WEEKLY WHINE

Finally, something to do before the third place match

So last weekend we had the NHL skills competition. This weekend we had the NBA skills competitions. Aside from making us say "Goddam, J-Rich! Where did that come from?", it made us think about the one sport that doesn't have anything like that.

Well, okay, cross country skiing doesn't have one either. But the sport we had in mind was football.

One problem that football has is the off days between the semifinals and the third place match at the Men's and Women's World Cups. So why not reserve the day before the third place match as Footy Skills Day? We told the GoobNet Special Projects Enhancement and Enforcement Division [SPEED] to lock themselves in a padded room and come up with a schedule for Footy Skills Day, which they did.

WHERE AND WHEN: The first Footy Skills Day is to be held on FRI 07 JUL 2006, the day before the third place match at the 2006 Men's World Cup. The venue is the Fritz-Walter-Stadion in Kaiserslautern, Germany, which will have hosted four group phase matches and one second round match.

ELIGIBILITY: Any member of the rosters of the 32 Men's World Cup teams may apply to compete in the events, as well as players from teams that did not qualify. As a general rule, players from nonqualifying teams and from the teams in the third place and final matches should not take part. The Technical Study Group, which observes all the matches, is responsible for selecting the participants in each competition.

EVENTS: Here now is the agenda for the 2006 Footy Skills Day.

13:00 CEST: FOOTBALL SHOT PUT

Six players will compete in this event. They take turns shooting at an open goal from anywhere on the field. After each player has taken three shot attempts, whoever has scored from the greatest distance is the winner.

POSSIBLE PARTICIPANTS: Ronaldo [Brazil], Raúl [Spain], Christian Vieri [Italy], Hakan Sükür [Turkey], David Trezeguet [France], Pape Bouba Diop [Senegal]

13:30 CEST: KEEPER CLASH

Four goalkeepers are drawn into pairs. Each pair competes against one another in a penalty shootout, where one takes a penalty against the other, and then runs to the goal line to face a penalty from his opposite number. They alternate five attempts, and whoever converts more wins. Meanwhile, at the other end of the pitch, the other pair of keepers competes simultaneously, and once both semifinal shootouts are done, the winners meet in the final.

POSSIBLE PARTICIPANTS: José Luis Chilavert [Paraguay] [assuming we can talk him out of retirement], Oliver Kahn [Germany], Brad Friedel [United States], Marcos [Brazil]

14:15 CEST: CORNER CONVERSION

Six players compete here, and they get to select a teammate to hang out at one of the corner flags and lob corner kicks to them. The participant hangs out inside the penalty area and volleys or heads the crosses at targets mounted in the goal mouth. The targets are hoops: two large ones in the lower corners of the goal mouth [one point each], a medium sized one in the top centre of the goal [two points], and two small ones in the upper corners of the goal mouth [three points each]. They have sixty seconds to play as many crosses as they can through the targets, and whoever accumulates the most points during their attempt wins.

POSSIBLE PARTICIPANTS: Miroslav Klose [Germany], Ahn Jung Hwan [Korea Republic], Álvaro Recoba [Uruguay], Brian McBride [United States], Ruud van Nistelrooy [Netherlands], Michael Owen [England]

15:00 CEST: FOOTBALL TENNIS

This is a favourite exercise of Honduras coach Bora Milutinovic. Four pairs of teammates enter this competition, in which they are again matched up in semifinals and then a final. A net is set up on the pitch, and the ball is played back and forth over the net like in tennis or volleyball. As in volleyball, the first team to fifteen with a two point margin wins.

POSSIBLE PARTICIPANTS: Ronaldo and Ronaldinho [Brazil] [although we might allow Ronaldo to select his wife as a teammate], David Beckham and Michael Owen [England], Patrick Mboma and Rigobert Song [Cameroon], Junichi Inamoto and Hidetoshi Nakata [Japan]

16:00 CEST: FREE KICK BEND-OUT

Eight players will face off in this competition, which sees five stations where the players shoot at goal around defensive walls of cardboard cutouts standing ten yards away. The first is at the top of the arc atop the penalty area, followed by one a few yards outside of the area near the left edge, then one near the left sideline, one in the middle of the field about 35 yards from goal, and the fifth on the right side 45 yards out. Each competitor has ninety seconds to run around the course, taking four shots at each station. Whoever scores the most goals wins. [The option exists to make the last ball at each station count more, like the Money Ball at the Three Point Shootout.]

POSSIBLE PARTICIPANTS: Roberto Carlos [Brazil], Francesco Totti [Italy], Francisco Arce [Paraguay], Luis Figo [Portugal], Cuauhtémoc Blanco [Mexico], Marc Wilmots [Belgium], Jay-Jay Okocha [Nigeria], David Beckham [England] [of course]

17:00 CEST: CAGE MATCH

Just like in that Nike commercial, we'll have a three on three tournament inside a cage, with only one rule: First goal wins. But the twist is, the Technical Study Group will only select the twelve competitors; they'll be free to divide up into teams as they see fit. Then special guest Eric Cantona will draw the semifinal pairings, and we'll be off and running.

POSSIBLE PARTICIPANTS: Clarence Seedorf [Netherlands], Ümit Davala [Turkey], Harry Kewell [Australia], Li Tie [China PR], Juan Sebastián Verón [Argentina], Michael Ballack [Germany], Landon Donovan [United States], Roy Keane [Ireland Republic], Zinédine Zidane [France], Quinton Fortune [South Africa], Ronald Gómez [Costa Rica], Jon Dahl Tomasson [Denmark]