a bit of Madrid on this Saturday

Kids and adults love it so: Iker’s in Mexico promoting his campus; he was in Mexico City on Thursday and Monterrey on Friday.  There, he told the media that if he had to choose between Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, he would choose Cristiano, because “he’s mine.”  Well, it only took Iker one whole season to come around to Cris’ side!  (Apparently, Sara has traveled to Mexico to join up with Iker and spend a few days of vacation together before he hits the next stop on his summer tour, Chile, so Iker may change his mind at any time because Sara thinks that Cris is individualistic.)  Anyway, Iker’s spreading his football and personal values to budding footballers around the world, and from his interaction with the children, I can tell he’s going to be a great father!  He’s also carrying out his duties as a UN ambassador while on tour.

(In case you’re wondering: I love candy, and one of my favorite brands is Haribo, and their slogan is “kids and adults love it so,” and when I see pictures like these of Iker, that’s what I think.  It applies perfectly to him.)

Those jeans are a travesty.  Horrible, horrible, horrible.

News briefs: Mourinho has decided that Juanfran will join the first team during the pre-season.  And Madrid apparently wants Rubén de la Red to continue as assistant coach of the Juvenil A team, so yay!

International update: a couple more pictures of Karim Benzema with France last week (the first one for the merits of the composition, and the second for the merits of Karim’s thigh) and two of our Argentine players preparing for the Copa América yesterday.  Ángel got a haircut!  Side note: most of his teammates look like they could do with one as well, although we all know that they deliberately choose to have awful looking hair in a misguided attempt to look fashionable.  Fernando Gago is one such example, though he looks fine now, maybe because he’s getting married?

Player news: Jerzy Dudek, in an event in Warsaw celebrating the countdown towards the 2012 Euro, told reporters that he’s not ready to retire yet.  And since “my family is very happy in Spain and in Madrid, and my son has a girlfriend, my priority is not to leave football or the country.”  He revealed he has some offers from Spain, Turkey and England.  So we may get to see Jerzy play next season somewhere in Spain!  The Polish football federation, meanwhile, has offered to organize a tribute game to Jerzy, but he protested: “I’m not retiring yet!  Wait until I stop playing!”  Jajaja!!!

Emmanuel Adebayor told Joy FM, a radio station in Ghana, that “when I’m 31, I’ll retire from football.  I’ll return to Africa to take my kids to school every day.”  Adorable!  But too young, no?  We also found out that he wants to have a maximum of three kids.  Manu also said that he owns more than 28 houses in Ghana, Togo and around the world, but “I’ve purchased so many houses that I don’t even remember how many (laughs).”

Sergio Ramos attended Jesús Navas’ wedding yesterday, while Álvaro Arbeloa is in Vigo for our former canterano Diego López’ wedding, and Borja Valero is there too!  I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it again: I love it when canteranos stay friends.

And the gorgeous Miguel Torres showed up at Kenzo’s summer party in Madrid last Wednesday, as did Aitor Karanka and his wife, whose dress was absolutely perfect for the occasion.

And Kaká and wife Carol celebrated Luca’s third birthday with a party in Sao Paulo on Friday.  You all know my feelings towards Carol, so the only reason I’m posting about this is because reader Laryssa sent it in, and because Luca is adorable.  I love the matching father-son shirts, but why do they insist on putting a barrette in Isabella’s non-existent hair?

Since everyone is asking about it and no one bothered to do a search, here’s the post on why I dislike Carol.