Not quite Zinedine Zidane, not quite David Beckham, but the next best thing perhaps? Chicago Fire coach Dave Sarachan calls new signing Cuauhtemoc Blanco an “artist,” a player with his own style of play, who on his day, can make things happen out of absolutely nowhere. Fire president John Guppy agrees: “I’m not sure if there’s any other player who has his qualities on the field and his personality off it. He’s one of a kind.”
Blanco won’t be making Beckham money ($6 million over three seasons), but he could be a similar source of marketing firepower. “He’ll help us on the field, and our league is making a real positive effort to get into the Hispanic market,” the Colombian-born midfielder Diego Gutierrez said, calling Blanco “the brightest star” in Mexican soccer. But it’s also true that few soccer personalities are as polarizing as Temo-though it seems Fire fans have already embraced the former U.S. nemesis as one of their own: during his welcoming ceremony, one fan held up a sign that read, “Who needs Beckham when you have Temo?”
Blanco says he wants no comparisons to Beckham, or any other player, but that hasn’t kept the Chicago papers from labeling him the “Mexican Beckham.” He’s a totally different type of player, of course, but the U.S. media know they’re still speaking to the layman.