Nirvana changed pop music forever with a single song.

 In the history of pop music, there are certain bands, albums and songs that changed everything. Just like in your own life, it’s tough to recognise the impact of a turning point as it happens – you just know that something big is going on. And in the fall of 1991, something huge was happening with Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Nirvana, led by singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, was a band out of Aberdeen, Washington. Prior to Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana was like countless other small bands, treading water during the last wave of college rock (“underground” music that played on university radio stations). Some of the most popular college rock bands, such as Cobain favourite R.E.M., had gone from releasing albums on tiny, independently owned record labels to receiving big-money contracts from major labels owned by corporations.

And in 1990, Nirvana did this, too. After putting out their debut, Bleach, on Seattle indie label Sub Pop, Cobain and his band signed to DGC Records for their second release. Nirvana moved up a floor – but no one had any idea that they’d blow the roof off the building.

In the early 1990s, pop radio was wall-to-wall balladeers (Michael Bolton and Mariah Carey), rappers (MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice) and Jacksons (Michael and Janet). The closest thing to rock was still several universes away from the world inhabited by Nirvana.

It’s not like Cobain didn’t have great affection for pop music. He was a huge admirer of The Beatles, and many of his punk, metal and college rock heroes had a knack for burying beautiful melodies under raging guitars or murky noise. Nirvana’s new drummer, Dave Grohl, could even sing harmony.

Nirvana would record Nevermind, the band’s major label debut, with producer Butch Vig in the spring of 1991. Smells Like Teen Spirit would end up being the album’s lead track. Cobain was responsible for the song’s charging guitar riff. While playing his new riff with bandmates Grohl (drums) and Krist Novoselic (bass guitar), the trio experimented with quietening down the riff for the verses, creating a loud-quiet-loud dynamic that would be endlessly copied by those influenced by Nirvana.

Of course, the band didn’t come up with the idea out of nowhere. Cobain later admitted that Teen Spirit was an attempt to write a song in the style of The Pixies. The Nirvana frontman had loved the first album by the college radio stars (if such a thing ever existed), because of their roaring guitars, dynamic shifts and strong melodies.

And then there’s the song title, which Cobain took from a message spray-painted on his wall by Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna. The singer had written “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit,” namechecking the deodorant that Cobain’s girlfriend wore, called Teen Spirit. The story goes that Cobain was unaware of the brand name, and thought Hanna was referencing some sort of youth revolt.

Indeed, some fans have interpreted the song’s lyrics as being about the indifferent teenage experience: “I feel stupid and contagious. Here we are now, entertain us.” Grohl had dismissed this, saying that Cobain chose the words for how they sounded, not what they meant.

In September 1991, DGC released Teen Spirit to college radio as the album’s first single, just to stir up attention about Nirvana and Nevermind. The label executives thought that another song, Come As You Are, had more hit potential, and that Teen Spirit would simply be a way to introduce Nirvana’s sound.

Boy, were they wrong. From September until the end of the year, Teen Spirit grew in popularity – from college rock fans to mainstream rock fans to, well, almost everybody. What was expected to be a modest college radio hit became a mainstream smash, earning play on radio stations worldwide.

The specific reasons why the song became such a hit are unknown. Faced by a wasteland of wimpy ballads and overly synthetic music, perhaps listeners craved something edgier. The song’s conventional structure and catchy riff helped smooth over the noisier elements for fans of slicker pop. Of course, the music video (in constant rotation on MTV by the end of 1991) featuring Nirvana playing at an anarchistic high school pep rally, only helped the song become a titanic moment in rock history.

And then, in early 1992, came the coup de grace: Nirvana’s Nevermind took over the No. 1 position on the Billboard Albums Chart from Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. The King of Pop was dethroned by a raggedy rock band. You couldn’t have written the fairy tale any better.

Sadly, Cobain wouldn’t live this fairy tale for very long. About two and a half years after Teen Spirit found a fanbase, the troubled musician would commit suicide.

Smells Like Teen Spirit ushered in a new era. Loud and angry rock had a home on pop radio. College rock’s funeral pyre gave way to “alternative rock,” which would bring more interesting and varied strains of rock and roll into the mainstream. Young kids today, inspired by Nirvana’s punk ethos, continue to pick up guitars and start their own bands

read more →

Check out Deng Zhuoxiang's wickedly swerving free kick in the 67th minute.

