamo and Zegna, has produced a host of elegant players: Marco Tardelli and Paolo Rossi in the World Cup winning team of 1982, and more recently Paolo Maldini. Argentina had Daniel Passarrella, a sweeper almost the equal of Beckenbauer in the elegance stakes.
And France has had two great midfielders with the gift of elegance, Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane. Their star striker, Thierry Henry of Arsenal, is a supremely elegant player. A poll is here by opened on the most elegant player of the 2006 World Cup.

Uncle Gregory defends Jose Pekerman

By Gregory Pekerman
The moment I saw my cousin Jose Peck call Julio Cruz to the touchline, I sensed Argentina were in trouble.
It is true that Cruz got into the 23-men squad on the basis of last minute goals scored for Inter Milan after having come on as a late sub. Had he scored, or had Germany simply failed to equalize, we would all be pondering Jose's genius and about the richness of Argentina's bench. My only other explanation is that Jose probably felt Cruz was HIS choice, whereas Messiwould have been everybody else's choice.
If the result had been any different, that would be called "personality". Now it's an instance of "Svenism"...Overall, it was a remarkable showing from Argentina. Nobody here (in Argntina)expected as much.
Considering "star-spangled" Argentina were in fact a team madeup mainly of subs and rejects, they didn't do badly at all.
Cruz: sub at Inter. Crespo: sub at Chelsea. Saviola: sub at Seville (and Barcelona reject). Aimar: sub at Valencia. Sorin: Juve reject. Heinze: after his injury, he'd played just one or two games for Man United reserves. Mascherano: only played about twice this year for his team Corinthians. Riquelme: another Barcelona reject, never a first choice at national level before Peck.
It was only logical that the only real stars of the team should be on the bench: Tevez and Messi. But Jose's magic was in making his players forget all this and play like a team of stars. I'm not objective, but I don't think there was a better team at this year's world cup.
And certainly not Germany, judging by what they had to show against Argentina. Two headers on target in 120 minutes: one was a goal. And the ball is round.

Everyday I love you more, Argentina

By Marcela Mora y Araujo July 3, 2006
In the German film Run, Lola, Run there's a scene before the title sequence in which an odd-looking referee throwsthe ball up in the air. The camera focuses on the ball as it spins in the air, and a narrator says something along the lines of "The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes. That's fact. Everything else is theory."
I ended up watching Friday's game with two Argentinian women I'd never met before in the middle of the terraces, surrounded by German men. They spent most of the 120 minutes of play chanting "Deutschland" to the tune of two hand claps, and then stretching their left arms out towards the pitch. At the very least 60,000 people were doing likewise in the stadium.
There was no animosity towards the three of us, struggling to accompany the faint melody of the Argentinian cluster who sang "Ole, ole, ola, every day I love you more" to the team. The German supporters occasionally looked at us with a faint grin.
For most of the match we were 1-0 up so it wasn't hard to grin back. The booing and whistling during the penalty shootout wiped the smiles off our faces. In the distance, up high behind one of the goals, a small battle had broken out between a smallish group of Argentinian fans who wanted to be allowed to move closer to the larger contingent.
I understand the German police were quick to avert any serious trouble. Good.Violence, whatever motivates it, is always wrong.
Loss is a terrible feeling t odeal with but gang warfare is unlikely to repair the hurt. The battle among the players after the match was horrendous and undignified, regardless of whostarted it or who provoked it. I hope it is not the only lasting memory we have of the evening.
At least the game was relatively fairly played. No doubt we will debate forever who deserved to win, but the fact is that Germany did win, and the Argentinian players gave their all and tried their best. Nothing dishonourable about that. It all went wrong in the end but, hey, that'sfootball.
The following day, Julio Grondona, the head of the Argentinian Football Association, recalled the footballing great Alfredo Di Stéfano, who liked to say that when a player squeezes his shirt after a match, blood should drip from it. Grondona felt satisfied that this lot could hold their heads high.
Like most Argentinians, and maybe most people who watched the match around the world, Grondona did allow himself a little rant at the one question he said he could not begin to answer: "Why the hell didn't Messi come on?" Young Messi, who has a long football life ahead of him, looked sullen on the bench, barely watching the game, and defiantly confident as he was captured by photographers leaving the "concentración" in Nuremberg.
I spoke to his father, who echoed the global disappointment but begged me not to quote him. I won't.
Argentinian journalists are now dismantling their German based operations. Most will go home, some will holiday in Europe, a few will stay and report the semis and the final. English journalists are probably doing the same. And Brazilians. This is always a strange stage of the competition.
The hype and the adrenalin rush in fans and hacks alike has been escalating at great speed and now there are only four teams left it's hard to wind down gracefully. Everyone is writing obituaries - perhaps in styles that reflect national traits. Argentina's headlines are melancholic and sentimental: "We died standing" and "When the pain filled with tears".
The English papers are more punitive, pointing the finger at various possible culprits: the Argentinian ref, the Swedish coach, and Wayne Rooney for example. Yet the men of football play on. All over Germany in the lobbies of five-star hotels deals will be toyed with.
Like pieces on a chessboard players will be sold, bought, touted and loaned. Already agents are promising the arrival in the Premiership of Carlos Tévez while a source at MCI, the group that owns his current club Corinthians, says they are not letting him go. "We've had an offer of 100 million," says my man "but it's not just the money, you know. We need to win something and the issue if we sell Tévez is who replaces him".
Managers will resign or be sacked. New names will appear, rumours will circulate. If Argentina's coach José Pekerman leaves for example -and his comment at the press conference immediately after the game was in no way a formal resignation; I think Grondona will try to keep him - who will step in?
There is a rumour that Maradona will be next. Diego, whose only loyalty is to the ball, missed Friday's game. He tried every gate of the stadium, accompanied by his customary entourage, one of whom had apparently had his accreditation removed for excessive swearing and shouting during a previous match. VIP or nay,there is a code of conduct. Diego didn't defeat the electronic tags, the guarded gates, or the Fifa protocol.
Perhaps that's why Argentina lost. It's not inconceivable - just because it's superstitious doesn't mean it's not true. Perhaps it was the unfulfilled promise to the virgin in Tilcara. This dream is over, but it's not the end of all dreams forever.
Far from it. The ball isround, and will keep rolling, thank God, indefinitely and forever. There will always be another match.

