Word: soccering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...world economy may be slowing, but you wouldn't know it to look at the giddily bullish market for the services of the world's leading soccer players. The top clubs in England, Spain and Italy are primed to spend billions of dollars in the remaining four weeks of this summer's "transfer window," during which teams are allowed to trade consenting players. And in a game with no salary caps, the players - who not only get to negotiate a more lucrative deal with their new clubs but also get 10% of their transfer fee (the remainder going...
...European soccer economy is quite different from that of American sports with its carefully regulated trades and salary caps. The right to contract players can be bought and sold. And for a match-winner like Ronaldo, the driving force of a United team that finished last season as champions of both England and Europe, it's a seller's market. The Manchester club have the Portuguese star on contract for four more years (after which, if he's not sold, he becomes a free agent) at a weekly wage of $240,000. Real Madrid wants to pay $120 million...
...blood was spilled thousands of miles away in Honduras. On October 7, in the Central Penitentiary of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the prison homeboys of the "MS" gang cranked up the volume of their dormitory's TV set. It was the day of the big Honduras-Jamaica soccer game, and the blasting soccer commentary covered the screams of ex-gang leader Geofredo Cortes Ortiz as two ornately tattooed MS members - both Hispanics from the U.S. - dragged him into the bathroom and hacked him to death with machetes. Their homeboys then joined in the symbolic rite of methodically cutting the dead...
...iron maiden confirmed some of the ghastly stories I'd heard about Uday's treatment of Iraqi sportsmen, especially the national soccer team. When they lost a game, they routinely received beatings and an imaginative range of punishments - like being made to kick concrete balls, or forced to run shoeless over shards of glass. Later, I would meet a coach who had spent two terrifying hours in the iron maiden - his torso was riddled with scars from the spikes...
Needless to say, torture didn't make the Iraqi soccer team play better. But once freed from Uday's depravity, the team flourished. At the Athens Olympics in 2004, they went all the way to the semi-finals, losing the bronze medal game by a single goal to the mighty Italians. They had been the Cinderella team of the Games, and like their proud countrymen, I celebrated the team's success. Three years later, as their country was being torn apart by a bloody sectarian war between Shi'ites and Sunnis, the team (comprising of players from both sects...