It starts off to Hugo Lloris's left, the French goalkeeper position himself, everything is going swimmingly for a routine pick up when the ball catches a thermal and swerves to the right. Lloris already committed is left prostrate on the ground with his body one way and the arms the other in a futile attempt to keep the ball away from goal. Jabulani magic.

France looked a whole like Arsenal and given the club's weight on the national squad with present players and alumni, it well could have been Wenger on the sideline suffering deja vu. Lots of nice possession and plenty of it but the final product? Sorely lacking. Plus, the Chinese goalkeeper was very, very good. It took China just one chance but it was enough.

read more →

Wayne Mark Rooney was born in Fazakerley Hospital in October 1985, when Everton were the champions of England. Wayne Snr was an often unemployed labourer, mother Jeanette worked as a dinner lady in her son’s De La Salle school.

Son Wayne’s primary school, St Swithin’s, did not play organized football, so his first ‘proper’ match came as a seven-year-old, for the Western Approaches under 11 team. Rooney went on as a sub for his debut, and scored. It was the beginning of a Rooney pattern: younger and better than the rest.

Wayne Snr, being a season-ticket holder at Goodison Park, must have held his breath when his first-born was soon offered a trial by Liverpool before Everton. Fortunately for both Waynes, Everton scout Bob Pendleton followed quickly.

Rooney was then playing for a team called Copplehouse. He was shortly in Everton’s centre of excellence and Rooney’s name was quickly going into the notebooks of men across the country who know about these things.

Paul McGuinness, now Manchester United’s academy manager, recalled his first sighting.

‘Our under nines played Everton’s boys and they absolutely hammered us,’ he said. ‘Rooney scored a few (six), but there was one that stood out.

'It was basically the classic overhead kick, the perfect bicycle kick, which for a kid of eight or nine years old was really something special.’

That was the 1995-96 season, when Rooney scored 114 goals in 29 games for Everton’s under 10s and 11s. A few months later, in November 1996, shortly after Rooney’s 11th birthday, he was Everton’s mascot for the derby game against Liverpool at Anfield. In the warm-up Rooney chipped the ball over an unimpressed Neville Southall.

Gary Speed has good reason to cherish that game. He scored the Everton equaliser in front of the Kop. What Speed also remembered was thinking: ‘Mmm, the mascot’s not bad.’

All at Goodison knew that an exceptional talent was on his way. So did others — Everton had to fight off interest from Wolves, Liverpool and Tottenham — but they knew that until Rooney was 17 they could not sign him as a professional.

There was relief then when two months after his 16th birthday, in 2001, Rooney signed a pre-contract. The significance can be seen in the venue for this event: Goodison Park, in front of 38,000, the day Everton faced Derby in a Premier League match.

Presumably one of Everton’s substitutes will have taken wistful notice: Paul Gascoigne. Everton won but there was to be only one more league victory in the next four months. Manager Walter Smith was replaced by Moyes.

Under Moyes the 16-year-old prodigy began to travel with the first team. And on the opening August day of a momentous 2002-03 season, Rooney was named in the Everton first XI. He had been given the squad number of a released player — No 18, Gascoigne. There was no dream debut goal but Rooney was still delighted.

Finding himself replacing or being replaced by Niclas Alexandersson, there was no Rooney goal until the League Cup in October. That night Everton went to Wrexham, who had Sir Alex Ferguson’s son, Darren, in their team. Rooney came on for Tomasz Radzinski and scored twice.

It was the start of Rooney’s month of arrival. Five days before his 17th birthday, on October 19, with Arsenal the visitors, the score 1-1 and the Gunners about to extend their unbeaten league run to 31 games, Rooney replaced Radzinski.

There were 10 minutes left. Arsenal were the champions, accustomed to seeing games out. In the 90th minute Thomas Gravesen clumped the ball forward. As it fell, it did so on to the soft toes of a 16-year-old most of the nation had not heard of. In the next two seconds that changed.

Rooney brought the ball down 30 yards from goal, swiveled, looked up and drilled an arcing shot past the gaze of Arsenal’s centre halves, Sol Campbell and Pascal Cygan. Behind them, the ball soared over England goalkeeper David Seaman.

Cygan, 36, and now with Cartagena in Spain, remembers: ‘Before the game, Arsene Wenger told us about how dangerous Rooney was.’

