The Perils of International Week

By: Isaiah | November 20th, 2007

Hey, it’s international week! Total malaise has set in, soccer-wise, while my Jayhawks have brought the pain in football and basketball (the former being good, the latter being a fractured foot for Sherron Collins), thus distracting me well enough. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the above picture in El Mundo Deportivo. It was in this story about Bojan being super good n’ stuff and being named Gillette’s Future Champion, as the best new superduper wunderkid. Like he didn’t know it. (Barca’s take) But the thing is, the picture is of him reading EMD…which is bad because it suggests that the Barca players read that crap in order to get their soccer news. Now, I don’t doubt that it was a photo op, a manufactured picture, blah blah, but that it’s possible a 17-year old is reading about himself in the newspapers means he’s probably susceptible to all the hype that causes bad things to happen to young kids thrust into the spotlight. It’s an ego thing, not a thing about whether his parents look after him well enough, because I’m sure they’re fantastic parents (yadda yadda).

I just thought I’d post that.

And the fact that Iniesta scored and Xavi got an assist in Spain’s 3-0 defeat of Sweden on Saturday. Xavi also got an assist. Messi and Milito both played 90 minutes in Argentina’s 3-0 win over Bolivia. They play again today away to Colombia. Ronnie played all 90 minutes away to Peru on Sunday, which is very unfortunate because he has an ankle injury that’s not fully healed. Apparently he played badly. Whatever, internationals suck for club teams, but they’re necessary (and wonderful!), so let’s just hope the “FIFA virus” has the reverse affect compared to what it did to us before, when we were chugging along, scoring like 8,000 goals per game and generally just dominating.

My computer brokeded at home, so I may not be able to come up with a post for this coming weekend either (that and Thanksgiving, the ultimate weekend in sports, and large consumption of, ahem, uh, water…will make it hard for me to find the time to post a meaningful preview of a game we’ll probably win 3-0 cause Recre is in the relegation zone and, you know, kinda sucks a lot. Not that we didn’t draw with Valladolid or anything. And not that you can ever take these games lightly if you’re playing in them. I’m sure I’ll watch, but if anyone wants to sign up for a guest blogging spot like Kevin did before, that would be fantastic. Kevin, of course, you’re welcome to repeat. Just email me at barcelona[at]theoffside[dot]com and we’ll be in business. First-come, first-serve.