Dravid hails his troop

Blog Report/Agencies
Indian captain Rahul Dravid hailed his team after they completed their first Test series victory in the Caribbean in 35 years with a 49-run win over the West Indies in the fourth test on Sunday.
"It was a team effort. Everyone in the team contributed at various stages," Dravid said.
"Our seam attack was brilliant throughout the series. Our spinners were brilliant throughout the series. Everyone chipped in at various stages and made a contribution to this win."
"Winning the series is the most important thing," he said.
"We played the better cricket right from the first test after the first two days. It's nice that it all bore fruit in the end and we won the series."
Dravid also described the pace attack, that comprised Munaf Patel, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, Vikram Singh and Irfan Pathan as the best Indian seam attack he had seen in a long time. "They bowled well throughout this series. I have seen fine spells in my career, but this is the best I have seen throughout a series since 1996 when I saw Javagal Srinathand Venkatesh Prasad bowl well in England," he said.
"They are young and inexperienced, yet they did it. Patel and Sreesanth played most of the games here. Singh also did well and Pathan did well when he played."

Gavaskar, where's your vitriol?

By John Cheeran
That convincing win at Sabina Park has slienced the guns of Sunil Gavaskar and such worthies as former coach Madan Lal who has been employed by a desperate channell as an analyst.
Gavaskar, a strong sympathiser with disgraced Indian captain Sourav Ganguly and former BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya, has relentlessly attacked Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell through his syndicated column, fortunately carried only in the north Indian newspaper Hindustan Times.
Gavaskar, never a brave captain, but a brave opener for India, poured poison against Indian team during the course of the Caribbean tour. Now that India wrapped up the series in West Indies, a feat he or Ganguly could only dream of, Gavaskar is lost for words.
It was Kapil Dev, who it was portrayed as an antithesis to everything Gavaskar stood for during their playing days, who rejoiced in India's historic win.
"Winning is beautiful," he has said. "The boys have finally tastedthe feeling of winning abroad. I am very happy."
Another significant comment has come form Former Test captain Ajit Wadekar.
"It was the captain who led from the front," said Wadekar, who led the team on their previous series victory in the Caribbean in 1971. "It was his efforts, he shouldered the responsibilityand pushed the boys," Wadekar added.
Wadekar put the victory in perspective against a West Indies side who have struggled in the last few years and barely staved off defeat in the first two of the three drawn tests. "Looking at the opposition we should have won one or two more tests," he said. "We looked like a team in this test and played as a unit."
It is also interesting to note that Kapil was among the former players who criticised the exclusion of young all-rounder Irfan Pathan, who played only one Test after struggling in the one-dayers, and Harbhajan, who came in for the final two tests.

When Dravid led India to glory in Kingston

Editor's note: Though Reuters intro makes a factual mistake in leaving out the Test series win India posted a hopeless Zimbabwe side in Zimbabwe, when Sourav Ganguly was captain it shows how history recalls the events..That interestingly was the tipping point for Ganguly's career as well.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, July 2 (Reuters)
Anil Kumble bowled India to their first series win in the Caribbean for 35 years on Sunday -- and their first outside the sub-continent for 20 years.
The leg-spinner's performance lifted his side to a 49-run victory over West Indies and a 1-0 series win in the fourth and final test in Kingston.
The first three tests at the Antigua Recreation Ground, the Beausejour Cricket Ground, and Warner Park had ended in draws. West Indies, set 269 to win, had staggered to 144 for seven before wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin's unbeaten half-century lifted them to 219 all out.
Kumble finished with six for 78, claiming the last five wickets after tea as he bamboozled the lower-order batsmen with cunning, varied bowling.
The 21-year-old Ramdin, in just his 12th Test, played with maturity beyond his years, cleverly marshalling the tail as he scored 62 not out, with eight fours and a six to suggest the match could have a thrilling climax.
But an inspired Kumble clinched India a long-overdue victory. West Indies had resumed after tea on 85 for four and Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo calmly set about the Indian bowling and looked untroubled in a 70-runpartnership. Sarwan reached his 26th test half-century with his seventh boundary, but failed to add another run as Shanthakumaran Sreesanth had him caught at first slip by Rahul Dravid, the Indian captain taking a sharp catchlow down.
Kumble then took care of the rest of the West Indian batting line-up. Bravo had struck three successive boundaries in the spinner's previous over but six balls after Sarwan's dismissal he played a loose slog-sweep and was bowled for 33.
Marlon Samuels (5) was then trapped on the back foot by a Kumble delivery that went straight on, exposing the West Indies tail with 125 runsstill needed. Ramdin's innovative batting and some crisp hitting by Jerome Taylor began to cause doubts in Indian minds, however, as they took the hosts to180 for seven.
But Taylor, who had scored 20, was then beaten by a quicker ball from Kumble and trapped in front of his stumps.
Although Ramdinwas to have some solid support from Pedro Collins in adding a further 39 runs, Kumble wrapped up the innings with two wickets in three balls. India had been bowled out for 200 in their first innings, but the West Indies then plummeted to 103 all out to give the visitors a decisive 97-run first-innings lead on a pitch which generally made batting a terrible ordeal.
India had taken three wickets after lunch as the advantage swung their way, Sreesanth picking up two wickets and Munaf Patel and Anil Kumble one each. Sreesanth, who finished with three for 38, sent opener Daren Ganga back to the changing room for 16 in the fourth over after lunch with a superb late-swinging yorker that crashed into off stump.
India claimed the vital wicket of Brian Lara in the next over, when Munaf cut a delivery back into the left-hander, who had stayed in his crease while shuffling across his stumps. Lara was leg-before-wicket for 11. The experienced Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who has enjoyed considerable success against India in the past, then came in but leg-spinner Kumble soon had him lbw for 13, the batsman playing across a delivery that turned into him.
Sarwan, who has recovered from the seriously bruised knee that forced him to bat with a runner in the first innings, steadied the innings and had reached 31 not out by tea, with Bravo on 13.
Earlier, seamer Corey Collymore completed a five-wicket haul as the West Indies needed just 102 balls to wrap up the Indian second innings.

India is Dravid, Dravid is India!