Wenger, as they say, knew. Afterwards he said: ‘Losing our record is a big disappointment, but at least we lost to a special goal from a special talent. He is the biggest English talent I’ve seen since I took over at Highbury.’

The 16-year-old had invaded the nation’s living rooms. He has been part of the furniture ever since.

read more →

It is hard to imagine a more significant managerial appointment for Liverpool than the next one; not even the arrival of Bill Shankly in 1959. If Liverpool get this wrong, they are heading for footballing oblivion... it's bigger than finding Bill Shankly

We know of Shankly’s importance now. He took a Second Division club, one that had recently lost an FA Cup tie to Worcester City, and turned them into the best team in England. He changed the ethos of Liverpool, right down to its all-red strip. He paved the way for unimagined European glory.

Yet had Shankly not been a success, Liverpool had nothing to lose. The club had been outside the top division since finishing bottom in 1953-54; it had won a single trophy in 36 years (the 1946-47 League title).

This could not be more different. This time there is so much more at stake. The next Liverpool manager has to get it right or, in language his employers will understand, give away the farm. The elite status, the glorious diversion of Europe, Liverpool could
surrender it all.

The colours will remain, and the Kop, but in every other aspect, the club risks a return to the wilderness. With the huge changes being made to the financial structure of the European game, this is not the time to be on the outside.

The new regulations being introduced by Michel Platini, the UEFA president, were considered to be of great benefit to a club the size of Liverpool. If debt was no longer allowed, meaning spending would be tagged to legitimate turnover then Liverpool, as Champion League regulars, would always have more money than the majority of rivals.

Except, this season, that bubble burst: mistakes by departing manager Rafael Benitez painfully compounded the inadequacy of owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and Liverpool slumped to seventh place.

With Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City in the ascendancy, and the future of key players increasingly uncertain, the new Liverpool manager faces an enormous challenge to restore the club to the top four in his first season; and the longer Liverpool are excluded from the Champions League the greater chance there is of being regulated into a life of mediocrity.

Without Champions League football all revenue streams suffer: prize money, sponsorship, television revenues, gate receipts. Less money coming in means less investment in the team. Before, it did not matter, because Liverpool’s name sustained the possibility of increased funding once the dead weights of Hicks and Gillett were out of the way. Soon, though, the wealth of an owner will cease to matter.

In the next two seasons, Manchester City will spend heavily to ensure success before UEFA’s controls are in place. In the scramble to be on the right side when the bridge goes up, Liverpool are losing ground. Hence the magnitude of this appointment.

Liverpool do not have time to recover from further failure. The new man must work quickly or risk conceding Liverpool’s position of prominence in the modern game. It can happen.

Borussia Moenchengladbach were Liverpool’s opponents in their first European Cup final, in 1977, and remain the sixth largest club in Germany; but they last won a trophy 15 years ago and in 1999 were relegated to the second tier of the Bundesliga, and have since existed as a yo-yo club, down one season up the next.

Liverpool put four past Benfica in the Europa League this season, and the Portuguese looked barely adequate, yet this was a relatively grand campaign for them. European Cup finalists four times in five years from 1961 to 1965, they are now celebrating only their third domestic league title since 1991.

Ajax, once so dominant, have not won the Eredivisie in six years. Nottingham Forest, twice European champions, fell as far as the third tier in England.

It is not unthinkable that Liverpool could become detached, not on Forest’s level, but certainly from the familiar European elite, if this decline is not arrested.

The short-term concerns are obvious considering that the three players regarded as most important to Liverpool’s continued success, are also being touted for departure this summer.

Steven Gerrard is linked to Real Madrid, Fernando Torres remains vague about his
future after the World Cup, while Javier Mascherano may be wanted by Rafael Benitez if he goes to Inter Milan.

None of this is surprising. Mascherano made noises about signing a new contract but never got round to it, while Torres and Gerard would have had just as many issues had Benitez remained.

The days when keeping Benitez was considered essential to keeping Torres happy are long gone; and nothing distances a manager from his best players faster than seventh place. Benitez’s famous coldness only worked while he brought results; without them only the unsmiling visage remained.

Even if the trio stayed it is estimated that Liverpool need roughly five top quality players to mount a revival; without them, they as good as need a new team.

Benitez might have won the European Cup in 2005, but he couldn’t win the trophy that
mattered most to the fans, the Premier League. Here is how his record compared to the greats...

Paisley - 20 (6 League titles, 3 League Cups, 3 European Cups, European Super Cup, UEFA Cup, 6 Charity Shields)
Shankly - 9 (3 League titles, 2 FA Cups, 1 UEFA Cup, 3 Charity Shields)
Dalglish - 9 (3 League titles, 2 FA Cups, 4 Charity Shields (2 shared)
Houllier - 6 (2 League Cups, FA Cup, UEFA Cup, European Super Cup, Charity Shield)
Benitez - 3 (European Cup, FA Cup, European Super Cup)
Fagan - 3 (League titles, European Cup, League Cup)
Souness - 1 (FA Cup)
Evans - 1 (League Cup)

read more →

Winners Argentina
Teams 24
Host Mexico
Teams in qualifiers 121
Notable absentees Netherlands
Surprises Canada, Iraq
Golden Boot Gary Lineker (England) - 6
Stats A total of 132 goals were scored (2.54 per match); Argentina (14) scored the most
Format Six groups of four, with the top two teams in each group advancing to a knockout round of 16, plus four best third-place finishers
Number of matches 52

Innovations
• The group-style second round was scrapped and replaced with a straight knockout tournament

Controversies
• Colombia were the original choice as hosts but economic chaos meant they in effect had to withdraw. Hopes of an open system for finding a replacement were all but ended when FIFA president João Havelange headed straight from the 1982 final to Mexico
• The sometimes brilliant, sometimes disgraceful Diego Maradona's handball to score against England stirred passions on both sides of the Atlantic. Afterwards, he smiled and said it was "a bit with the head of Maradona and another bit with the hand of God"

Trivia
• Iraq qualified without playing a home match because of the Iran-Iraq war
• A total of 308 qualifying matches were played and 801 goals scored
• Bulgaria and Uruguay qualified for the second round without winning a group match
• Portugal's players went on strike, refusing to train between their first and the second games, and were knocked out after a loss to Morocco in the final group match
• Iraq defender Samir Shaker Mahmoud was banned for a year by FIFA after spitting at the referee during his team's 2-1 loss to Belgium
• Paraguay's Cayetano Ré became the first coach to be sent off after repeatedly encroaching onto the pitch during the first-round game against Belgium
• Uruguay's José Batista was sent off after 56 seconds of the group match against Scotland

A return to Mexico after just 16 years looks a romantic choice at first glance. In fact, the return to Central America came as a result of original hosts Colombia's inability to meet the economic demands of staging "the greatest show on earth". Mexico was itself a country in crisis after a earthquake had wreaked havoc and killed 25,000 people in 1985, but the country rallied to stage the tournament once again.

The tournament was to centre on one squat little man, Diego Armando Maradona, who was on a mission to bury the ghost of 1982 and a troubled spell at Barcelona.

From the first game, Maradona was the mainstay of an Argentina side that was otherwise functional and efficient but lacking in flair. Maradona provided magic in spades and matched it with a will to win. Scoring an excellent equaliser against off-colour holders Italy, he played a part in every Argentine goal in the first round.

The first round's darlings were the Danes, featuring the talents of Michael Laudup and Preben Elkjær-Larsen. A 6-1 defeat of Uruguay saw odds on the Scandinavians winning the trophy tumble. The bookies soon breathed easier, though, as the Danes bizarrely capitulated 5-1 to Spain in the second round, with Emilio 'The Vulture' Butrageno scoring four.

Other first-round form teams to fail at the second-round stage were Soviet Union, in a dramatic 4-3 loss to Belgium, and Morocco, who topped England's group before taking West Germany to the wire - it was not until three minutes from the end that the Germans got their winner in Monterrey.

Italy, a pale shadow of the 1982 side, were dispatched with ease by the French. France, who had won the 1984 European Championships in some style, were again many romantics' choice for the championship, though an over-reliance on Michel Platini's goal power from midfield would later prove problematic.

Brazil, themselves a shadow of their 1982 team but 4-0 conquerors of Poland, met the French in a titanic encounter in Guadalajara.

The game ended 1-1 and was absolutely jam-packed with incident. A challenge by Brazil goalkeeper Carlos on Bruno Bellone brought back painful memories of the Battiston-Schumacher incident four years earlier. At the other end, with his first kick of the game, substitute Zico missed a penalty to win the game in normal time, so it was penalties again for the French. This time, their nerve held despite Platini inexplicably blazing his spot-kick over the bar. Keeper Joel Bats was the hero as he saved first Socrates' casual effort and then Júlio César's strike.

Luis Fernández stroked home the decider and the French rejoiced. The time seemed right for revenge over the Germans, who had ousted the hosts in their own shoot-out.

Argentina's challenge was meanwhile gathering pace. A functional win over Uruguay took them on to face England in the quarter-finals. Bobby Robson's side, for whom Gary Lineker had hit a rich vein of scoring form, had beaten South American opposition in the second round in Paraguay, but Argentina looked a far tougher proposition.

And so they would prove. Maradona's first goal, for which there is no dispute that he had handled, was followed by an amazing 75-yard dribble past the entire England defence and goalkeeper Peter Shilton. It is surely the best goal ever seen on the World Cup stage. England, though, rallied after the introduction of John Barnes, who provided a goal for Lineker. The pair almost repeated the trick but Lineker failed to direct his header goalwards.

Yet, despite the illegitimacy of Maradona's first goal, there was little doubt about the best team winning.

Just to show that his second goal hadn't been a fluke, Maradona twice repeated a similar trick in the semi-final against Belgium, surprise members of the last four after a shoot-out win over Spain. The Belgians just couldn't hold the irrepressible Argentina skipper as he led his team into their second final in three World Cups.

There they faced West Germany, ever the party-poopers. France, broken by their toils in the quarter-final, failed to get their revenge. Goalkeeper Bats soiled his heroic status by fumbling an Andreas Brehme free-kick early on and, in the last minute, when France were pushing hard for an equalizer, Rudi Völler scored a breakaway goal.

The final saw Maradona being marked hard by Lothar Matthäus and reduced to a peripheral role for much of the game, which was a poor spectacle until its later stages. Centre-back José Luis Brown had headed in Jorge Burruchaga's free-kick and, when Real Madrid's Jorge Valdano stroked the ball past Schumacher, all looked lost for the Germans.

But on came substitute strikers Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Dieter Hoeness, brother of 1974 hero Uli. Rummenigge, who had suffered another injury-hit finals, bundled home a Völler flick before Völler himself headed in Thomas Berthold's flick with eight minutes to play. Argentina looked shaken but surely this had to be Maradona's tournament?

The little man certainly believed so. Two minutes later, he ended a weaving run with a delicate through-ball to Jorge Burruchaga. The youngster did the rest and Argentina soon claimed their second World Cup. Maradona had realised his dream and, though Argentina were far from a one-man team, no single player has ever had such an influence on the destiny of a World Cup.

Source: FIFA, ESPN, AllSports & Getty

read more →

Winners Italy
Teams 24
Host Spain
Teams in qualifiers 109
Notable absentees Netherlands, Mexico
Surprises Algeria, Cameroon, Honduras, Kuwait, New Zealand
Golden Boot Paolo Rossi (Italy) - 6
Stats A total of 146 goals were scored (2.81 per match); France (16) scored the most
Format Six groups of four, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the second round, where they split into four groups of three. The winners of each group advanced to the semi-finals
Number of matches 52

Innovations
• A complete overhaul of the structure and an expansion to 24 teams in the finals to allow more teams from Africa and Asia
• Penalty shoot-outs to decide semi-final and final matches

Controversies
• In the game between France and Kuwait, the Kuwaitis protested about a goal, claiming they had stopped because of a whistle. Prince Fahid, the Kuwaiti FA president, walked onto the pitch to argue with the referee and threatened to withdraw his team. The referee reversed his decision, but France still won 4-1. The referee was suspended, and Fahid was fined US$14,000
• The format meant that England and Cameroon were knocked out despite not losing a match
• West Germany and Austria went into their last group game knowing a German win would mean both qualified for the next round and, to the disgust of the vociferous crowd, neither made any attempt to score after Germany took an early lead. Algeria, who had beaten West Germany in the opening game, were the real victims as they went out as a result
• In the semi-final, German goalkeeper Harald Schumacher was responsible for one of the game's most appalling fouls when he charged out his area and poleaxed France's Patrick Battiston. To the astonishment of players and spectators, the referee took no action and Schumacher showed not a jot of concern for the unconscious Battison, who was stretchered off with a damaged spine and missing teeth

