55-year-old Diego Maradona had to be restrained by security staff at Pope Francis’ “Match for Peace and Solidarity” after getting into a verbal altercation with Juan Sebastian Veron on Wednesday night.
Few would argue against major international tournaments being the biennial highlight of the footballing calendar. They’re a marketing groups’ wet dream; hundreds of millions worldwide tuning in on their official World Cup Samsung 60’’ flat screens to watch Pepsi and Coca Cola adverts interspersed with 45-minute segments of the very best in the game representing their motherlands at the highest level.
No player wants to receive a yellow or red card during a match — what they do want now is a green card. What’s a green card? A green card is given to a player to reward them for their good sportsmanship and other acts of virtue on the pitch. Chivalry is alive and well.
Green cards can be earned for such actions as stopping play when a player is injured, helping the referee make the appropriate call or admitting to diving.
The pre-match team photo is so innocuous and brief that it hardly even registers when watching it take place. Like players holding the hands of little child mascots when entering the field, it's just one of those things that happens. Don't question it, don't even think about it, let's just get it over with.
The starting XI gets in two balanced rows, the players in the back drape their arms over one another and everyone stares blankly into the camera for a moment. What’s the point of the exercise? Where does the photo end up? Who’s getting any joy from this photo op?
It hasn’t been the dream beginning that many anticipated following three straight victories to open their 2016-17 Premier League campaign, and many within the Manchester United camp are already beginning to feel the heat.
Wayne Rooney has been in dire form, and his inclusion in the starting XI has been relentlessly questioned. Zlatan Ibrahimovic hasn’t scored a Premier League goal since September 10th. Paul Pogba has hardly justified his gargantuan transfer fee, and Jose Mourinho’s personnel choices, including the ostracizing of Bastian Schweinsteiger, have been criticized.