By John Cheeran
India is Indira. Indira is India. That was the legendary slogan coined by the then Congress (I) secretary Dev Kant Barooah when Indira Gandhi ruled the nation in the 1970 and 80s.
Though Barooah was criticized roundly for displaying a shameless streak of sycophancy, the slogan echoed the reality of the Seventies bursting at its seams.
Coming to cricket, the most important subject in this nation of millions of struggling souls, one could say that India is Dravid, Dravid is India.
Yes, the new slogan for Indian cricket, or why we restrict to cricket, the new slogan for India, the nation, should be India is Dravid, Dravid is India.
Yesterday, when the nation was sleeping with a million inchoate dreams, Dravid’s India beat the West Indies by 49 runs at Sabina Park to win the fourth Test and the series.
That should rank as one of the finest moments in Indian cricket history. India, under the astute leadership of Rahul Dravid, has carved out the Test series after a hiatus of 35 years. It was in 1971 when Ajit Wadekar led India to its first series win in the West Indies, though Wadekar himself did not play any great role in that famous win.
Here things were absolutely different. Sabina Park will be remembered for the classicism of Dravid’s batsmanship. Take away Dravid from the Indian team, this Test would have finished on the first day itself, in favour of the West Indies.
It is not for nothing Dravid was declared man-of-the-match and man-of-the series. If ever these awards have gone to a deserving performer it is Indian skipper Dravid. Dravid himself has rated his first innings effort of 81, compiled from facing 215 balls and laced with 10 fours, on a first day wicket with Caribbean bowlers roaring in, as the most satisfying knock he has played in his illustrious career. Dravid again stood up for India in the second innings, an innings that resembled the first one. Dravid hit 68 in the second innings and displayed an urgency to get quick runs with the help of 12 boundaries.
What keeps Dravid going when worthies such as Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif flee from the scene and their responsibilities? It is nothing but supreme class and the sheer determination to excel. In cricket, a contribution becomes meaningful only if it helps the team to tackle an adversity or author a triumph. In the recent past Indian cricket has seen centuries, double centuries and triple centuries from many blades but not when the team required it most.
This great triumph, a triumph against insurmountable odds, has taken Dravid very, very close to immortality. A World Cup coronation next year, again in the Caribbeans, would be the final seal of approval.
The win at Sabina Park, though was scripted with bountiful contributions coming from bowlers Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Sreesanth, was made possible only by skipper and batsman Dravid. And with this coruscating victory, Dravid has risen above all the false Gods in Indian cricket. Dravid has walked past Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and should I say a certain Sourav Ganguly, the biggest non-performing asset (NPA) of Indian cricket in recent times.
To understand the importance of the Sabina Park one has to consider a few things.
First and foremost, this sizzling triumph was achieved without Sachin Tendulkar. And, now other things. India had lost the one-day series to the West Indies after winning the first match in the series. Though the matches were very, very close affairs, the fact remains that India lost the series 1-4.
India came very, very close to winning the first three Tests – At Antigua, St Lucia, and St Kitts – the critique went that Dravid failed to apply the killer punch on all these occasions.When critics such as former Indian coach and medium pacer Madan Lal and my own favourite Sunil Gavaskar lead the assault, even the ever-so-cool Dravid gets irritated.
Dravid and coach Greg Chappell were criticized for a variety of things during this tour. For Leaving out Harbhajan, for ignoring Irfan Pathan, for sticking to Sreesanth, for not playing the fifth bowler, and finally for the rains in the Caribbeans!
Pressure was very much there as India went into the fourth and final Test.
Dravid is familiar with the pressure to win and it only inspires him to the special zone he occupied at the Sabina Park. But pressure that inane criticism generates can upset anyone who has India’s interests at his heart. Always.
I hope this victory, the first significant Test series win outside of the Indian subcontinent since India won in England in 1986, should silence those who found the apogee of leadership in that hollow man, Sourav Ganguly.

Argentine angles

Editor's note: In my quest to soak up the World Cup spirit, I have been trawling the web as well as the print. And I haven't come across a more intelligent and inspiring writing on football other than what Roger Cohen wrote for IHT. I discovered Cohen as a football writer a bit late, I must say. Nevertheless this early piece when Argentina beat Ivory Coast should be a must read for everyone who cares about sport.

By Roger Cohen/IHT
Everyone loves the Brazilians; nobody seems to have much love for the Argentines.
Why would that be?
Of course, the national temperaments of atropical, patriotic, forward-looking country like Brazil and a self-questioning, troubled, uncertain nation like Argentina are bound to be reflected on the football field, just as they are reflected on the dance floor.
Contrast the samba and the tango and you get some idea of how these two great footballing powers approach the game. Brazil plays to win with joy, Argentina plays not to lose because it carries the conviction that any match, like any love affair, can end in tragedy.
These thoughts came to me watching Argentina overcome Ivory Coast 2-1 in their opening Group C match. The victory was clinical and, on the whole, unlovable.
Sure, there was the class of Juan Roman Riquelme to admire in midfield, and the opportunism of Hernan Crespo, who showed with an early goal why he's the country's third-highest scorer behind Gabriel Batistuta and Diego Maradona.
But there was also Juan Pablo Sorin, the Argentine captain, tugging at an Ivory Coast shirt and then protesting his innocence to the referee with a pained indignation as vehement and unconvincing as that of a child caught pilfering candies.
And Sorin, again, taking a dive and feigning agony, only for the mysterious injury to disappear as soon as he thought eyes were off him. What kind of example is that, Juan? An example with a grand Argentine tradition,whose highest, or lowest, expression was Maradona's infamous "hand-of-God" goal against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico, a tournament theArgentines went on to win.
Maradona followed his fraudulent goal against England- finger-tipped into the net - with one of the most brilliant individual efforts ever seen: a mazy run from his own half past five England players that ended with an unstoppable low shot. But, of course, the stolen goal diminished the stupendous goal.
On the other occasion the Argentines won the trophy, in BuenosAires in 1978, the generals were busy "disappearing" people as the crowds roared. The holding of the World Cup in the Argentina of the "dirty war" amounts to a dark moment in the tournament's 76-year history.
All that said, the Argentine team looks formidable. They are what they set out to be: very hard to beat. They're clever, not always in the best sense, and they have the skill to complement their cleverness.
They're also ruthless. Football, like darkness, is in their blood; their style is unmistakable. It's not a seductive style, but it tends to get the job done. There's brio and brilliance to the Argentine game; the knife slides in before the opposition even has time to see it and then an impenetrable shield goes up.
Without question, they could win this competition. But, be honest, how many of you non-Argentines out there would really like that to happen?

