Maradona Hospitalized, Has Surgery

Admit it. You see that headline ... and you don't know where to go with it.

Diego Maradona, coach of the Argentine national team, has had such an erratic/sickly/substance-addled life ... you see he's in a hospital ... and you think, "Well, OK ... it could be just about anything."

In this case? Diego was bitten by his dog. He has had surgery on his face. Diego. Not the dog.

And what this reinforces is that the Argentines, as good as they are (and they are very good, individually) are led by the most erratic coach in the South Africa 2010 World Cup. Whoever is second isn't within a country mile of Mad Maradona.

(Unless one of those other 31 gentlemen have been hiding some massively corrosive personal shortcomings that include rampant cocaine usage, near-death experiences from substance abuse and, now, attacks from their own dogs.)

If I were Argentina's fans, or bettors on Argentina ... well, I would be worried. Because this guy is a loose cannon. A goofball. A man who can barely get through the day. A disaster waiting to happen.

And he is expected to make the decisions to get Argentina through the World Cup?

So, today it is a dog that put Diego Maradona in the hospital. What will it be next time?

Whatever it is, it won't surprise us.

And here is an update with a few more details. A couple of fun facts: Diego was playing with his Shar Pei and got wounds on his mouth ... ick. Also, the hospital he went to is the same he went to in 2007 to get his liver fixed up.

Sigh.
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Ivory Coast Picks Sven-Goran

Hey, what was the rush? Ivory Coast finally settled on a coach for South Africa 2010, which begins in all of 74 days. And it is the Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson, best known as England's boss at two World Cups.

He has more than two months to figure out the Elephants and point them toward the correct goal.

What? You mean he never did figure out Mexico in 10 months running El Tri?

Uh-oh.

This has the feel of one of those marriages made in ... hell.

Guus Hiddink would have been the perfect guy for this job. A month ago. Bora Milutinovic, even.

Sven-Goran just gives off a vibe that he may not be able to coach outside Europe. Something kind of stuffy and mechanical and joyless about him that seems to say, "Let him coach a team from some cold, wet country. Or maybe Italy."

Ivory Coast is wet, but it's never cold.

It will be interesting to see how he gets along.

To be sure, Ivory Coast has talent. Just a few months ago, the Elephants were the fashionable choice as the "African team that will make a deep run in 2010."

Then came the draw into the official 2010 World Cup "Group of Death," a quartet that includes Brazil and Portugal (gulp). Followed by a spotty performance in the Cup of African Nations, followed by this really, really drawn-out search for a mercenary coach.

Hiddink was caught between commitments to Russia (leaving) and Turkey (about to arrive). So he fell out. And by the time Ivory Coast finished its dithering, Sven-Goran apparently looked as good as anyone else.

At least it doesn't have to last long. Ivory Coast could be eliminated as early as June 20, the day it plays Brazil. After opening with Portugal on June 15. Two defeats, and it could be buried even before it gets the eminently beatable North Koreans on June 25.

Did we mention Ivory Coast has talent? Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou, Yaya Toure, Emmanuel Eboue ... all of whom play in England or Spain.

Anyway, Sven-Goran needs to get a look at these guys in the flesh, firm up the defense, figure out a way to get a result from Portugal or Brazil, and perhaps he can make some African history.

More likely, we're thinking, he will not. And he may already be back in Europe by the time Ivory Coast plays North Korea on June 25 to wrap up the group stage. Read more!

And on the Third Day, Becks Is Healed?

We shift from mind games to spiritual ... games?

This is one of the stranger sports medicine stories of recent times.

David Beckham has a ruptured Achilles tendon. It has been surgically repaired. Now he needs something like six months to rehabilitate. It is a serious injuries.

But a "spiritual healer" from Sri Lanka says he can get Beckham healthy in three days.

Ohh-kay.

Our first reaction to this idea is ... "balderdash!" Second reaction? "Quack!"

Then you read a little deeper, and India's best cricket player, Sachin Tendulkar, says this doctor/healer helped heal his knee.

The guy, named Eliyantha Lindsay White, is the "personal physician" of the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakse. And it was President Rajapakse who offered his healer to Becks.

Hmm.

