The World Cup Lists (1 of 4): The Captains

Greetings to our readers in Bangladesh, Turkey and Peru, where assuredly folks are still depressed because their respective nations are not competing in the World Cup, but we are here to cheer you up.

Well, actually, this list may not help_may not help at all in fact.

We begin our long overdue World Cup coverage with a list of 11 players who are captains of their team. Of course, just because one is a captain does not he is the best player. The disgraced soccer version of Bela Lugosi, Uruguay's Luis Suarez, one of the best players in the world, was not the captain for Team Uruguay which will try to defeat Colombia today without him.

Here is our list, good luck to everyone in Brazil:

1) Thiago Silva. Brazil. Age 29. Paris Saint-Germaine (France; pictured top).

2) Giorgis Karagounis. Greece. Age 37. Fulham (England; pictured center)

3) Clint Dempsey. USA. Age 31. Seattle Sounders (MLS/USA; pictured bottom)

4) Robin van Persie. Netherlands. Age 30. Manchester United (England)

5) Hugo Lloris. France. 27. Tottenham Hotspur (England, he plays goal-keeper)

6) Lionel Messi. Argentina. 27. Barcelona (Spain)

7) Vincent Kompany. Belgium. 28. Manchester City (England)

8) Gokhan Inler. Switzerland. 29. Napoli (Italy; he is the son of immigrants from Turkey)

9) Claudio Bravo. Chile. 31. Barcelona (Spain, the player is a goal-keeper)

10) Philipp Lahm. Germany. 30. Bayern Munich (Germany)

11) Mario Yepes. Colombia. 38. Atalanta (Italy)

http://espn.go.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport

Quote of the Day/Week-Michael Phelps

Welcome to the May 23, 2012, edition of our blog. Today, we will continue quoting American athletes who won gold or silver medals at the summer Olympics in honor of the upcoming 2012 London Olympics. We want to thank those of you from Greece, Lebanon and Bangladesh who have visited our blog today.

Today's quote is from swimmer Michael Phelps, 26, from Baltimore, Maryland. Phelps won six gold and two bronze medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics and eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He is second only to Soviet gymnast Laris Latynina, 77, in terms of total medals won. But, Phelps may well pass her as he is slated to compete in London.

Here is his quote:

"I always thought it would be neat to make the Olympic team."

Quote of the Day- Mel Gibson

We continue our series of quotes from people associated with the 32 countries in the 2010 World Cup with a quip from controversial, out-spoken actor/director/right-winger Mel Gibson who was born in New York, but grew up in Australia where he made it big as "Mad Max" (the 1982 sequel "Road Warrior" is pictured here) in 1977 when he was just in his early twenties.

This quote is in reference to "The Passion of the Christ," a film Gibson directed which I saw as an interesting mess:

"Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages. They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius."


Hmmmmm.......


SIDEBAR: Apparently World Cup fever is even spreading in countries which are not in the competition as the Tokyo, Japan-based Twitter site Weird News is reporting that government authorities in Bangladesh have asked factories, stores and shopping malls in the capital city of Dhaka to close down to prevent the city's limited power supply from getting jammed. Mohammad Afrazur Rahman, the minister of energy for Bangladesh, actually made a formal request of compliance to the people of Dhaka!

SIDEBAR TWO: Chile beat Honduras to win the country's first game in the World Cup since 1962. In today's match in South Africa, Chilean striker Jean Beausejour scored what became the game-winning goal in the 34th minute of the game.

NOTE: We had a technical glitch with our last entry on the Somali-American Yahya Wehelie, 26, who is trapped in Egypt as the FBI put him on a no-fly list as he was trying to board a plane to the United States from the Cairo Airport six weeks ago. The Washington, DC-area resident has spent 18 months in Yemen, where many jihadists have been working in terrorist camps. But, Wehelie's parents insist he is not involved in radical ideology. We were hoping to post labels for the post when the glitch occured so we will post those labels here instead.