Oswaldo Sanchez couldn't save himself from himself

Behold, a non-Euro 2008 post!

Oswaldo Sanchez hasn't had much luck between the posts recently. Mexico was embarrassed 4-1 at the hands of Argentina, and now they face the mouth-watering prospect of having Sven Boring Eriksson at the managerial helm, in a move I still can't quite figure out. [Was Sven's tan lacking? Does he enjoy tequila? Has the Swedish krona suddenly become a weak currency?]

Adding further fuel to the depressing fire, one of Mexico's best players is off to lose his skills and waste his talents playing at White Hart Lane.

Heck, it's enough to drive a player to drink.

Or, in Oswaldo's case, to drive a player to trespass and resist arrest.

It's purely a semantic difference, right?

From the wonderful newspaper report:

Police said the arrest was made shortly before 7 a.m. in downtown Chicago, where Mexico beat Peru 4-0 the night before in a friendly at Soldier Field with Sanchez in goal. According to some reports, hotel guests complained about a loud party by players in the early hours of the morning.

“He was asked to leave the premises and he remained on the property after being repeatedly warned to leave,” officer John Mirabelli said. “When officers attempted to place him in custody, he resisted arrest.”

Christ, killjoy law enforcement officers of the world, can't a man simply unwind after morale-reviving win?

Either way, funny as it sounds, the downside is that such arrests might well affect his visa status for future travels with his team to the US, where Mexico play quite a few exhibition games and tournament qualifiers.

Such a calamity would not be a good welcome gift for Eriksson, who's still trying to put his own self-confidence back together after the public humiliation of answering to Thaksin Shinawatra.

Let's hope Sanchez regains his balance long enough to prevent future errors.

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How not to ingratiate yourself to a population

It's been a while since any soccer players have really said anything stupid or idiotic in the media, unless you count the almost-daily David Beckham self-updates about his playing condition, his skincare regimen, or his desire to make slippers.

However, Beitar Jerusalem's Croatian goalkeeper, Tvrtko Kale, has decided to throw his hat into the ring of poorly-timed, ill-conceived comments in the press.

In an interview with the Israeli TV Sport5 channel, Kale went on record about the Gaza conflict [scroll down].

Now, there are a whole lot of people wishing he hadn't.

Kale's ideas are simple and Bush-like in their focus. How do we deal with the problem? Simple: bomb the living fuck out of it.

"I get lots of SMS messages from my friends who ask, how is the constant Hamas shelling of Sderot and Ashkelon being allowed? How can the citizens stand this? And I remember how the Croats solved it when we had these problems: Shoot, kill, destroy, and then you have no more problems."

Kale was a soldier in the Croatian army during the battle for independence in the early 90s, so he can be excused slightly considering that before his soccer career took off, he did walk the walk somewhat.

However, you can't really excuse the idea of killing lots and lots of people, can you?

Here's a video of Kale in action, proving once again that it's virtually impossible to put together YouTube clips of goalkeeping. Check out his leaping save!

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