Pekerman sabotaged his own side

Editor's note: An interesting account of the Argentina-Germany match.
By Paul Doyle in Guardian
If ever there was a case of a manager sabotaging his own side, it occurred during the Argentina-Germany quarter-final in Berlin this afternoon.
Argentina were manifestly the superior team, yet after they finally edged ahead thanks to a fine Roberto Ajala header in the 49th minute, manager Jose Pekerman pressed the self-destruct button, making two absurd substitutions to surrender the initiative to the hosts, who, being Germany, went on to win on penalties.
Having been forced to use his first substitution to bring on reserve goalkeeper Leonardo Franco for the injured Roberto Abbondanzieri, Pekerman elected to use the second to haul off playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme in the 72nd minute. Riquelme hadn't been his dominant self so taking him off was by no means nonsensical - but replacing him with efficient enforcer Esteban Cambiasso rather than the infinitely more inventive and assertive Lionel Messi or Pablo Aimar was negative to the point of being suicidal.
A second goal would have killed Germany: instead, Argentina began to cower in fear of a comeback, an attitude that acted as a kiss of life to the Germans. That blunder was compounded by the Pekerman's third and final substitution, which came in the 79th minute. Quite why Pekerman felt the need to replace ace goleador Hernan Crespo is a mystery, but nowhere near as incomprehensible as his decision to throw on the lumbering Julio Cruz rather than Messi or Javier Saviola.
Cruz doesn't make the nifty runs that Crespo or Saviola do, can't dribble past players, isn't an especially proficient finisher and, basically, was the worst of the options available to the manager and possibly the most misguided substitution since England's 2-1 defeat by France in Euro 2004, during which Sven Goran Eriksson replaced Wayne Rooney with Emile Heskey.
It was obvious that Germany were going to pile forward in search of an equaliser and though they're not particularly incisive, a goal from a free-kick or a long shot was always possible.
As it turned out, in the 80th minute Germany managed to prise Argentina open in a different way, Ballack clipping in a neat ball from the left, which Lukas Podolski flicked towards the far post, where Miroslav Klose headed it expertly into the bottom corner.
Suddenly extra-time looked likely: but how were Argentina to score a winner without Crespo, Riquelme, Messi, Saviola and Aimar?
In the end, Argentina went out in the most ridiculous way possible: with all their best players watching helplessly from the bench.

Roger Cohen salutes Argentina

Editor's note: Here Roger Cohen, political columnist for International Herald Tribune salutes the Argentine team. He points to the terrible mistakes committed by coach Jose Pekerman.
By Roger Cohen /IHT blog
What a titanic struggle in the Olympic Stadium between two fine teams!
The game was Argentina's to win after Roberto Ayala put the side ahead early in the second half. But Jose Pekerman, theArgentine coach who has now quit, chose to signal to Germany that he intended to cling to the lead rather than go for the killer punch.
With drawing the heart ofthe team, the elegant Juan Roman Riquelme, in the 71st minute was a terrible mistake. If there's one side in the world that you should never sit back against, it's Germany. The Germans never give up. Never, ever.
Anyone who saw Germany come back from a two-goal deficit to beat France on penalties in the semi-final of the 1982 World Cup knows that. The Germans have won more games against better sides than any other in World Cup competitions. Why?
Because of their inexhaustiable will to win.
Argentina was the better team. It had 58 percent of the possession, and was able to dictate the flow of the game for long periods. But it was psychologically weaker.
For ten minutes after Ayala's goal,the game was Argentina's to claim. Maxi Rodriguez almost did so with a blistering shot just wide of the right post. Then Pekerman chose to sit back. He could have brought on the brilliant Lionel Messi. He didn't. That was the beginning of the Argentine unraveling that began with Miroslav Klose's well-taken 80th minute equalizer and culminated in ugly scenes after Germany won on penalties.
The Argentines lost it. They do sometimes. Gabriel Heinze of Manchester United went nuts; he should be ashamed of himself. Along with their brilliance, there's an ugliness in the Argentines' footballing culture about which I wrote an earlier post.
Their high road is beautiful; their low road is low indeed.
Once the game went to penalties, Germany was going to win. Jens Lehmann, the German goalkeeper, is a proven saver of spot kicks. Argentina had their number two goalkeeper, Leo Franco, on as a substitute for the injured Roberto Abbondanzieri.
The noise from the crowd was deafening. Jurgen Klinsmann, the German coach, has devoted days to penalty training (a wise move given thereal possibility that games will be decided in this way.)
Sure enough, Argentina cracked. The shots from Ayala and Esteban Cambiasso (brought on for Riquelme) were weak. Germany sewed up the game 4-2 on penalties. If the Argentine culture of football was revealed in its bright and dark sides, so, too, was a German footballing culture that is all about effort, cohesion, will, determination, self-belief and relentlessness.
There are only one-and-a-half world class players on this German side: Michael Ballack and Philipp Lahm. But that culture carries them, aided by a very shrewd coach who has made the whole more than the sum of its parts.
Speaking of culture, watch Italy. I've said this before. But I'll say it again.
That defense built around Fabio Cannavaro and the peerless GianLuigi Buffon in goal (what a game he had in the 3-0 victory over Ukraine!) is a pure Italian creation. So too are the quick, lethal strikes that brought those three goals. Two of them were scored by Luca Toni.
An Italian striker coming right late in the tournament is familiar. That's what Paolo Rossi did when the Italians triumped in 1982.
Then, too, a soccer scandal in Italy preceded the tournament. You don't have to love the Azzurri as much as I do to believe these are possible signs of an Italian triumph here. Cultures run deep, on the football field as anywhere else.
They were revealed in the German and Italian march to what will be a classic semi-final clash. The Germans will attack in waves; Italy will try to deliver the knock-out blow Argentina could not find in counter-attacks of devastating, smooth speed. Even with Buffon in goal, Italy will want to avoid another penalty-shoot out before a partisan crowd.
A great encounter is in store.