Trivia
• Italy's captain, Dino Zoff, was 40 when he played in the final and remains the oldest man to receive a winner's medal
• France's Alain Giresse scored the first goal in a penalty shoot-out. France lost the semi-final to West Germany 4-5
• Hungarian substitute László Kiss scored a hat-trick in eight minutes in a record 10-1 rout of El Salvador
• Italy's Giampiero Marini was booked inside a minute in the game against Poland
• Northern Ireland's Norman Whiteside, at the age of 17 years and 42 days, became the youngest player to appear in the finals
• Algeria's captain, Salah Asad, was executed during a government crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists in 1992
• England's Bryan Robson scored against France after 27 seconds, a record at the time
• Peru's 67-year-old coach Elba de Pádua Lima, better known as Tim, had appeared in the World Cup 44 years earlier as a player for Brazil
• The total attendance figure of 2,109,723 was the first time it had topped two million

Source: FIFA, ESPN, AllSports & Getty

read more →

Lionel Messi is naturally a very shy and reserved young man who has not always fit in well with his teammates with the Argentina National Team. During the 2006 World Cup in Germany, La Pulga was the youngest players in the squad and mainly kept to himself, socializing only with friend and former teammate at the Under-20 level, Oscar Ustari.

A year later at the Copa America in Venezuela, Juan Sebastian Veron made his return to the Argentina setup after missing out on Germany 2006, and immediately began to try and integrate Messi into the group. Over the course of that tournament, there were notable signs of a change in Messi as he began to feel more comfortable with the Argentina side.

In an interview last season, Messi attributed his friendship with Veron as the reason he began to feel at home with the national team, while Veron has been compared to Messi's father in the national team on more than one occasion.

Just last month, he was asked again and responded: "I get along well with Leo...He was a timid and withdrawn kid who had to integrate into a team of people much older, and he did it without any problems. To me, he occupies a very important part in the group."

Veron has also been a constant advocate of Messi in the Argentine press. As arguably the most high profile player plying his trade in Argentina, Veron became a bit of a spokesman at home for the many stars playing abroad who were labeled as mercenaries at times during Argentina's poor run to qualify for South Africa.

La Brujita has also been a proponent of building the team around Messi, saying: "If he needs more company, then it is perfect that we play with two more strikers...We will try to make him feel like he does when he plays with Barca."

The two giants of Argentina football have butted heads during Barcelona's dramatic extra-time victory over Estudiantes in the final of the FIFA Club World Cup in 2009, thanks to Messi's winner. The relationship hardly suffered, and the two are now roommates with Argentina at the team bunker in Pretoria.

"That was their decision, I had nothing to do with it," said Diego Maradona when asked about the room pairing, "...I love it because they get along very well."

Maradona has often stressed how important the group spirit and unity were during Argentina's run to back-to-back World Cup Finals in 1986 and 1990, and it appears that El Pibe de Oro is building a similar harmony within the squad as team manager.

Since arriving in South Africa, Argentina has trained behind closed doors and away from the spotlight of the often overly critical Argentine media, who have been throwing plenty of pressure on top of Messi during the run up to football's showcase event.

Away from the spotlight, Messi and his teammates are beginning to build a quiet confidence, while the rest of the world's media has been going on about the outspoken Brazilians and Spaniards.

Although Maradona has handed the press a few quality sound bites, he has kept the attention away from his players. They have been able to concentrate on nothing but football and the upcoming match with Nigeria, while also building the friendships.

On the pitch, Veron plays an equally important role in Messi's happiness and productivity. Although the Estudiantes captain does not play as far up the pitch as he once did, Veron has one of the best passing ranges in world football. He also possesses the patience and experience to calm down his often more exuberant younger teammates, who often try to operate at full speed 100 percent of the time.

"Veron is my Xavi. I want him to manage the team, to be my representative on the pitch, to speak to the kid (Messi)," Maradona said in an interview last month after announcing his preliminary squad of 30 players in World Cup contention.

Veron may not have the movement of Xavi, but La Brujita will be content to let the ball do the work, and allow Messi, Angel Di Maria, and Gonzalo Higuain to do the running. In the recent friendly, Messi drifted inside to exchange passes with Veron as Argentina protected a lead against Germany.

Hoping to see more of that on the field in South Africa when the tournament kicks off. The only regret is Riquelme won't be there to play along side of Veron and Messi.

read more →