Hugo Almeida found out in a cruel way that he will be suspended along with playmaker Diego when Werder Bremen face Shakhtar Donetsk in the UEFA Cup final on May 20.
The Portuguese striker had celebrated the 3-2 semi-final win at SV Hamburg with his teammates on the pitch and strolled into the mixed zone saying, “I am so happy to be in the final.”
It was only then that a reporter told him quietly that the yellow card he picked up two minutes into stoppage time would make him ineligible for the big match in Istanbul.
PHOTO: EPA
“Really?” Almeida asked in utter astonishment. “100 percent?” he continued as his face turned pale. The reporter nodded, Almeida hung his head and walked away in silence as tears filled his eyes.
He simply hadn’t known. Possibly others were unaware as well, as no one appeared to have told him.
They all knew about Diego, though, as at the same time midfielder Torsten Frings started the choir of lamenting the fateful booking he had received in the first half — like Almeida for a heated argument with a Hamburg player.
PHOTO: AFP
“The suspension is unjust. The referee was against us,” fumed the temperamental Frings in the direction of Belgian Frank de Bleeckere.
Coach Thomas Schaaf was also not amused: “This is very disappointing. Diego attacked no one. If you want to see emotions in football then the players must be able to show their emotions.”
Claudio Pizarro was less sentimental.
“That’s football,” the Peruvian striker said.
But Pizarro also said “Diego played a great match” and that it was “a pity” he won’t be in the final.
The man himself kept a straight face, well aware from the minute he was shown the card that his dream of the final was over.
“It is very bad for me not to go to the final. It was a difficult situation. I didn’t do anything,” Diego said.
But Bremen has to live with the reality of his absence on May 20, which could be a test for the future as a summer move of Diego to Italian giants Juventus Turin was on Thursday reported to be all but completed.
Maybe Bremen will also take heart from the fact that Diego was also not present when Bremen secured its place in the UEFA Cup as Champions League dropout with a surprise 2-1 win over Inter Milan in December.
Frings, meanwhile, insisted that Bremen has a good team even in the absence of Diego and promised that: “Now we will try and win the cup for him.”
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS