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El Brujito 'ransom demand'
29 September
El Brujito is still missing, as you know, of course. La Nacion's headline today is 'Ransom Demand for Missing Soccer Star'. A story by 'Our Man in San Juan', Maximo Salez. But according to the local papers, the ransom demand was dismissed as a hoax by the police. So you have a choice of disinformation there. Am finding it increasingly irritating not to be covering the case.
Wall of Silence
28 September
Endless difficulty getting hold of anyone at Deportivo. A wall of silence has gone up around the club. The guy on the switchboard (probably a cop, come to think of it) refused to believe I wasn't just another reporter chasing the El Brujito story. Clearly, getting hold of the people I need to talk to about El Gato is going to take longer than I thought. Damn!
Exhausted
27 September
Getting anything done in this city is like shoving rocks uphill. Everything is so slow... I guess it's the climate. Rush around in this heat and humidity and you'd be dead within a fortnight. And one has to remind oneself that the Deep North is more like a part of Africa than South America; there's a whole different set of values up here. Someone like me sticks out like a sore thumb, of course; it's odd to be looked at so much. Yesterday a bunch of kids yelled 'Gringo!' at me, thinking, I suppose, that I was an American tourist. (The shame of it!)
Favourites
Car: my Jaguar (imported from England at great personal cost)
Footballers: Pele, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, El Gato, Thierry Henry, Ronaldinho.
Books: Pele - An autobiography by Pele; Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Music: Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Susana Baca, Margaretha Menezes.
Places: Copabacana Beach, Rio; Barcelona, Spain; London, England.
Quotes: "Football isn't a matter of life and death. It's more important than that." Bill Shankly
"The British brought the game here a hundred years ago. But they are an unmusical nation. They taught us the rules of the game, but we could not teach them how to dance. They never learned to do the slow tango in defence, nor how to rumba through the midfield, nor how to samba in the penalty box." Carlos Roberto, in the Introduction to The Dawn of the Beautiful Game by Paul Faustino.
"Most football teams are temperamental. That's 90% temper and 10% mental." Doug Plank
Dislikes
Sushi - raw fish? Strictly for the penguins.
Cricket - a game that lasts three days and ends in a draw? Only the crazy English could invent a thing like that.
Tattoos.
Politicians who pretend to be into football.
Girls with hairy legs - sorry, you girls with hairy legs. I know it's my problem, not yours.