NYT's take on the Argentina-Germany clash

Stretched to Limit, Germany Ousts Argentina
By Jere Longman
BERLIN, June 30 - The most anticipated match ofthe World Cup recovered from a tedious start to provide a dramatic finish on Friday as Germany defeated Argentina, 4-2, on penalty kicks. Hardly anyone finds a shootout to be a satisfying conclusion, but the tautness served to rescue a quarterfinal that was often uninspiring and fractious.
The match had remained tied at 1-1 through 30 minutes of overtime, as neither squad truly measured up to the importance of a confrontation between two World Cup favorites. Afterward, a 90-second scuffle broke out between the teams, bringing a sour end to the afternoon on the field.
But outside, hundreds of thousands of German supporters poured into the streets of the capital to celebrate a victory that moved the home team into a semifinal match Tuesdayagainst Italy. The Italians easily defeated Ukraine, 3-0, with two goals from Luca Toni, in the day's other quarterfinal match in Hamburg.
"The team has grown over the last six weeks, and it is a team which is saying they can beworld champions," Jürgen Klinsmann, the 41-year-old German manager, said afterward.
The game extended to penalty kicks after Argentine defender Roberto Ayala scored on a header off a corner kick in the 49th minute. German forward Miroslav Klose tied the score with his own header in the 80th minute, giving him a tournament-leading five goals.
Finally, Germany prevailed on the instinct and reaction of goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, who blocked two penalty kicks in the shootout. Germany appeared confident and decisive on all four of its penaltykicks taken by Oliver Neuville, Michael Ballack, Lukas Podolski and Tim Borowski. The shots eluded the substitute Argentine goalkeeper Leonardo Franco -who entered in the 71st minute after an injury to the starter, RobertoAbbondanzieri - and who seemed slightly awed by his first appearance in the tournament.
Lehmann, on the other hand, seemed self-assured, bouncing in front of goal, arms raised, making himself appear larger than his 6-foot-3-inch height. Klinsmann's decision to start Lehmann in the World Cup ahead of Oliver Kahn had been controversial here. Kahn was named most valuable player of the 2002 World Cup, and he publicly expressed displeasure with his bench role. But few are questioning Klinsmann's choice now.
Before Friday's shootout, Kahn approached Lehmann with encouraging words and shook his hand in support. Lehmann guessed correctly but could not stop Argentina's first penalty kick, by forward Julio Cruz.
But on the next attempt he dived to his left and smothered a weak bouncer from Ayala. On Argentina's third penalty kick, Lehmann got a hand on the shot by midfielder Maxi Rodríguez, but could not keep the ball out of the net.
On Argentina's fourth attempt, he dived to his left yet again and punchedaway the left-footed kick of midfielder Esteban Cambiasso, rendering Germany's fifth kick unnecessary. The crowd of 72,000 erupted at Olympic Stadium and Germany's players rushed from midfield and the sideline to pile on Lehmann incelebration. Cambiasso broke into inconsolable tears. Players and coaches disagreed about the brief scuffle that followed.
It appeared that Leandro Cufre, an Argentine reserve, got into an argument with two German players. Cufre was red-carded even though the match was over.
Players from both sides then began pushing, and the German assistant coach Oliver Bierhoff got into a shoving match with the Argentines. Klinsmann and Argentina Coach José Pekerman played down the scuffle, blaming the intense emotions surrounding the game.
Pekerman also said he planned to quit as head coach. "It is over, the chapter is closed," hesaid. He will be left to explain why he never inserted the 19-year-old sensation Lionel Messi into the game. Argentina also played the final 48 minutes withoutits playmaker, Juan Riquelme, who was not sharp and who was substituted for in the 72nd minute.
Argentina played the first half with a dreary patience, apparently trying to draw the larger German defense away from goal and hoping to use its speed and nimbleness for a clinical finish.
Meanwhile, Germany started forcefully but crudely, unable to string together more than a few passes. Klinsmann cautioned his players to remain calm, but their serenity was shatteredin the 49th minute, when Argentina did what Germany was supposed to do -dominate on set pieces.
Riquelme lifted a corner kick and Ayala leapt in front of Klose, who is two inches taller, and headed the ball powerfully from eight yards. Lehmann could only reach futilely as Argentina took a 1-0 lead.
The pace of the game then picked up, with Germany desperate to tie the score. In the 64th minute, after Germany won a corner kick, the Argentine goalkeeper Abbondanzieriwent up for the ball, but it appeared he was kneed in the lower stomach or groin by Klose.
The injury persisted, and Abbondanzieri left the field on a stretcher in the 71st minute. He was replaced by Franco, who had not played a minute in this World Cup. Ballack was limping badly through the end of the second half and could barely move during the overtime, even going to the sideline for several minutes for treatment of cramps.
"I would have gone out, but we already made three substitutions," Ballack said. "So I had to tough it out."
In the 75th minute, Germany sent on the midfielder Borowski, and he made an immediate impact. In the 80th minute, after a throw-in, Ballack crossed to Borowski near the top of the penalty area. Borowski deftly headed the ball to a charging Klose, who got inside Juan Pablo Sorín, Argentina's captain, and drove a header just inside the left post to tie the score at 1-1.
"Small things will decide that sort of game," Klinsmann said. "They scored on a corner kick out of nothing. We went after them. We always knew we could come back."
And thanks to the resolve of Lehmann in goal, Germany prevailed on the nervous and theatrical caprice of penalty kicks. "For a coach and the entire team, it's a thriller, like a Hitchcock movie," said Klinsmann, who lives in Southern California.
"Obviously you're the happiest person in the world if you win and the saddest if you lose."

Reuters' version of the Berlin shootout!

Editor's note: Here Mike Collett, Reuters soccer editor reports the Argentina game. No wonder his bias towards Germany shows through this copy. What a pity!

BERLIN, June 30 (Reuters) - Germany's dreams of winning the World Cup at home for the second time stayed alive after they held their nerve to beat Argentina on penalties in the quarter-final on Friday.
A titanic struggle in front of 72,000 fans at the Olympiastadion featuring two nations who have been world champions five times between them was always likely to be settled by the slenderest of margins, and so it proved.
Level after 120 minutes of absorbing but rarely thrilling football, Germany triumphed 4-2 in the shootout and will face Italy or Ukraine in the semi-finals in Dortmund on Tuesday.
Losing in such cruel, dramatic circumstances was too much for Argentina's players who reacted angrily to gestures made by substitute Tim Borowski after he put Germany 4-2 ahead on penalties.
That led to a short-lived melee after the final whistle with players, officials and coaching staff from both sides all jostling and threatening each other.
It was an unseemly end to a dramatic occasion, even if the football at times was scrappy and disjointed.
The weight of expectation on Germany to emulate the 1974 team by winning the World Cup at home was enormous, but Argentina also started the match with realistic hopes of lifting the trophy next weekend.
BETTER START
Argentina had emerged as early tournament favourites after their 6-0 demolition of Serbia & Montenegro in the group stage and their outstanding 2-1 win over Mexico in the second round.
They also started better than Germany on Friday, playing with more confidence and understanding than the hosts who appeared nervy in defence and lacked precision in their passing in midfield and attack.
It was no real surprise when Argentina took the lead four minutes into the second half when Roberto Ayala escaped from Miroslav Klose and reacted first to meet Juan Riquelme's corner and head powerfully past Jens Lehmann to put Argentina 1-0 up.
Germany responded well.
Captain Michael Ballack, later named Man of the Match, was involved in almost every creative move that Germany produced and although his touch was wayward at times, he continually prompted Klose and Lukas Podolski into promising positions.
However, the match only started to turn Germany's way around the hour mark after an injury and two substitutions.
RIGHT WING
Germany coach Juergen Klinsmann put pressure on Argentina skipper Juan Pablo Sorin, already on a yellow, by bringing on David Odonkor to pressure him with his pace on the right wing.
Argentina then lost goalkeeper Roberto Abbondanzieri to injury and coach Jose Pekerman surprisingly took off playmaker Riquelme, replacing him with Esteban Cambiasso but handing the initiative in midfield to Germany.
Despite battling with a leg injury Ballack became more influential and it was the German skipper who swung over the cross, headed on by Borowski for Klose to head the equaliser after 80 minutes.
Top scorer in 2002, Klose also heads the scoring charts in these finals with five goals and has at least two matches left in which he can improve on that total - either the semi-final and the final, or the semi and the third-place match.
With no further goals in extra time the match went to penalties. Neither country had lost a World Cup shootout before but Argentina's players were at a huge disadvantage from the cacophony of whistles and jeers from the home fans.
Lehmann emerged as the shootout hero with two good saves.
The antics at the end will keep FIFA's disciplinary committee busy over the weekend as they study the video evidence. Germany's players will also be studying videos -- of their semi-final opponents.

