Mes: febrero 2022

Wear different and usually more colourful soccer uniforms than the rest of the team, and sometimes even a nice hat. Goalkeepers not only play differently but often have their own training coach, who will be more than likely a former goalkeeper. They rarely achieve the status of being the captain of the team, simply because they are too far away from the center of play. In general, goalkeepers shout a lot and often get very upset with their team mates as well as the opposing team, the referee and anyone else who comes within distance. That may be why, goalkeepers, over the years, may have earned the title of being a bit crazy.

There are a number of theories around as to why a footballer would want to become a goalkeeper. Some say that they are failed strikers, who were too big and clumsy to make the grade or frustrated central defenders. One thing for sure is that a goalkeeper’s role is difficult. Supporters will eventually forget a major blunder that a striker, midfield player or even a defender makes, but they will take a lot longer to forgive a goalkeeper their transgressions.

On the other hand a goalkeeper may spend 80 minutes as a virtual spectator in a one sided football match, but needs to be ready to spring into action should the opposing team spring into action.

So is it any wonder that keepers tend to be a little «eccentric». The history of soccer has produced a very large number, only some of who can be mentioned, and not necessarily in order of eccentricity.

One of the most outstanding goalkeepers of the 1980s and D90’s was the Paraguayan Jose Luis Felix Chilavert, Chilavert played his club football in Argentina and Spain and ran the roost as the Paraguay goalkeeper for more than a decade winning the title World Goalkeeper of the Year by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) in 1995, 1997, and 1998. As a club player, Chilavert enjoyed the most success of his career playing for Vélez Sársfield, helping them win the Argentine championship four times as well as the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup, both in 1994.

A large and imposing personality, Chilavert expressed his ability as a frustrated outfield player by insisting in taking all the free kicks and penalties for the clubs that he played for. First of all, he was too big and crazy to be argued with, and secondly because he was an exceptional dead ball expert. Chilavert earned his place in soccer becoming the first (and to date only) goalkeeper to score a hat-trick in the history of football, while playing for Vélez, with all three goals through penalties. He is also remembered fondly or otherwise for a memorable free-kick goal from behind the half-way line against River Plate. Chilavert took part in 74 international for Paraguay and holds the goalkeeper-record of eight international goals. Chilavert retired from international football in 2003, surprisingly enough after a feud with the team directors.

It is said that Welsh born Neville Southall became a goalkeeper simply because when he discovered soccer he was too old and a little too overweight to play outfield. Yet at his peak, also in the 1990s Southall was regarded as the finest goalkeeper in the world. Southall dominated his penalty area like few others, and when found in a one-on-one situation mostly always came out on top. Neville, who played most of his club football with Everton in the English league, where he made a club record 578 league appearances (over 750 in all competitions) and won two Football League championships. Unlike Chilavert, Southall was a very placid character, who rarely ventured out of his penalty area. Short for a goalkeeper, Southall earned some notoriety as being a bit «unkempt» and needing a haircut, shave and a diet.

Despite that, Southall was voted England’s Footballer of The Year in 1985, extremely rare for a goalkeeper, He represented Wales a record 92 times.

Another famous «eccentric» goalkeeper is Rene Higuita of Colombia, Higuita also liked to have a shot at goal now and again, scoring three goals in 69 international appearances, However Higuita is particularly remembered for three highlights of his career, best described as the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good: The remarkable «scorpion kick», save he made in a friendly against England at Wembley. Higuita saved a shot between his feet while perched on his hands, a trick he succeeded in repeating on a number of occasions.

The Bad: Higuita was already known for having an eccentric playing style and taking risks, when an unforced error in the full glare of the World media that got knocked Colombia out of the 1990 World Cup. Higuita was caught in possession 35 yards from goal enabling Cameroon striker Roger Milla to dispossess him, and score the winning goal.

The Ugly: Higuita’s amazing hairstyle which only went further to prove that goalkeepers are crazy.

Hello today I am continuing my series violin from A-Z. We are now on X for Xiang Gao. Born in the people’s republic of China, Xiang Gao is one of the most successful violinists of his generation and was cited by the New York Times as a rare and soulful virtuoso.

He has performed for many of the world’s leaders including the former presidents of the US and China. He has gained worldwide acclaim for his technique and virtuosity. In 1994 he became the first Chinese violinist to join Columbia records and began his professional recording career.

During his long career he has performed with the Detroit symphony orchestra the Czech Philharmonic orchestra the National Orchestra of Sweden the Philharmonic orchestra of Russia the Estonia national symphony the Mexico state symphony the Kansas Symphony the Memphis symphony and many others he has also given recitals and master-classes throughout North America, Asia, Europe and South America.

Xiang Gao composes, arranges and performs in the styles of jazz, bluegrass and Asian folk. On August 8, 2007 he was featured live as soloist for CCTV’s concert in Macau to celebrate the one year countdown to the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony. This event was viewed by more than one billion viewers worldwide.

He is also a dedicated chamber music performer and promoter; he has collaborated with some of the world’s leading chamber musicians. Gao lives in Newark, Delaware and is the youngest Associate Professor of music at the University of Delaware’s department of music.

His hobbies include cooking Chinese cuisine watching college football and skiing. He is married and has one daughter born in May of 2005.

The Ivy League is an athletic union of American educational institutes based in the north-east of The States including Harvard, Yale and Columbia University. Many people mistakenly believe MIT and Stanford are members of this union. While we reference these institutes in this article, they are not.

There are a series of factors that will determine your acceptance to the Ivy League or other elite institutes. Here we’ll analyse the best approach. Let’s begin with your GPA.

GPA Requirements

Of course, your GPA is a pillar of your application. But is your application a house of cards without it? Not necessarily. Why is it that some students with 4.0 GPA’s are rejected, while others with sub-3 GPA’s are accepted? Because the value of the courses you took is often of equal value to your result. Because your application needs to demonstrate extra-curricular pedigree.

Your record at school needs to display academic rigor – don’t opt for the easiest courses. A prescribed high school path featuring 4 years of the cornerstone subjects, English, Math and Science, are best complimented with 4 years dedicated to History and learning a foreign language.

That brings us on to Extra-Curriculars.

Those Darn Extra-Curriculars

Meet John. John has a 2.7 grade point average and equally unremarkable SAT results. Although John was never the best student, he excelled in sports, holding the post as captain for his Baseball, Basketball and Football teams, winning awards for his sporting ability. It’s these strengths that secured his place at Harvard. Meanwhile many thousands of students are rejected every year with outstanding academics.

Stories of a sub-3 GPA turned Harvard graduate are the exception, but there’s a moral to this tale. If two students are equal academically, universities like employers, will opt for the candidate who has held leadership roles or displayed an extra-curricular spike. Without these traits, your application will be lost.

Financial Aid

Unfortunately, you’ll have to factor cost into attending your dream school. Fortunately, though, the world’s most prestigious schools are often in possession of the largest financial aid endowments. Consider Harvard which has a financial aid budget of $172,000,000. This aid is reserved for students whose parents are earning under $60,000 per year. The net result means the cost of attending actually matches or bests 90% of other universities. Before preparing your FAFSA application (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), you’ll need to know where you stand.

What About Reach Schools?

Universities with low admissions rates, including Harvard and Yale are considered ‘Reach Schools’. A ‘Match School’ is one that has a high probability of acceptance. Identifying reach schools and match schools is smart forward planning.

Perhaps your heart is set on attending Yale. You may dream of being published in Yale Law Review before one day running for Congress. Students negotiate a path towards their dreams every year. Equally there are who students fail to reach the school of their dreams without Plan B. Identify other institutes with a prestigious record of graduating the finest minds in your field.

Post-Graduate Success

When creating a shortlist of schools, it’s wise to assess the post-graduate success student’s are likely to experience. Let’s take MIT. While the US economy struggles and jobs are scare, MIT bucks the trend. Studies demonstrate just 20% of students find employment on graduation. MIT students however, fare better than the national average with on-campus hiring still prevalent.

The idea that your post-graduate success is purely dependent on your education, however, is mistaken. History is shaped by those who defy the rules and define their own route. Be they a Harvard reject Warren Buffet or Princeton reject Ted Turner. So, you don’t need to graduate the Ivy League to be a success… But it helps.

All the debates are now taking place around the world as everyone turns into a soccer pundit. Many are looking at making money off the bookies to soften the blow of watching their favourites get beaten by one of the unfancied countries.

It can be worthwhile placing your bets for this year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa before it kicks off, as the odds are higher. With all the 32 squads being named on 1st June, the date of this article being written, now is the time to check the fixture schedules and see who will progress to the later stages.

If you don’t know how to go about placing bets on line, then there are a whole host of sites out there giving you that information. One thing you will need though is an account with one or more online betting companies. The vast majority, if not all of them now, will offer you incentives to sign up with them usually by way of them matching your first bet up to a maximum value; this will be offered as ‘free bets’ and is definitely a good way to start.

