Salon.com > Soccer http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 13:20:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Soccer fans ruffled after player kicks owl http://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/soccer_player_kicks_owl/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/soccer_player_kicks_owl/#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/28/soccer_player_kicks_owl Soccer fans are crying fowl over kicking an owl. In fact, they're crying a lot worse.

An apologetic player is facing sanctions after he kicked an injured owl that landed on the field during a game in Colombia on Sunday. The owl was a mascot for the opposing team and was being treated Monday at a veterinary clinic in Barranquilla. The bird is expected to recover from a slight fracture of its right leg.

The owl had landed injured near the corner of the field when Panama defender Luis Moreno of the Colombian club Deportivo Pereira walked over and kicked it about three yards. Atletico Junior fans shouted "murderer, murderer."

Moreno said he did not know the bird was a good-luck charm.

"I want to apologize to the fans," he said after the game. "I was not trying to hurt the owl. I did it to see if it would fly."

Pereira club president Francisco Javier Lopez said the player would be punished. Moreno also could be disciplined by soccer's governing body in Colombia. Animal welfare officials said there are no animal cruelty laws in Colombia.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/soccer_player_kicks_owl/feed/ 13 Brazil’s Ronaldo retires from soccer http://www.salon.com/2011/02/14/ronaldo_retires_from_soccer_open2011/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/14/ronaldo_retires_from_soccer_open2011/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/14/ronaldo_retires_from_soccer_open2011 Ronaldo’s career was as exciting and scandalous on the field as it was off of it. As a player, he won two World Cup titles with Brazil -- he scored 15 World Cup goals, a record, including both in the 2002 final against Germany. Ronaldo was also named the European Player of the Year twice -- his first came at age 21. He even earned the FIFA World Player of the Year Award three times -- an all-time record shared with Zinedine Zidane, maybe his biggest rival to the title of best player of his generation.

And there was controversy. In the 1998 World Cup final against host France, Ronaldo looked slow and disoriented and played poorly as Brazil lost. It later came out that Ronaldo had suffered a seizure the night before and should never have been on the field.

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