Futbol En Power Point

My Ten Day experience with Real Madrid...

It happened in a matter of hours..Elisa from Forza Futbol offering to help get me a media credential with her for the upcoming Real Madrid tour back Los Angeles. Last year I had seen them, only twice though as I am not an autograph kinda person..I want to actually see them play etc. so I went once at a pay-for charity practice, the second time on a Sunday while the LA Open tennis final was on and of course went to the game at the Rose Bowl when they played the LA Galaxy. While that was exciting and all, I had no idea of what I was in for. Elisa sent off the paperwork and within hours it came back.. WE WERE APPROVED!!! Wow!..To say I was floored, excited, thrilled and just plain happy, probably wouldn’t sum it all up how I felt. Media credentials would not only get us in to see practices, we would get to go to press conferences each day, be on the pitch & in press room during the match if we chose to and in the mixed-zone after the matches. Basically we would get to see them up close and live each day..I thought I was in a dream.

They would be arriving on Monday, July 11th, 2011. That Sunday night we got word of the first press conference. It would be Tuesday, June 12th, at 12N at CAA with..gulp.. Cristiano Ronaldo, Iker Casillas, Jose Mourinho, Bruce Arena, Landon Donovan and David Beckham. Wow..They were starting off with a bang weren’t they!! I actually got nervous for a second..Why I don’t know. But again..WOW..This was going to be amazing. And yes, it was. I’ve been in presser’s before with work etc.. But never had I been in one where I was actually truly a fan of it all.

Tons of media from all over the world were there. Of course some Herbal Life people and CAA sports agent, Michael Levine has to talk first and get the rules out. Yes, there are rules to having a media credential. We could only ask questions pertaining to the RM/Galaxy game, the upcoming tour and such. (No, China, we can’t ask Cris if he changes his baby’s nappies because guess what..It doesn’t pertain to anything football/soccer relevant in the slightest ugh!). And Iker would only take and respond to questions in Spanish. Though I did find out he secretly can speak English better than any of us thinks he can, he just doesn’t want to. Ya know, that whole Spanish pride thing they have, but trust me, I was okay with it.

Tottenham deserve great credit for showing some balls ...

One of the most positive results of this year’s transfer deadline day was Tottenham Hotspur managing to keep hold of Croatian playmaker Luka Modric. To many this can be seen as a victory for football and evidence that player power doesn’t always win.

The Croat had previously admitted his desire to leave the North London club earlier this summer but his request was met with a firm response from Chairman Daniel Levy , the player would not be sold. Chelsea made no secret of the fact that they wished to sign him and had three separate bids rejected by Spurs.

The final bid, according to manager Harry Redknapp , came on the 30th of August and it is believed to have been worth £40m, £30m cash plus Blues defender Alex as part of the deal. Spurs stood firm and again rejected the advances of their London rivals.

Modric made a number of attempts to seal his exit from White Hart Lane and met with Levy more than once to discuss his future. Although the message from the club was clear a number of people, from the media especially thought it near impossible for them to hold on to an unhappy player.

The Croat’s exit seemed even more likely when he asked to be left out of the Spurs squad that travelled north to face champions Manchester United and even Redknapp made comments that indicated his departure could be likely.

More evidence to suggest Modric would be sold was the fact that Spurs had been in a similar situation in August 2008, when Bulgarian striker Dimitar Berbatov sparked a similar sequence of events in an effort to secure his eventual transfer to United. Levy had at first taken the same hard line stance and insisted the player would not leave, but on deadline day he completed a £31m transfer.

Though it seems both Chairman and club have learnt from this and were determined not to lose arguably their best player, and especially not to one of their biggest rivals. The player stated he wanted to play Champions League football, but as manager Redknapp suggested keeping players like Modric will help get them back into Europe’s premier competition.

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