You’ll then be asked to deposit funds to your account by using a credit or debit card, and the bets you place are obviously taken from this deposit, After your first bet is finished, you will be credited with the amount of that bet as per your sign up offer. This can then be used in future bets, either immediately or another day.

Using the 2010 World Cup as a topical example, you can just place a simple bet on the outright winner or you can go into much finer detail, such as who you think will qualify for the quarter finals, in which game will the first red card be shown and so on. For those more detailed bets, you need to keep up to date with as much information you can with regard to player suspensions and injuries as they will weaken teams as the tournament progresses.

You can make a fair stab at who will qualify from the opening group stages, and maybe you can spot a surprise or two in there. Will France and South Africa outgun Mexico and Uruguay in Group A? That seems a very open group and is too close to call for some. It is safe to assume Italy will win Group F at a canter, but will complete outsiders New Zealand be able to compete for second spot with Paraguay and Slovakia? The bookies don’t think so but do you think it’s worth a punt?

For betting on the first group stages, there are good chances to get off to a good start, as some of the more fancies countries tend to start slowly and this is where most of the shock results traditionally occur. An example is that Argentina qualified by the narrowest of margins, and one of the rated nations always seem to get knocked out during the Group stages. The bookies are favouring Argentina to be the early faller, and are giving generous odds on this. More worrying is that Diego Maradona has promised to run naked through Buenos Aires if they win the final, so let’s all hope they get beaten early as no one will be able to sleep at night until they lose. Their opening game is against Nigeria, and they will remember losing to Cameroon at the same stage in 1990.

To the later stages then and can you predict the semi-finalists from this early stage? Well perhaps you can, as the fixture schedule is often kinder to some teams than it is to others. Occasionally a smaller nation can reach this stage, as per South Korea in 2002 but it is a risky bet to go against the key nations.

It does make sense to bet on one of the more dominant footballing nations to be the outright winners, only seven countries have ever won the World Cup and although African nations are getting stronger and stronger, they don’t appear to be quite ready to walk away with football’s top prize. A couple of interesting facts are that (1) only two countries have ever won the world cup twice in succession, Italy and Brazil, and no one has retained since 1962. Also (2) only one country has ever won a World Cup outside of their own continent, and that is also Brazil. Does that increase the chances of an African nation winning this time round?

At this moment in time, there are three obvious favourites to win in South Africa, and they are Spain, Brazil and England, The rest are a little further out but never write off Italy and Germany. More recently, more money has gone on Holland as they appear to be in great form going into the World Cup.

The ‘Golden Boot’ award always attracts healthy betting; this is the trophy presented to the top individual goalscorer at the finals, English money is going on Wayne Rooney, but every country has a scorer amongst them, you really need to scour the squad lists and the player’s goal scoring records before you pick one above all the others.

Did you know?

France is the birthplace of Pierre de Coubertin, who is the father of the Olympic Movement. This Frenchman was born on January 1, 1863 in Paris. Pierre once said, «The Olympic Movement gives the world an ideal which reckons with the reality of life, and includes a possibility to guide this reality toward the great Olympic idea».

The Summer Olympic Games were held in Paris in 1900. For the first time, sportswomen were allowed to compete in the Olympics ( six tennis players ). France won first place in the Games with 26 gold, 41 silver and 34 bronze medals.

Marie-José Pérec was one of France’s greatest sportswomen. She was born in Guadeloupe ( Caribbean island ) and moved to France with her mother when she was sixteen. Marie-Jose became the second female athlete in the history of the Olympic Games to sweep the 200m and 400m ( Atlanta’96 ).

