Despite the presence of Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi, the weekend’s Free Kick Masters event at Reliant Stadium, Houston, was something of a lost opportunity, writes Jen Chang in a highly entertaining column.
The organizers, who reported a 45,000 crowd that “was more in the range of 25,000,” weren’t helped by the late withdrawals of Fernando Torres, Lukas Podolski and Alessandro del Piero. Meanwhile, “the crowd couldn’t hear the public announcer, and the rules for the actual tournament were somewhat questionable,” he writes. Not even the players were clear on the points system, while the “nonsensical” elimination process also caused a lot of confusion.
Chang spent much of the weekend being mistaken for Shanghai Shenhua’s Shen Shi (try saying that after a jug of jiu), who turned out to be the event’s best first round performer. Ronaldinho and Messi, mysteriously granted byes to the second round, failed to score from a single kick, with the Brazilian’s poor performance even provoking boos from the crowd. Jorge Campos invited himself, Romario brought along an entourage rivaled only by Ronaldinho’s, and goalkeeper Vojislav Dragovic spent much of his weekend playing freestyle piano in the players’ lounge. Oh, and Mexico’s Rafa Marquez took the $1 million prize.