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: Pope Francis

Since Pope Francis of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the first Pope to ever be on the cover of "Rolling Stone" magazine, who also happens to be from the land of Barcelona soccer great Lionel Messi, whom along with Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers is a spokes person for Turkish Airlines, we thought we'd quote the pontiff today:

"I love tango, and I used to dance when I was younger."

http://www.rollingstone.com

http://www.vatican.va/

http://ncronline.org/

http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php

http://www.turkishairlines.com/

World Cup Players Worth Remembering

Today, since there are two quarter-final World Cup games to be played, we thought we'd share with you some of the players we will remember most from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

We have compiled 12 names, and we will post six of them here and six of them on our other blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time," which just recently got over 25,000 hits (well considering how poor the ratings once were this is good for us!)

Most of this info on all these players came from Wikipedia as I am a casual futbol fan though I have seen quite a few World Cup games though admittedly I feel asleep watching the first half of the Slovakia-New Zealand first round game, which aired very early here in les etats unis, and I promptly went back to bed!

Here are the six soccer players we are profiling here:

1) David Villa. (pictured here). Spain. Age 28. Plays for Barcelona. Wears #7. Has scored an impressive 42 goals in 62 games, including both goals in 2-0 win over Honduras in the first round and the lone goal in 1-0 win over Portugal to put Spain in quarter-finals. They play Paraguay later today.

2) Landon Donovan. United States. Age 28. Plays for Los Angeles Galaxy. Born in Ontario, Calif. Wears #10. Has scored 45 in 127 international games. In World Cup play (2010), he scored goals against Algeria, Slovenia and Ghana, which was alas not enough to win the game.

3) Lionel Messi. Argentina. Age 23. Plays with Villa for Barcelona (wow!). Helped Barcelona win the 2009 UEFA Cup. Scored an amazing four goals versus Arsenal (English team) in a 4-1 win over them on April 6. In World Cup play, he has scored once versus Mexico and twice versus South Korea. Argentina has yet to lose a game in South Africa. They play Germany in less than an hour.

4) Cristiano Ronaldo. Portugal. Age 25. Plays with Real Madrid. With six-year $132 million contract, Ronaldo is the world's most expensive soccer player. Had a disappointing World Cup, though he scored an impressive goal in the team's 7-0 drubbing of North Korea.

5) Lucas Barrios. Paraguay. Age 25. Plays for Barrusia Dortmund (German team). Was actually born in Argentina, but has Paraguayan mother. Got Paraguayan citizenship in the spring to play for national team. Has scored three goals in first international appearances. Nicknamed The Panther. Paraguay plays Spain later today.

6) Asamoah Gyan. Ghana. Age 24. Plays for Rennes (French team). Club teammates with American national player Carlos Bocanegra, a UCLA alum. Ironically, the two teams met in the last round where Ghana prevailed thanks to an extra-time goal by Gyan. But, alas Gyan choked yesterday in the 121st minute of play by missing a penalty kick versus Uruguay. Gyan redeemed himself by scoring on a penalty kick in the final stage of the game, but ultimately Uruguay won the match to advance to semi-finals.

My World Cup Final Four Picks

Without commentary which will have to include some other time, my final four are Argentina, Holland, Uruguay and Spain. I pick Argentina to win the World Cup. One of their star players Lionel Messi is pictured above.

I would personally love to see Argentina play The Netherlands in the World Cup final for sentimental reasons. Those same two countries met in the 1978 World Cup final which was in Argentina in 1978.

That was the year I first started watching international soccer in Black Sea Eregli, Turkey, where the whole country watched the games with black and white tvs. Now, Turkey not only has color tv, but satellite and cable services with up to 200-plus channels, where they can watch reruns of "Gunsmoke" like the 'rest of us."