This morning I was reading news from one of my favorite soccer blogs dirty tackle, that Usain Bolt wants to play soccer. There is no question dude has got athletic skills (mainly fast running skills) but I don’t know if he has football skills… Manchester United Football skills at that. Here is what Bolt says about it in his autobiography:
“Ideally, if I was to play football, I’d sign for my favorite team — Manchester United. People say it’s not realistic but nobody has seen me play so you never know. If Alex Ferguson saw me in one of those charity matches he might think I could replace Ryan Giggs.”
The Gaurdian explained the lifetime Man U supporter is serious about playing.
I ask about his ambitions. Ultimately, he says, he’d love to make a go of playing football professionally. He’s being deadly serious. One of the perks of being Usain Bolt is that sporting stars love to meet him, so whenever he’s travelling and there’s time, he tries to train with a top football team. Last year it was Manchester United, a few days ago it was Bayern Munich. He’s still carrying a copy of the French sporting newspaper L’Equipe, which features a spread on his football skills and praise from Bayern manager Louis van Gaal. He shows me a photo of himself with his arm wrapped round the dwarfed 6ft German forward Miroslav Klose. “If I keep myself in shape, I can definitely play football at a high level,” he says.
Here is some footage of a recent trip Bolt made to Bayern Munich FC and there’s a quick shot of his “football skills”.
The former Arsenal captain Thierry Henry has signed for the NY Red Bulls from Barcelona FC. For any soccer fans out there this is great news for American soccer to have a big name player and even better for NYC. Check out some highlights from the man who should do it big in NY and one of my personal all time favorite players.
Today’s Times features a story on the past, present and future of Puerto Rican baseball, and the politics behind their recent decline.
Check out a excerpt from the story below…
…In 2009, only 3.5 percent of position players in Major League Baseball came from Puerto Rico, a 24-year low. Meanwhile, the percentage of Cuban and Venezuelan position players has nearly doubled in the last decade.
An average of 27 Puerto Ricans a year were drafted and signed during the past decade, down from 35 a year during the 1990s. Ten times as many amateurs were signed from the Dominican Republic.
Major League Baseball has tried to boost the popularity of the sport through the World Baseball Classic and by playing regular-season games in Puerto Rico, including this week’s series between the Mets and the Florida Marlins.
The NY Times puts together an interesting feature on German/Jamaican tennis player, and Wimbledon hopeful, Dustin Brown. Check out a few line from the story below…
Dustin Brown, the most accomplished tennis player in the history of Jamaica, was born in Germany and trained by an American before polishing his game near the picturesque shores of Montego Bay.
He remains a man of worldly influences, fluent in German and English, with distinct dreadlocks and a serve-and-volley style. But Brown’s rise into the top 100, his first Wimbledon singles appearance and his late-blossoming career can all be traced back to an unlikely vehicle — a Volkswagen camper van….
Interesting story on the Olympic aspirations of dominoes players in Jamaica. Could dominoes ever overtake Track & Field as their national sport? Only time will tell.
Check out an excerpt from the article below…
Domino competitions see players setting up from daybreak and going through until the early hours playing Cut Throat and Partner, the names of the two most popular local styles played.
A “Q”, or quarter-litre bottle of white rum, is often a key element of the event, making the job of getting the game more professional even more of an uphill battle.
“I’d say seven of 10 of us play,” says Rey Smith, head of the National Association of Domino Bodies in Jamaica.
“We play it as a social game and we’re now playing it competitive level. It’s that level that we’re talking about with the Olympics.”
ESPN as well as us have chronicled the story of Joe Gaetjens many times. This time with cameras in hand ESPN traveled back to post earthquake Haiti with Joe’s oldest son to revisit his memory.
Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian immigrant, scored the greatest goal in American soccer history. He should have been a hero. Instead, Gaetjens was abducted and died in a Haitian prison. “Outside the Lines” sheds light on his story.
The Havana sun casts a golden, late afternoon light, lending a brief glow to a narrow street. Decaying houses, with their half-crumbling facades, somehow cling to their faded glory. The camera pulls back and reveals the silhouette of a man, rounded by age and good living, puffing on a cigar. At the age of 67, Luis Tiant has come back to Cuba, the island he had left at age 20 for a trip he thought would last a month and became nearly a half-century. But is this still home? What is home for an exile that becomes a star in his new land, leaving former teammates to play for their government and country in isolation and povertis home for a man who never had a sister or brother and whose parents are dead? Where can he go to sort out the guilt and the glory? And is it too late?
I’ll (hopefully) have a full review of the film next week, so be on the lookout for that.
With 2010 World Cup just 99 days away, ESPN has reopened an old topic about Joe Gaetjens the hero during the US victory over England in the 1950 World Cup. The article tries into kill all the misconceptions that were portrayed about Joe Gaetjens and show him as he truly was. In the movie “Game of Their Lives”, he was portrayed as a voodoo fanatic when he was actually Catholic. There are mangled facts about Gaetjens family origins and the English media trying to call his goal a fluke as well as his mysterious demise.
Joe Gaetjens was not Belgian. And his father wasn’t, either.
His name sounded Flemish. The Flemings are the Dutch-speaking half of Belgium. Considering the tidal wave of Flemish immigrants that washed over North America in the 19th century, the assumption that Gaetjens was of Belgian descent held credence. But Gaetjens, in spite of the ‘-jens’ suffix, is not a common name in Flanders.
Genealogic research shows that Joe’s great-grandfather, Thomas, migrated to Haiti from Bremen, in northern Germany, where the Gaetjens name is rather common. (A close variation on Gaetjens — Gätjens — is also oft-heard just north of there, over the Danish border.) Thomas arrived in Haiti shortly after 1825 (when France officially recognized Haiti’s independence) and married Leonie Dejoie, whose father was a general and had played a part in Haiti’s self-determination. That connection opened a path to prosperity for the Gaetjens family…
Joe Gaetjens did not practice voodoo.
“Absolutely not!” shouts his indignant younger sister, Mireille, reached in Puerto Rico.
“The Game of Their Lives,” the 2005 movie about the historic upset, had been ludicrously inaccurate. The film made light-skinned Gaetjens, played by dark-skinned Jimmy Jean-Louis, out to be some sort of voodoo nut.
The Gaetjens family was appalled. In real life, Gaetjens was Catholic, like most Haitians, and went to church every Sunday…
After the U.S.-England game, a barrage of excuses was blasted from the England camp. It had been too hot. Travel had been strenuous. But this one would stick: Gaetjens’ goal had been a lucky one.
All Americans and most English present on the scene dispute that.
A while back Omar posted some photos of skateboarding crews that were emerging in Jamaica, I was searching around to see if there was an more info or video on them to show, just the other day I stumbled on an interview from Large Up about this.
From the video you can see how the kids are being diversified with new hobbies and putting their own spin on things by merging it back into the dancehall scene.
