the news round-up

Interviews, events, stats and more!

ONE. There is a nice feature on Sami Khedira in Sport Bild, as part of a series on Germans playing abroad, where he talks about barbecues, basketball and bullfighting, and of course the three favorite – and already flogged to death – topics of his adaptation, Cristiano and Mourinho.  But for me, the highlight is that they dressed him up as a bullfighter (although it’s once again poco original).  Sami said of this, “I haven’t had time to go see a bullfight yet, but I would like to, and I’ll go soon.  I’m like a torero in terms of speed and aggression.  I’m going to show these photos to Mario Gómez – who celebrates goals by imitating a bullfighter – so that he can see that I look like one.”

Highlights from the interview dealing with Real Madrid:

on getting together with his teammates: we get together once in a while.  Some players such as Gago or Marcelo live outside the city, and they invited me to their houses and we have barbecues in their yards.  We have team lunches every six or eight weeks, where the players, the bus driver, the utilleros, everyone get together.  We also go watch basketball together.  The last time was against Olympiakos, I was there with Marcelo, Pepe and Cristiano [ummm, what about Sergio Canales?]

on Mourinho: to a lot of people, Mourinho is serious and arrogant, but he’s very humane and respectful.  He works hard and knows how to balance fun and work.

on being German at Real Madrid: when Sebastian Vettel won the F1 this year, the players said to Mesut and me, “you’re not Germans.  You’re a Turk and you’re Tunisian.”  Before the away game at Gijón, we followed the final of the F1.  The Spaniards, such as Sergio Ramos and Arbeloa, were sad [because Fernando Alonso lost out to Vettel and finished second].  We were the winners, and we enjoyed it.

TWO. Xabi Alonso will be in his (and my) beloved Donosti on Jan. 19 to pick up the city’s Golden Drum award, the highest award given out by the city to those who they consider good ambassadors of San Sebastián.  Xabi called it “an honor.”  The local government decided to change tradition and move up the ceremony by one day so that Xabi would be able to attend, as Real Madrid is playing the second leg of their Copa del Rey quarterfinals against Atleti on Jan. 20.  The mayor of the city had contacted FP to make sure that Xabi would be given permission to attend.

THREE. Other tweets from yesterday.  Cristiano says the hand gestures he makes when he celebrates goals are for his son, and Álvaro reveals that the Germans’ Spanish has improved a lot. Arbeloa also confirmed that the fourth musketeer is not on twitter.

FOUR. I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Ruud van Nistelrooy is the latest name to be floated as Madrid’s new “9.”  I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen!  He already knows perfectly well what it means to wear the escudo and what will be expected of him.  But if that doesn’t work out, rumors are saying that Madrid is also considering bringing back canterano Rodrigo, who is on loan to Bolton for the season from Benfica.  The club would ask for his cession for six months.  If Madrid does obtain a new forward in the winter transfer market, all signs point to Mahamadou Diarra being the one to give up his ficha.  He’s currently in Mali with his sick mother, and there is interest from several teams, including Pellegrini’s Málaga, to obtain his services.

FIVE. Cristiano has said that he wasn’t looking to injure Tomáš Ujfaluši during Thursday’s game, while admitting that his tackle was worthy of the yellow he received.  He added, “I’m not the type of player who intends to injure others… because God sees everything, and if you have bad intentions, in the end you will be punished.  I wasn’t looking to hurt him.”  Cris’ actions after the play showed this, because he attempted to help Ujfaluši up and even assisted him in putting his headband back on, after picking it up from the ground.  According to Cris, they also had a brief conversation, which went like this:  “I asked him, ‘Ujfaluši, are you ok?’  He told me he was hurting a bit and I told him not to forget to apply ice after the game, which would help.  And we laughed.  He knew that I’m not the type of player to make hard tackles.”  Very nice of Cris.

Cris also had another collision, this time unintentional, with David de Gea, and also helped him up and patted him on the head.  Video of these moments here.

SIX. More from the Atleti game, this time with a focus on Mou.  At first I was surprised that he would actually wipe the bench himself (it was wet), but then all was right when he handed the towel to Karanka to dispose of instead of doing it himself.  As for the other moment, I love it because it looks like TSO is doing a dance.  These moments from the video here.

SEVEN. In this week’s senseless insulting of Madrid figures, Franz Beckenbauer told Gms agency that “Mourinho is rude and uneducated in the methods used to achieve his objectives.  The fact that he wears cashmere doesn’t mean that he’s a gentleman.”  Has someone headed the ball too many times in his career?

And the man many consider to be the new Beckenbauer, Gerard Piqué (Piquenbauer), showed that he’s like that man in more ways than one, as he told Dutch magazine Voetbal that “Cristiano finds it difficult to resist looking into the mirror.”

To be fair, Piqué also said of Cristiano, “he’s a very complete player.  People say he’s arrogant, but I remember him as friendly and fun.  He’s a great person.”

EIGHT. To balance this, Rafa van der Vaart told Marca from London that “I have good memories of Madrid because it’s the greatest team in the world.  I keep in contact with my former teammates.  I was in Spain a while ago and I met with Sergio Ramos…  Mourinho is the best coach in the world.  In the pre-season, he treated me very well and I think he’s the best possible coach for Real Madrid… I never considered signing for Barcelona because Madrid has something ‘magical’ about them.”  I miss you too, Rafa.

NINE. A fun stat:  out of the 77 goals that Madrid has scored this season, nearly one-third of them have come from passes from Di María and Ozi.  Ángel has 13 goal assists (six in the Liga, two in the Champions and five in the Copa), while Mesut has 11 (seven in the Liga, three in the Champions and one in the Copa).  They’ve also produced 13 goals between the two of them (five for Di María and eight for Ozi).  Impressive, considering that both players are only 22 years old, and in their first seasons in the pressure cooker that is Real Madrid.

TEN. And Jesé Rodríguez from Juvenil A has been training with Castilla this week (Castilla’s new coach Alberto Toril is Juvenil A’s former coach, so he knows perfectly what Jesé is capable of, such as this) and could make his debut with them this weekend against Universidad.  Jesé, who’s 17, has scored 14 goals this season, and was also called up to train with the first team once (which came before he was ever called up to train with Castilla).  It’s said that Getafe is interested in him for next season.  Go cantera!

ELEVEN. Lastly, I thought I would just slip this in because it’s been a while.

However, I also have this picture now.

Which do you prefer and want to see randomly in future posts?