For the record: Argentina vs Germany

Editor's note: Germany 1 - Argentina 1, (4-2) after penalties
World Quarterfinal at Olympic Stadium in Berlin
Minute-by-minute commentary from New York Times.
I found Guardian commentary too anti-Argentine and handled by an incompetent person, largely unfamiliar with football.

Jeff Z. Klein /NYT
Post-game: The word in Spanish is decepcionado - disappointed, deceived.
TheArgentina fans stand motionless, looking on as the German players applaud their fans. Most of the Argentina players are off the field, but there's Maxi Rodriguez, his lower lip quivering. I didn't see what happened at the end of penalties, but I did see Argentina players leaping in, trying to get a punch in on at least one German player. What an injustice penalties are.
Delightful that Germany will continue, but so sad that Argentina are finished. This was a draining experience. My sympathies to the Argentine fans out there. I know this will not help right now, but you can be proud of your team. They fought bravely today, and they looked every bit at home as the Germans did. They could so easily have been in the final, but it is not to be. That's it from here. I must be by myself for a while. I'm sure you understand.
After penalties Cambiasso shot to the right, hard, but Lehmann dove the right way and got it! Germany win.
And now there's pushing and shoving! There's a fight on the field! FIFA officials are trying to separate the milling mass of players! The Argentine fans stand in shock! The German fans wave their flags! Now finally they separate everyone on the field. An excess of emotion!
Chencellor Merkel in the stands, embracing Beckenbauer. Gonzalez on the field, in tears. Penalties!
Neuville will start against Franco. The German team stands on the sideline, arms over shoulders, all linked together. Neuville takes ... GOAL! He hits the net on the right! 1-0 Germany.
Cruz against Lehmann. The crowd whistles. Cruz takes ... GOAL! Top shelf, where he keeps his Proust! 1-1.
Ballack against Franco. ... GOAL! Top in the center. 2-1 Germany.
Ayala against Lehmann ... SAVED! He took a long run up and Lehmann dived to his left and stopped it easily! Still 2-1 Germany!
Podolski against Franco. ...GOAL! 3-1 Germany.
Rodriguez against Lehmann ... GOAL! 3-2! Lower corner, and LEhmann guessed right, but the shot was perfect!
Borowski against Franco ...GOAL! 4-2 Germany! Cambiasso against Lehmann. He's got to score here! SAVED!
GERMANY WIN! GERMANY WIN! GERMANY WIN! After extra time Now Pekerman's Argentina, as some of you have pointed out, must do the penalties with a pretty defensive set of players in there. I'll try to get these out to you as soon as they happen.
They show a picture of Kahn conferring with Lehmann on the sideline. All smiles. Argentina, now huddling, all the players on the sideline. The German trainer is working on Ballack's cramping legs. Lehmann on his back,meditating, eyes closed, trying to grab a moment of calm and focus. The stadiumis oddly quiet.
120+1 The whistle! To penalties!
Die angst des tormanns beimelfmeter! Unbearable agony, now to be resolved by the lottery of penalties!
120 Free kick for Argentina from the sideline, 35 yards away. Cleared away!
119 Arare offside! Argentina had the ball in the German area, but Rodriguez was juststanding offside. A minute to go!
118 Tevez shoots way over the bar after being left open 22 yards away! Ballack is back on the field for Germany.
118 Agerman four-on-four break goes for naught as Lahm's cross is off-target.
117 Ballack's off the field, getting attended to.
116 Odonkor, almost! He's set upon the right by Neuville, but his shot goes right at Franco at the side of the net!
116 COLOCCINI, ALMOST! He lofted a ball in, Lehmann let it go, and it just bounced off the top of the crossbar!
115 yellow to Friedrich for kicking Tevez while they were going for the ball. Good call by Michel. He's done a fine job reffing today.
114 Seven mnutes to go! The lottery of penalties looms!
112Argentina, packed in on defense. What a courageous, calm game they've played -it's like they're not even the visiting team.
110 A corner for Argentina! Slapsie Maxi to take. Blooped up high on the header and over the bar. Goal kick, Germany!
107 Corner for Argentina! Tevez outdueled Lahm on the right. The Argentine fans have been up all through the game. The German fans, who are in the majority, have not been as demonstrative. The corner is cleared away easily.
106 Play resumes. Tevez a long shot that doesn't trouble Lehmann.
105+1 The whistle! Switch ends! 15 minutes to go!
105 Lucho Gonzales shoots from the corner of the area on the half-volley ... but it goes high. Not by much, though.
103 Tom tells us that Argentina are out of subs. I thought switching keepers was a free sub, but I guess that law was changed. Probably years ago. Davidconfirms. Okay then, Argentina and Germany must go with who they've got.
102 Odonkor banks it off Sorin for a corner. Neuville to take it. ... headed over the bar by Metzelder. 100 minutes of agony!
99 Ballack and Ayala push and shove in the Argentine area! They're really mad at each other! And when the freekick falls in Ballack goes down in a heap trying to draw a penalty. No sale. Shame on you, Michael!
98 We learn from Univision that Leo Franco in the Argentine nets goal tended a junior world championship for Pekerman. He was absolutely not at fault on the Germans' goal earlier today.
97 Odonkor puts ona little close-quarters dribbling show against Sorin along the sideline. Nothing really accomplished, but it was entertaining.
95 yellow given justly to Cruzfor using his elbow as he went up for a 50-50 ball.
93 Tevez comes to the sideline for repairs after going down hard on a legal tackle. Pekerman comes over to him with instructions. He and Klinsmann make two trim, good-lookingcoaches. 91 Back under way! Thirty minutes of extra time on tap.
Full time: Too much anxiety! Die angst des tormann beim elfmeter! Let's hope it doesn't go to elfmeters - to see this decided by penalties would be too tragic.
90+4 yellow to Odonkor for tackling from behind. Free kick from 45 yards! Maxi takes it ... a defender heads it out just inside the corner flag for a throw-in. The whistle!
Fulltime! There will be extra time!
90+3 One more minute! 90+2 Corner Argentina! Heinze went high to head it, but it bloops in the air and Lehmann gathers it in!
90+1 Que manera de partido! Argentina have reawakened!
89 ALMOST, ARGENTINA! Rodriguez centered on a break down the right. It was headed toward goal by Idon't know whom, and Lehmann dove at full stretch to push it wide of the post with Tevez all over him. Wouldn't have counted anyway, as Tevez is given a foul on that.
88 yellow to Maxi Rodriguez for simulation! He broke into the area, Lahm tripped him without getting the ball, but Rodriguez was too flamboyant in going down!
86 sub Klose, the goal scorer, the man with five goals at this World Cup, more than anyone else, comes out! He's replaced by another forward, Oliver Neuville.
84 A replay of the goal! Klose just surged ahead of Sorin on his dive to head the ball in! Klose's 29th goal in his 60th appearance for Germany!
83 Resilient Germany! Odonkor and Gardener Cruz battle for the ball like hyenas over a scrap of meat along the sideline. Que intensidad!
81 TOR!TOR FUR DEUTSCHLAND! GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL! Ballack centers to Borowski, who flicked it on to Klose, whose palomita pushes the ball into the net! What a goal! Germany 1, Argentina 1!
80 Great work by Odonkor on the right to steal the ball, then start an attack the other way.
79 Borowski shoots again, but it's blocked. He likes to fire! Sub Julio Cruz, el "Jardinero," in for Crespo. A midfielder for a forward.
78 Borowski cranks from 35 yards .. it skips before it gets to Franco, but he handles all right. May be not that gracefully - he went to his knees and fumbled it a moment - but it gives him that vital first touch of the ball!
76 sub Borowski in for Schweinsteiger. Two midfielders. Free kickfor Podolski from 25 yards ... BLOCKED at the defense!
75 Franco is playing only his fourth game for Argentina! He's an Atletico Madrid keeper.
74 RODRIGUEZ OPEN ON THE RIGHT - but he fires WIDE!
73 another sub Riquelme out, Cambiasso, the Inter midfielder, in!
72 Schweinsteiger shoot right at goal to test the new man, but it goes five feet too high.
69 Free kick after a foul on Ballack. Schweinsteiger to take from 35 yards! But wait - Duck Abbondanzieriwants the ref to come over. He goes down, pointing to his stomack, as if the injury from seven minutes ago hurts worse. Is he going to come out? Leonardo Franco is warming up on the sideline! Argentina without Abbondanzieri?Unthinkable!
They show a replay of his injury - Klose went up on a 50-50 ball and kneed him in the left side. Franco's coming in!
67 Odonkor and Ballack create a corner through hard work. Everyone in the stadium on their feet! But the corner is cleared away by Argentina....
65 Another corner - Ballack in the box, but his shot is blocked! Pato Abbondanzieri is down - he was fouled by Klose.
63 A total penalty in the box was missed on that corner! Ayala yanked Ballack down by pulling on his shirt! But no call!
62 sub Schenider out, David Odonkor of Stuttgart in! Both midfielders. Odonkor, a Ghanaian-German, now in the box for Schweinsteiger's corner ... cleared away!
60 Podolski's free kickfrom close in - TERRIBLE! Way over everyone and out. The hour has struck! Time grows precious!
60 Foul and a yellow to Jefe Mascherano. He tripped Schneiderat the side of the box. 58 Argentine fans in New York, here.
56 Will this German team be as resilient as so many German teams past? They press forwardwith new urgency, but can't break through the Argentine defense!...
55 Counterattack Argentina! El Lucho shoots from the top of the box. BLOCKED! Germany the other way ... Frings serves it in, but headed away. And a foul to Argentina. The match has hotted up!
53 For the defender Ayala, that was only his seventh goal for Argentina in his 105th match!
52 Klose can't get by Coloccini in the Argentine box! Now Ballack serves it up, but just over everyone's heads!
51 Ayala dove through the air to get that! Tremendous goal by the Mouse!
49 Corner for Argentina ... GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL AYALA! AYALA! ROBERTO AYALA goes high to take Riquelme's corner and heads it between Lehmann and the defender on the post! ARGENTINA 1, GERMANY 0!
47 Sorinto throw it in. Didn't see if he crossed himself as he entered the field. Those of you who read our pregame report closely learned that Sorin is Jewish. There will be a quiz on other elements of that report at the conclusion of today's game.
46 yellow to Sorin for bumping Friedrich in the flat to the left of the the Argentine area. Podolski to cross it in! El Pato comes out to catch it and quell the danger! Still more
halftime Back out come Germany. Still cloudy in Berlin. Temperature has dropped a bit to 18/66.
Klinsmann calls Podolski over to the sideline for some last-minute instructions. Now Argentina emerge: Pato Abbondanzieri, Lucho Gonzalez, Raton Ayala, Jefe Mascherano Carlitos Tevez. ... Germany to kick off!

