Mark Ssali: Cecafa should be camp
Posted By Online Reporter at 28 July, at 15 : 22 PM Print
Mark My Word | Mark Ssali
Laszlo Csaba has been left fuming that the league has not been called off to allow him to prepare a team for a Cecafa onslaught.
While I see where he is coming from, I think Csaba should look at making the two-week Cecafa tournament his main training camp, not the seven days preceding it.
It is obvious that The Cranes should only ever enter a tournament with the aim to win it, and the incentive is seldom greater than the $30,000 at stake for the Cecafa champion.
But what Csaba has got to be embarking on now is a long-term programme that promises much bigger rewards in 2010, and that is not to say that he cannot pick up the cheque in Dar along the way.
The league has already had enough fixture problems without contemplating a call-off.
Csaba can only be guaranteed time to study, juggle with and improve his entire squad when he gets to Dar, and I dare say he ought to experiment at a tournament Uganda has won so many times it should only be a stepping stone from now on.
It would be unfortunate if gifted, creative players like Mike Sserumaga and Augustine Nsumba were to miss out, because they are the kind the future should depend on.
But Csaba and his men should look closer at the league as there are new options less obvious than top scorer Caesar Okuti for example.
Mayweather beware
It comes as no surprise that Ricky Hatton has be given virtually no chance of an upset when he meets Floyd Mayweather in the ring this weekend.
In the past, ‘Coming To America’ has proved to be a bigger cultural shock for boxing Brits like Naseem Hamed and Frank Bruno than it was for Eddie Murphy in that movie.
Which is why Hatton has been reminded by all and sundry that the unbeaten record he has chalked up has been of nobodies and has not included serious trips across the Atlantic to the ‘real’ boxing world.
Now, I also consider Mayweather a favourite, and not because he has said so in too many words.
But it will be foolhardy for the Pretty Boy to assume that he will win just by showing up.
He is up against an opponent who has nothing to lose, who claims (and I believe him) that he wants it more, and whose style is quite different from what Mayweather is accustomed to coming up against or what he faced in his last fight; De La Hoya is a classy boxer while Hatton is a brawler and bruiser, a streetwise one too.
No one in boxing history has cracked more ribs and knocked out more people with body punches. Mayweather beware.
Juve shames them all
There are those who claimed that Juventus didn’t deserve the punishment they got, which is a shame really.
The bigger shame though is that the two Milan clubs, Roma and, come to think of it, all else in the Serie A are working hard to prove them right.
A cursory look at Inter Milan’s squad and Juve’s would reveal that the Old Lady belongs to a different division, which is where ‘she’ has just come from anyway.
But Inter could not put away Juve over 90 minutes, despite leading for most of that game, and neither could Milan Saturday, even if Juve had nobody on the pitch in the class of Kaka, Pirlo, Nesta and Seerdof.
When I said on these lines earlier in the season that Juve would be title contenders, it was largely because I realised from a good many refereeing decisions that they still commanded a lot of respect despite being disgraced.
Well, that respect is not just from refs and small teams, but from the giants who cannot bring themselves to believe that they are now better than Italy’s record champions.
Milan was closed out on Saturday night by Giorgio Chellini and a bunch of unknowns in the absence of Jorge Andrade and Alain Boumsong, while in that game and others Cristiano Zanetti and age old men like Pavel Nedved and Hassan Salihamdzic have been a match for supposedly better midfields. On one end, Gigi Buffon is like he has never been away, as is David Trezeguet on the other end…
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