The doctor apparently uses ayurvedic medicine, traditional medicine native to the subcontinent. It calls for herbs, massage and yoga. For us science-based Yanks, it sounds like quackery. But I should note that our insurance here in the UAE covers ayurvedic.

Where Dr. Eliyantha is involved, though, it gets a little more exotic, as this story notes.

I suppose I am willing to listen to someone promulgating treatment from a country with an ancient culture. But when Dr. Eliyantha suggests he has "special powers" ... and that "when someone sits before me with an ailment I can study his reports and feel his system, but what is more important I can see a light, as small as a welder's sparkle and I begin to hear and sense the medication for his ailment."

Anyway, the point is this: Dude says he can fix Beckham.

"I am ready to treat him," the good doctor said. "His condition can be easily treated and within three days he will be able to go back to playing. ... His case is simple. He can be treated. He can play again."

Well ...

What does Beckham have to lose? Plane fare to Colombo, maybe?

Anyway, if this guy fixes Beckham and we see him in England's starting lineup at South Africa 2010 on June 12 ... well, I may be taking a hop over to see about this achy back. Read more!

Mind Games Week Continues!

This may be about a guy who doesn't like what he has seen. About a former player disgusted with a shaky performance.

That certainly is what it appears to be, on the surface. German scoring legend Gerd Muller saying Germany has no chance to win South Africa 2010.

But since this is Mind Games Week, here at Countdown to South Africa, maybe something else is involved.

And we are back to the classic "lowering expectations" gambit.

Perhaps Gerd Muller, the second-greatest scorer in World Cup history, wasn't satisfied with Franz Beckenbauer's "notice I don't mention Germany as a contender" statements earlier in the week.

So Gerd cuts to the chase: "We have too many young players."

And then he takes on Germany's attacking players, who failed to generate much of anything in a 1-0 home defeat to Argentina earlier this month, calling them soft. "They sign a contract and immediately become millionaires. They then have no inclination to work hard."

Again, it's premature to write off the Germans, even if Gerd really is trying to (as opposed to attempting to fire up the Mannschaft). Aside from the loss to Argentina in the friendly, it isn't as if they have been horrible. They won their qualifying group, twice defeating the runner-up Russians.

And they have some serious World Cup history: Since 1954, the Germans have been in the quarterfinals at 13 of 14 World Cups (missing only in 1978), made the semifinals 10 times, the finals seven times and won it three times (1954, 1974, 1990).

But the current team is trash! Awful. Sehr schlect!

We'll see about that. Read more!

Playing Spanish Mind Games

This must be the week for psychological warfare.

A day ago, Franz Beckenbauer of Germany was talking up Wayne Rooney and England and talking down Germany ...

And now Spanish coach Vicente del Bosque is appalled at the expectations for his team -- co-favored, with Brazil, to win South Africa 2010 -- and out to remind everyone that winning a World Cup is a difficult business.

Sounds like good planning by Del Bosque.

Though he has a tough row to hoe.

Spain has been dominating European soccer for going on four years now. It has lost exactly one international match (to the U.S. in the Confederations Cup last June) since November of 2006. Before that shocking upset, Spain had set a record with 15 consecutive international victories and tied Brazil's record with a streak of 35 consecutive matches without defeat. Spain has reeled off another nine victories since losing to the U.S., giving it one defeat in its last 45 internationals.

Its record in those 45: 41-1-3. And one of the three ties went to a shootout won by Spain (over Italy, in Euro 2008).

Wow.

Spain won the 2008 Euro Cup without defeat and won every match in qualifying for South Africa.

Del Bosque concedes Spain might have some expectations placed on it. "We can hardly say it doesn't make sense that we're singled out, given we're European champions and have won so many games in a row," he said.

But that doesn't mean he has to like it, and it doesn't mean that he can't get to work trying to manage expectations. Spain has never won a World Cup, and that first one is hard. Ask the Netherlands. Or Portugal, or any of the other serious soccer countries that are not among the seven nations that have won a World Cup.

Del Bosque doesn't like the vibe in his home country. "Everybody in Spain thinks that anything except winning the World Cup is a failure," he said. "I think that's nonsense and an extremism but, in the times we live in, it seems that extremism sells."