Like Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Reunion, New Caledonia -French territory in Oceania- is not member of the International Olympic Committee ( IOC ). Why? France does not allow its territories to compete in the Olympics. For this reason, New Caledonia’s athletes can not compete in the Olympic Games. Unlike Guam ( American territory ), Aruba ( Dutch territory ) and Bermuda ( British territory ), it did not compete in the 2004 Olympics. Ironically, New Caledonia has several famous sportspeople in the South Pacific. Aquatics: Olivier Saminadin, Thomas Dahlia, Thomas Chacun, Reine-Victora Weber, Lara Grangeon, Diana Bui-Duyet, Adeline Williams and Gilles Durnesnil. Archery: Laurent Clerte, Emmanuel Guilhard, Henry Shiu, Isabelle Soeno and Sylvena Plazenet. Athletics: Vaikula Elise Takosi, Candice Soulisse, Erwin Casser, Bertrand Vili, Eric Frederic, Bina Ramesh, Eric Revillard, Phoebe Wejieme and Daniel Kilamo. Badminton: Nicolas Martoredjo, Florent Mathey, Marc-Antonie Desaynoz, Johanna Kou and Cecile Sarengat. Boxing: Christophe Lestage, Ataale Gyan and Hannequin Benoit. Judo: Sandrine Perel, Kyo Lussaud, Melissa Kaddour, Stephane Courtine, Jonathan Berger, Cyril Chevalier, Paul Dulac, Abedis Trindade de Abreu, Vaea Chadfeau and Diane Hillaireau. Sailing: Chrisptophe Renaud, Alban Rossollin, Feri Malhieu, Michael Borde, Cawle Dabin and Paiscillia Poaniewa. Shooting: Theodore Tein Weiawe, Fabrice Azarro and Phillipe Sinoni. Table tennis: Frederic Quach, Laurent Sens, Maxime Bataihard, Ornella Bouteille and Alexandra Heraclide. Taekwondo: Annie Odino, Kevin Belhameche, John Trouilet and Arnord Sariman. Tennis: Julien Couly, Elodie Rogge and Nickolas Ngodrela. Triathlon: Oliver Bargibant, Stephane Lacroix and Benedicte Meunier. At the last South Pacific Games held in Apia ( Samoa / formerly Western Samoa ) in November 2007, it finished 1st among 22 countries and territories. Certainly, New Caledonia has won more international gold medals per capita than any other country of the South Pacific.

Paris hosted the FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship in 1986. Final standings: 1.United States, 2.USSR ( currently Russia ), 3.Bulgaria, 4.Brazil, 5.Cuba, 6.France, 7.Argentina, 8.Czechoslovakia (currently Czech Republic/Slovak Republic), 9.Poland, 10.Japan, 11.China, 12.Italy, 13.Greece, 14.Venezuela, 15.Egypt, 16.Taiwan.

Jean Schopter became the first Frenchman to win the Roland Garros in 1892.

France send 243 athletes to the 1984 Los Angeles Games. It participated in 19 sports: archery ( 2 ), athletics (45), basketball ( 12 ), boxing ( 4 ), kayak ( 14 ), cycling ( 16 ), equestrian ( 11), fencing ( 20 ), football ( 17 ), gymnastics ( 9 ), wrestling ( 16 ), modern pentathlon ( 3 ), rowing ( 22 ), shooting ( 15 ), swimming ( 19 ), tennis ( 4 ), weightlifting ( 2 ), wrestling ( 8 ), sailing ( 12 ).

This European country won the gold medal in soccer at the 1984 Olympic Games in the United States.

France is the birthplace of fencing. Fencing was made part of the official program for the Olympics at the 1896 Athens Games.

Paris has hosted the Summer Olympics in 1924. There were 3,092 athletes from 44 countries who competed in 19 sports: athletics, aquatics, boxing, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, polo, rowing, rugby, sailing, shooting, soccer, tennis, water polo, weightlifting, wrestling. France came third with 13 golds, 15 silvers and 10 bronzes.

Eunice Barber is one of the most famous athletes in France. She was born on November 17, 1974 in Freetown, Sierra Leone ( Western Africa ), the world’s poorest country. Eunice says, «I was fortunate to grow up in Sierra Leone, an English-speaking African country where sport is very present». For political and economic reasons, she moved to France when she was 18 years old. In the 1990s, Sierra Leone had one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars. More than 70,000 Africans had been killed and 150,000 had left the country. Under the banner of Sierra Leone, Eunice finished fifth in the heptathlon competition at the 1996 Olympic Games in the United States. For many sportswriters and experts, her Olympic performance was amazing. Three years later, she become a French citizen.

Top performances:

1999: European Cup-1st heptathlon

1999: World Cup-1st heptathlon

2003: IAAF World Championships- 1st long jump, 2nd heptathlon

2003: European Cup-1st long jump

2003: IAAF World Athletics Final-1st long jump

2005: IAAF World Championships-2nd heptathlon, 3rd long jump

2005: IAAF World Athletics Final-4th long jump

2006: European Cup-2nd long jump

Eunice’s favourites:

Movie stars: Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore

Music: From French to pop music

Hobbies: Theater, cinematography, music, reading

Fashion designers: Issey Miyake and Jean Paul Gautier

Music artists: Celine Dion, Withney Houston, Wyclef Jean.