What’s happening today?

June 26th, 2007.

June 26th.

Tuesday.

What’s happened today? Nothing of note. The summer drags on, and the same matches of football are sporadically shown on TV. Thierry Henry is wrapping up the final stages of his move to La Liga runners up Barcelona, who’s forward line of Henry, Messi, Ronaldinho and Eto’o will be one to fear in the upcoming season. None of them are Spanish though, although top class Spanish forwards are rare in today’s market. Nothing much else happening in Spain- a group of Spanish scientists have calculated that it will take €55m to prise Kaka away from AC Milan (and to think they get paid to conduct such studies). The price is not too much for crazy Real president Calderon however, who is willing to sack Capello after he’s taken them to their first Spanish title in four years and fork out a world record €80m to buy Kaka. They do need their Galaticos, I guess.

With the FIFA U20 World Cup coming up, Spanish fans will get to see some of their promising youth players in action. Apart from Gerard Pique, all those players are ones for the future, thus largely unproven and inconsistant. As I responded to a blog reader in a previous post, this is my writeup on the Spanish U20 side:

They scored 32 goals in just 8 games in the qualifying championship, so you can be assured of attacking play. Players to watch would be Alberto Bueno, currently a Real Madrid ‘B’ player and top scorer for Spain at the U19 European Championship in 2006; Gerard Pique, who is on loan at Real Zaragoza from Manchester United, a promising central defender who is tipped for great things; Juan Manuel Mata who has just joined Valenca from Real Madrid Castilla, a promising player capable of playing all across the midfield; and lastly Diego Capel who plays for Sevilla B in the Spanish Segunda and can play up front or in midfield.

Gerard Pique, a central defender United stole from Barcelona’s famed youth academy is the most impressive of them all, playing as a first teamer in a decent season for Real Zaragoza. Now valued at around €10m euros by United, I think it’s fair to say that Barcelona were mugged. Great things are expected of him and a straight swap for United target Gudjohnsen is apparently being prepared by the Catalon side.

The Spanish side start the U20 World Cup with a match against Uruguay on July 1st. The two other teams in their group are Zambia and Jordan, whose teams will be played against on July 4th and July 7th respectively. Spain should expect to top the group, although at least they qualified for the finals unlike their U21 counterparts who failed to get into the group stage of the European U21 championships. Spain play all their group matches at the Swangard Stadium in Burnaby (British Columbia), and if you’re around at the time I suggest you go see a match.

With that, I’ll sign off. More non-news tomorrow. Last thing I’d like to add- if any of you have any questions or comments, use the surprisingly named “Comments” button. I will look, and try to reply to all of you.