To be sure, when you have a roster that includes Cesc Fabregas, Andres Iniesta, Fernando Torres, David Villa, Carles Puyol, Iker Casillas, Xabi Alonso ... you are in pretty good shape.

He could also have mentioned that Spain, historically, has been considered one of the great underachievers of the World Cup. Lots of good teams, well-regarded ... and then they failed miserably. A rep they carried until Euro 2008, frankly.

Del Bosque's complaints about expectations probably will fall on deaf ears. But you have to give him some credit for reminding la puebla that this is not a done deal. Spain does have to play the games.
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German Mind Games Begin

I love this. And what I love about this is not the stroking of Wayne Rooney.

It's the biggest name in German soccer beginning a campaign to get inside the heads of Team Three Lions.

This is the story: Franz "Der Kaiser" Beckenbauer talking up Wayne Rooney, and how the England striker is so hot, playing so well, has become so unstoppable, that not only does Beckenbauer's Bayern Munich have little chance against Manchester United in the Champions League quarterfinals ... he is moved to say that, ach!, England looks like a favorite to win the whole thing.

What is really going on here? Well, this: These are not just statements made without foresight.

--Beckenbauer is playing possum, as we say in the States. (A possum being a marsupial than can play dead, thereby leaving predators, as opposed to carrion eaters, to leave it alone.). If you went to the linked story, Beckenbauer makes no mention of Germany as a potential World Cup favorite at South Africa 2010, as if the national team that he led to one championship as a player and another as a coach ... has utterly collapsed. And he says that even though the Germans somehow show up in the semifinals just about every four years even when they are dismissed as being down.

--Beckenbauer is playing to the well-known and self-destructive tendency of England teams, fans and executives to overrate their side in the months before the World Cup, setting goals for it that are unrealistic or sure to amp up the pressure on the players. To read the English press for the past five decades is to believe that England has won scads of World Cups.

England has won one. At home. In 1966. But the country already is in a lather about the 2010 side, and Beckenbauer just lobbed another big fat warm fuzzy at a team and a nation, that already thinks "this is going to be easy."

--Some of this is about Bayern Munich; Beckenbauer is the honorary president of the club, which plays Rooney's club, ManU, shortly.

But it also is about the World Cup. Something else Beckenbauer didn't mention was how England may well face Germany at Africa 2010. If both teams do what they are expected to do (England) or normally do (Germany), they will meet in the semifinals. With England having the monstrous advantage of Wayne Rooney.

I'm not usually one big on subtexts. Generally, like most sports guys, a compliment is a compliment.

But there are times when a guy says one thing and means another. When he is trying to get inside the heads of a team or a specific player. And I am convinced Der Kaiser was working that angle when he all but conceded victory to Wayne Rooney's teams. Read more!

SA2010: Not a Sellout? Too Early to Tell

Not all tickets for South Africa 2010 have been sold. We know this. We knew it weeks ago when Fifa officials conceded something like 800,000 tickets hadn't been moved.

However, the Daily Mirror, one of England's down-market tabloids, wrote a story today raising the alarm that 650,000 (!) tickets remain unsold and breathlessly suggested this could be the first World Cup in history not to be a sellout.

Well, this isn't so much a story as part of a story.

Here's why:

Fifa already has conceded that the tickets it allotted to the other 31 nations in the World Cup have not sold out. The Mirror story has 330,000 of those tickets being returned.

But organizers and Fifa already have a solution in place, too: Selling them at a lower rate to South Africans. As reported a month ago.

South Africa is a significant enough soccer country that Fifa and the organizers probably can fill just about every stadium -- if it prices the tickets low enough. And it may do that, to keep away from this "first non-sold-out World Cup." stats. The Mirror didn't take this into account.

The Mirror story is a little dodgy, too, in that it asserts "Fifa admits ..." when all Fifa has said is that tickets are on sale in South Africa. Nowhere in that story does it "admit" that some of the matches might not be played before full stadiums.

What is true is the contention from the FA in England that the expense of a World Cup at the southern end of Africa has significantly dampened demand. There seems no doubt of that.

But to "discover" that the World Cup won't be a sellout ... is not accurate. Nor is it news.

We won't know until the end of the group stage whether South Africa 2010 doesn't sell out its stadiums. We can't say, right now, that it won't. We don't know that.
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