Stay with us! 45+1 Podolski totally dives near the end line! The ref bought it. Free kick in what constitutes a short corner. Schneider sends it ... headed away harmlessly. The whistle!Halftime....
44 "Raton" Ayala thwarts a German thrust. That's the first time the Germans have been in the Argentine end for almost 10 minutes.
40 This is like a chess match with all the pieces as pawns. No one can make a big, threatening move forward.
39 Crespo to Riquelme to Tevez, in the box, back to the goal! He manoeuvres ... but too many German defenders! They take it away from him.
36 This is an intense match, but hardly epic for the ages we were hoping for. At least to this point. Here's another free kick for Argentina. Riquelme from near the sideline 30 yards away ... a srcum in the box. And there's a foul against Argentina even before the ball falls in. Nothing! Even the crowd are a bit out of it.
34 Free kick for Argentina after Klose trips Sorin. Riquelme to take from 30 yards on the side ... into the box ... headed away. Still no real chances for either team. A defensive struggle. Duelingsieges!
33 Lahm breaks down the left very well, beating two, but he plays for the foul and goes down easily ... and without getting a call for it.
31 Okay, four. Coloccini. He doesn't have a Nancy band on, but he's got the long locksI've come to know and make fun of. And wish I had.
30 Ballack's pass into the area is too far. Where is the hair of Argentina teams of old? Far as I can tell,only two players on the field are wearing Nancy bands: Sorin, Tevez ... three players. Crespo.
28 Another German cross blocked! Podolski and Slapsie Maxi Rodriguez collide. Podolski called for the foul - he disagrees, but he and ref Michel talk a moment to square things away, and both depart smiling.
27 Crespo finally gets a chance in the area, going one on one with Metzelder. But Crespo handles the ball as it bounces to him. He'll have to try again later.
25 Lahm's cross is way off target. Germany entered the game hitting on 30 percent of their crosses, compared to 15 percent for Argentina. But today, nothing.
24 Ballack takes it away in the box. Another great defensive play by an offensive player.
23 Podolski makes a nice defensive play, sliding to break up an Argentine advance in the middle of the field.
22 Tevez tracks back to take the ball away from Schneider, who was free 25 yards out. Nice defensive play!
20 Riquelme takes, but nothing comes of it. It was another corner not hit well by him, to the near post along the end line.
19 Tevez to Sorin! His shot blocked - but Tevez passed it between the legs of Friedrich! Corner!
18 Schweinsteiger to take one of those patented deadly German free kicks from 30 yards out to the right side ... into the box ... pinged around ... and shot too high and wide.
17 Schneider serves to Ballack in the box, and he head-flicks it just wide! Best chance of the game so far....
16 Lucho Gonzalez tries to break through. He passes three men but runs right into a defender and falls. No way through!
16Argentina in greater control of this game, not that they're able to do anything with it. 14 Neither team able to get a shot on goal - the defenders are blocking every attempt!
13 Great battle between Podolski and Mascherano on the left flank. Podolski won the footrace, but after the cross was blocked by another defender Mascherano saved the ball from the sideline and cleared.
12 Whistles from the crowd as Argentina control the ball at their back.
8 Corner for Argentina! Riquelme to take ... very low, cleared by the defense at the goalpost. A desperate struggle for it at the edge of the block ends in a foul against Argentina. This is intense!
8 Podolski shoots - and Abbondanzieri saves. A dangerous skipping ball that he had to go to his knees to block.
7 Heinze clatters down Klose, so free kick Germany from 25 yards out and right in front! Abbondanzieri sets the wall. Four men in the wall!
6 Sorin at 5-8 fouls Metzelder at 6-3 during a header by elbowing him in the ribs.
3 yellow A totalclip from behind by Podolski on Mascherano. That was a bad-intentioned foul by the young Polish-German.
2 Riquelme fouled, and a free kick for Argentina from 45 yards out. Riquelme serves into the box, but a foul blows the play dead. Germany ball.
1st minute Mascherano tripped immediately, and Riquelme gives a little push to Klose, who knocked Mascherano down.
The coin toss. Hands are shaken with the referee Michel and his assistants. And finally Sorin and Ballackshake. The teams are on the field. Argentina to kick off.

