Soccer & Dreams of Greatness -- Bebe & Manchester United...

It is always uplifting to read, or hear, a story that is rags to riches. So, the story of Tiago Manuel Dias Correia, or Bebe as he is known to his fans, being signed by Manchester United is one of those feel good stories.

Bebe was a homeless street child whose skills with a soccer (football for you purists out there) ball saw him play some amateur and third division soccer in Portugal.

Bebe has been signed for a handsome 7.4 million pounds. This bodes well for a pretty decent salary (even if he spends most of his time just warming the reserves bench.

Hopefully, Bebe comes good and lives up to the potential and the hype. If nothing else it will make a good movie. Kind of reminds me of that movie where the kid gets plucked out of obscurity and plays for Newcastle in the English Premier League; Goal: The Dream Begins.

Well, it is soccer time...I am off to watch Arsenal and Liverpool do battle in round one of the EPL.

Good night all.

Dutch Indonesian Footballers...

I was thinking of posting something of Dutch footballers (soccer players to the rest of us) while I was watching the 2010 World Cup final the other week. The commentators on the broadcast that I was watching mentioned a number of times that there were plenty of Dutch footballers with Indonesian blood pumping through their veins. In the final, the names of Robin van Persie, John Heitinga, and Giovanni van Bronckhorst were mentioned a number of times.

However, this post actually came to life as I was reading an article in The Jakarta Globe earlier tonight.

It was interesting to read that the Indonesian Football Association has a plan in place to recruit Dutch players with an Indonesian ancestry to play for the Indonesian National Team. At face value, sounds like a good plan, and why not? However, politics and bureaucracy means that this is nothing more than pie in the sky dreaming.

Indonesia's citizenship and naturalization laws and regulations are notoriously difficult to navigate. On paper, it can be argued that becoming an Indonesian citizen is easy. Nothing more than filling in the paperwork and going through the motions. Personal experience tells me that this is not the case.

However, this post is not about me, but about football players who may be tempted, or not, to change their stripes from the Oranje of Holland to the Red and White of Indonesia. One of the biggest obstacles to the idea of dual citizenship is that Indonesian politicians do not seem to be able to get their collective heads around the idea that someone can hold two passports yet be a devoted patriot to one. Sometimes, practical considerations, such as family or work, dictate  dual citizenship.

I am sure that there are some fringe players who cannot secure a regular gig in the Dutch national side that might be tempted by the prospect of playing consistent international football. However, the established stars like van Persie are not likely to be suiting up in the red and white of Indonesia.

Nevertheless, Indonesians have had a chance to see what van Persie might look like in the red and white when he suits up in the Premier League for Arsenal. My guess is that is as close as van Persie will get to wearing the red and white of his ancestral homeland.

Yet, if the Indonesians are serious about this then it requires that the government get on board and look at putting some flexibility into the current laws and regulations relating to holding more than one passport. Dual citizenship will go a long way to enticing those fringe players into considering a stint with the Indonesian national team. Otherwise, this is nothing more than a couple of old Indonesian men sitting round a table dreaming of world cup glory in 2110 when Indonesia hosts its first ever football world cup.

A couple of other notable Dutch footballers with Indonesian connections include Roy Maakay, Bobby Petta, Denny Landzaat, Michael Mols and Sergio van Dijk.

That is the Arsenal strip, but I am pretty sure that is not Robin van Persie. The body paint though seems to be the way of the future, something about aerodynamics and energy efficiency. Oh well and happy viewing!

Racism and Sports

Racism in sport is not something new. However, when the ugly spectre of racism raises its head at increasingly lower levels of sports then there is a more apparent and urgent need to address the problem.

In a rugby league match between the Mascot and the South Eastern Rugby Leagues clubs in Maroubra on Sunday there is an alleged report of an under 12 player being racially abused by a person.

I hope that what I am about to write offends your sensibilities and if you never come back and read me again so be it. I want to offend your sensibilities because if you are a reader based in Australia then this is something that must be stamped out at all levels of the game! If you are a reader somewhere else then I hope that you join in the campaign to stamp out racism.

The more offended you are the more likely you are to do something about it. Write a letter to the paper, post something on your own blog (if you have one), or talk to your friends about it, but do something. It is alleged that the person making the remark was an adult.

It remains unclear whether this clown was a parent or a team official. Either way he is still a clown! I am competitive and I want to win. I am sure that is something that will transfer in the genes to "the kid". Yet, being competitive does not involve any need for me to racially abuse the opposition.

It is alleged that this person was calling the under 12 player a "black cunt". One assumes that the player was one of my indigenous brothers. I am not apologizing for the word and I am not going to disguise it with an asterisk or some other symbol. I want you to be offended. The more offended you are the more likely you are to take a stand against this. Calling a 12-year old a "black cunt" cannot be justified on any grounds, no matter how bad the kid is. But in this context of a sports match there is no justification I can see. Feel free to enlighten me if you can!

The punishment for the crime is to black-list the perpetrator (is black bad or something?) and to de-register the child. I have no problem with banning the perpetrator for a period of time in order that the person reflect a little on their racism and do something about it. However, banning the child seems to me to be punishing the child for the sins of the parent (father). To me this is inherently wrong! The picture is from the "Show Racism the Red Card" campaign.

The father of the victim on hearing the racial slur was then alleged to have king-hit the maker of the remarks and a fight then broke out between a number of spectators. An ugly incident all round.

It is my sincere hope that something is done about this sooner rather than later.

Astro Soccer

Some might prefer football as opposed to soccer but no matter what your fancy in that regard, if you are an Astro subscriber you are getting screwed out of your subscription fees -- you're paying and Astro is not showing!

Aside from the monopoly rights issues that the Commission for the Supervision of Business Competition is looking into, the very fact that there are some 140,000 subscribers to this Pay TV operator who are not getting service begs the question; what's the problem here?

It seems that Astro has failed to pay some administrative fees and as a consequence the Department of Communication and Information has suspended their broadcasting rights. This is presumably until Astro comes good with the outstanding fees that have already beendue and payable for some time. As my good cyber colleague, Jakartass, points out that the outsatnding fees total some USD 20,000 and the block / suspension of services is costing Astro some USD 100,000 per day.

The obvious, and perhaps stupid question for the seemingly stupid Astro people, is why wasn't some of this USD 100,000 big 'uns directed towards paying these administrative fees?

I do not subscribe to Astro because even though it has the EPL the rest of its offerings are a little lame and I get more from my current provider at a cheaper price! Being a die-hard Arsenal fan I would have been a little bit annoyed if I was an Astro subscriber and could not get to see the game particularly when I had paid my fees and the company I paid them to for the privilege to watch the game was too damn incompetent or poorly managed (perhaps they take their name seriously over at Astro and all their employees are a little "spacey" and that's not Kevin Spacey!) to see that my fees got paid to the right people in order to satisfy their legal obligations.

Another example of big business taking their customers for the proverbial ride!

Sad, sad, sad!