Word: soccers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the English soccer team Chelsea took to the field in Moscow on May 21 for the final of UEFA's Champions League, Europe's biggest club competition, its West London roots were all but invisible. A Czech goalie backed up a Portuguese central defender. Players from France and Germany marshaled Chelsea's midfield. The lone striker was from Ivory Coast. In all, of the 11 players who kicked off that game at the Luzhniki Stadium, only four were English...
...good enough, reckons FIFA, world football's governing body. At its annual congress in Sydney on Friday, delegates backed proposals capping at five the number of foreign players top soccer clubs can field at the start of a game. Buoyed by the support - 155 voted in favor of the resolution, and only five against - FIFA plans to explore the idea further with the hope of imposing the limits by 2012. "There is a growing sporting and economic inequality" between clubs, said Sepp Blatter, FIFA's president, taking aim at wealthy European teams able to cherry pick from the world...
...does back an existing scheme imposed by UEFA, European soccer's governing body, that requires clubs competing in the region's top tournaments to have a minimum of six "home-grown" players in their squads, who are required to have been trained by their club, or by another in the same country, for at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21, regardless of their nationality. But UEFA doesn't demand that local players actually take the field, as Blatter's more draconian FIFA proposal would. He has said he would push ahead on making that far more...
...Clearly, interest has been high, with 1,500 competitors entered in events ranging from soccer and cricket to volleyball, softball and arm-wrestling. The Games are staged according to strict Islamic codes, meaning that girls are separated from boys, staging their events in a large gymnasium. Inside, away from the eyes of men, some players remove their hijabs, but most prefer to keep their heads, and skin, covered...
...Friday's newspapers treated the event as if it were a soccer cup final. "What is Havel's Play Like?" runs a bold-type headline followed by five stars in Lidove Noviny, a daily not in the habit of running arts stories on its front pages. The business daily Hospodarske Noviny called the play the "theatrical event of the season" . "Sure, the fame of the author ? plays a role but it is an extraordinary experience nonetheless...