Kaka’ to Manchester City could be the start of the end

A banner by AC Milan Ultras Brigate Rossonere for Kaka' reads "Don't touch Kaka'"

Every footballlover in the world is aware of the chance that A.C. Milan superstar Ricardo Kaka’ might move to English Manchester City for the amazing amount of more than 100 million €. I also think that every true footballlover, despite the color of his heart, is hoping that Kaka’ will not finalize his move to the Sheikh ownned English club.

Since the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment has bought the club from the controversial former prime minister of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra, there have always been big transfer rumors surrounding the Citizens, with the only Robinho, among all the football superstars named to be joining the club, accepting the move to Manchester from Real Madrid.

Now the club presided by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has been given the green light by AC Milan to talk directly to Kaka’ to persuade him to leave Milan, while groups of AC Milan supporters have been standing, chanting and waving banners, under the headquarters of the club in Via Filippo Turati to show their disappointment to the will of the club to accept the money and let their player go. Unfortunately for them, luck is a wheel and it is their turn to see their best players “robbed” and covered with money by some other rich club. Many football supporters in the world, in the past years, have hated AC Milan for being a rich club, always capable of attracting the best players with extraordinarily good economic offers.

Despite what Kaka’ will do, though, football is more than a lot of money, much more.

Henrik Larsson

Henrik Larsson is another living proof that football is not necessarily about money, fame and glory, even though, nowadays, these elements play a big part in determining the course of events in our favorite sport. The 35 years old Swedish has left English giants Manchester United FC to join again his old team, Helsingborgs. He went to Manchester on loan this winter, during the season break of the Swedish League, promising to his family, fans and club he would be back in Spring, when the season starts again. So he did.

At Manchester United this year he has had a very peculiar role. Red Devils have been short of strikers, due to injuries and to almost unique situations. They have been looking for a player to sign, possibly a talented one and someone who had not yet taken part to this year’s UEFA Champions League. The identikit perfectly fitted Henrik Larsson who had just come back to play in Sweden after a successful couple of seasons spent at Barcelona FC, where he gave his contribution to win 2 Spanish Ligas and 1 Champions League, producing 2 remarkable and decisive assistances in the 2006 final against Arsenal. In January 2007 he got in touch with Manchester’s manager Alex Ferguson and said he would join the club but just for the Swedish season winter break. Now he has left Manchester United to come back to Helsingborgs and he’s missing the chance to add more trophies to his cupboard, as the English club has a good advantage to win the next Premier League and is in the quarter finals of the Champions League. But a promise is a promise and Henrik wanted to respect it.

Not that he hasn’t won enough trophies in his long, successful career. He has played for 8 seasons with Celtic Football Club, scoring 173 in 221 appearences, winning 4 Scottish Leagues and 5 cups, and, on a personal level, the Golden Boot, which is assigned to the football player who scores the highest number of overall goals (including national and international competitions) in Europe. He is the only non Scottish to have been included by fans in the all-time Celtic top 11. Having already mentioned the trophies in Spain, he also helped Dutch Feyenoord Rotterdam to win 2 Dutch League cups.

His international career has been very successful as well, he has led Sweden to gain the bronze medal in 1994 World Cup in the USA, has scored 36 goals in 93 caps and is one of the six players who have been able to score in 2 different World Cups, one 12 years after the other.

He’s always been an example of fair play as well, and loved and respected by fans and teammates. After his move back to Helsingborgs he might have lost the chance to earn more money and fame but surely he has gained respect and esteem by every true football fan in the world.

Zidane – a 21st century portrait

On Saturday night, back from the pub, I watched this amazing piece of football and cinema at the same time, Zidane – a 21st century portrait. I find the idea itself behind the movie to be great. The movie is the result of the editing of the footage taken by 17 cameras following just the French champion Zinedine Zidane during a match occured on the 23rd of April 2005 between Real Madrid and Villareal at Santiago Bernabeu.

Of course this is not one of the most exciting movies I have ever seen in my life, it’s not really entertaining as you don’t happen to watch the match, you pretty much understand what goes on and the focus moves from Zidane to the ball when there is a goal, but you mostly see just Zidane, even when is standing on one side of the pitch, hands on his hips. You mostly see him walking and standing and it’s not about him being a great football player, rather than a member of a team of 11 guys on his own in such a big (and boringly quiet for 90% of the time, I must say) stadium as the Bernabeu is. You rarely see him talking and interact with the others and rarely touch the football itself. And the last minutes of the movie couldn’t have been better, it’s like if it was preconceived… but I won’t ruin it for those who haven’t seen it yet.

You can still see bits of his skills, Zizou also performs an assistance for Ronaldo which alone should make you willing to watch this. The quality of the image throughout the whole movie is great and the soundtrack is amazing and couldn’t have been more appropriate. Mogwai, the Scottish post-rock band, have created a brand new album only for this movie. Here you get some taste of their music, which in my opinion is just astonishing. This is called “Hunted by a freak” and it’s included in Happy songs for happy people (2003)

Despite of the advices I received before watching it, I absolutely recommend this hour and a half of pure football loneliness, class and editing talent to whoever is so crazy like me to spend 90 minutes of their lives, maybe even more, every week just to watch a rolling ball over a green pitch.