The most remarkable thing about David Beckham is that he is not all that great a football player. He is good, sure. Some days he is excellent. But he is not great. What sets him apart, what makes him unique, is that never in sport has the gap been wider between a player’s talent and his fame.
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Playing in the stadium of his club side Marseille in 1998, South Africa’s lanky centre-half Pierre Issa put the ball in his own net twice against France and then muffed his team’s only clear-cut opening at the other end. World Cups have their zeros as well as heroes. Harry Pearson picks his XI to get nowhere.
Get used to it. It is early June and tennis is in thrall to Rafael ”Rafa” Nadal, the Majorcan who, once he steps on to a clay court, transmutes from softly smiling youngster to, in the estimation of one leading British coach, ”the toughest bastard the game has ever seen”.
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Should Germany be anything like as bad in this World Cup as they were in Euro 2004, fans who currently protest about his base in California will rant that Jürgen Klinsmann should never be allowed to leave it again. Though his citizenship is not yet being revoked, solidarity with him is tenuous.
Gwede Mantashe, the former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, is tipped to join the Development Bank of South Africa as the bank’s second-most senior executive. Union and government sources confirmed that Mantashe, who served as a unionist for more than 30 years was heading to the state-owned bank as executive manager for special projects.
The beleaguered N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town has been dealt a further financial blow by the discovery that 705 units comprising the project’s first phase have been built on a 50-year flood plain. The city has had to fork out a further R10-million to build a culvert to divert possible flood waters.
Berlin has, after more than 60 years, reversed a policy of concealing the location of the bunker where Adolf Hitler shot himself in the final days of World War II. A large information panel was erected on Thursday near Wilhelmstrasse, above the underground labyrinth where Hitler married Eva Braun hours before committing suicide with her on April 30 1945.
If the current inflationary pressures and other negative factors persist into the second half of the year, it is quite possible that interest rates may increase further before the end of the year, Absa said on Friday. The bank said its projection with regard to nominal growth in property prices was dropped from 12,1% earlier this year to 11,5% before Thursday’s rate hike.
Trailblazer Neo Ntsoma is leading the way for local women photographers, writes Maria McCloy.
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You can’t rule out Germany, and Poland gave England a run for their money in qualifying. Sweden are solid at the back, and Trinidad and Tobago could be the joke side of the tournament. The Netherlands had the best qualification record in Europe this time. Neal Collins looks at the chances of all 32 teams in the Soccer World Cup.