It's Rahul Dravid all over again!

By John Cheeran
Again it has taken Rahul Dravid to redeem the Indian batting.
From 91 for six, India touched the 200 mark in the first innings of the Jamaica Test against the West Indies on the first day.
All credit should go to Dravid and Anil Kumble who now can claim to a place in the side as a No.5 in the batting order.
Dravid made 81 invaluable runs as all of his illustrious (!) batting partners fled from the wicket faced with some accurate bowling from Jerome Taylor and Collymore.
It beats me why on earth that flat track bully Virender Sehwag can't last more than two balls whenever there is something for fast bowlers.
It was a test of technique and character for any batsman, and Sehwag, Wasim Jaffer, VVS Laxman and Mohammad Kaif have failed it miserably.
It was the first day of the Test which promises to be the series decider. Rival bowlers were fresh, and wicket offered a bit of movement and bounce. Sowhat does Sehwag do, leave the stage as quickly as possible.
It was an insulting sight to behold, with India struggling at 91 for six, this irresponsible Indian vice-captain enjoying the comforts of the pavilion with a huge grin on his face.
In the last three Tests where India faced stiff resistance from fast bowlers Sehwag has fled from the wicket. In Karachi against Pakistan, in Mumbai against England and in Sabina Park in West Indies now, Sehwag's show has been pathetic.
In cricket more than the runs it matters when do they come. It would be interesting to listen to the comments made by captain Dravid after his gutsy innings at Sabina Park.
Let me quote him. "It was one of the most challenging innings I've played and very satisfying as well. In conditions like that, you've got to fight hard for runs," Dravid said.
"It was just a pity that I got out at the end of the day. When I look back on this one, it will give me a lot of satisfaction."
"It's probably a score which we can fight with, but we've got to bowl well. It's not a score we're happy with, there is no doubt about it, but it's a score to fight with," Dravid said.
"At 91 for six, we fought back well. We've got something on the board. It's just important how well we bowl now. If we bowl well and can restrict West Indies to a decent score, we have the advantage of batting third and forcing West Indies to chase a target."
The pitch offered more assistance than the surfaces used in the previous two Tests, offering the West Indies pacemen plenty of bounce, but Dravid said it was lacking in pace.
"It was a strange sort of wicket. Normally on wickets that seam, you can play a few shots because the ball comes on to the bat. But the ball just did not seem to come on to the bat in the morning. There was no real pace off the wicket," Dravid said.
What he left unsaid to the rest of the world was this. My batsmen failed me and India. They did not have the stomach for a war of attrition out there at the batting crease. Nothing has changed in Indian cricket. People shirk responsibilities assigned to them and always come up with scores that ensure their survival in the team.
Dravid, to his credit, did not linger on the failure of Indian top and middleorder batting. But that does not alter the reality.
Without Kumble's contribution India would have struggled to reach even 125. I shudder to think how the Indian batsmen, except Dravid, would have fared against the likes of Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Joel Garner.
God save us and (Rahul Dravid) from Sehwag and company!

Referee boots out Argentina; World Cup is over!

By John Cheeran
The World Cup is over.
The World Cup is over for Argentina and for those who love football.
On Fridy, June 30, 2006, Argentina were cheated out by the Fifa of a place in the semifinal as the Slovak referee denied the Latin Americans a penalty in the closing minutes of fulltime.
In the 88th minute, Argentina's Maxi Rodriguez, who had scored the wonder goal against Mexico, broke into the penalty area, and German defender Lahm tripped him without getting the ball and justice would have been a penalty kick in Argentina’s favour.
But Lubos Michel, the Slovakian referee, did not have the guts to take a decision that would have thrown out the hosts from the World Cup. Only a courageous whistleblower could have done that.
So in order to justify his not giving, what would have been a deserving penalty for Argentina, Michel flashed the yellow card to Rodriguez, charging the striker with simulation.
It should not come a surprise to you that this was the same Michel who stood in the Brazil-Ghana match and gave Brazil their second goal from a clearly off-side position.
What the hell Sepp Blatter is doing there?
Is the Fifa running a World Cup or party for his European friends?
It should be worthwhile to remember that current German coach Jurgen Klinsmann was the simulator par excellence who claimed a penalty with his artful diving against Argentina in the 1994 final.
I sympathize with the Argentine fans all over the globe as their side is undeservingly thrown out of the World Cup.
It was a rousing performance by Argentina in Berlin. They took the lead through a stupendous header from Roberto Ayala in the 49th minute. They defended their lead till the 79th minute at rivals’ home turf.
Argentina coach Jose Pekerman, however, made some really baffling decisions in the second half by pulling out playmaker Roman Riquelme and striker Hernan Crespo.
I can’t understand why Pekerman brought on Cruz for Crespo. Pekerman should have brought on Lionel Messi and the young genius could have ripped apart the German defence.
One must admit that Pekerman’s tactical blunder also contributed towards Argentina’s disability in finding the match-winner even in extra-time.
Who said there is justice in this world?