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Tag: Pele

  • Christiano Ronaldo on TIME’s ‘Most Influential’ List

    FIFA soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is featured this year in TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and joins other influentials like Pope Francis, Barack Obama and pop icon Beyoncé on this year’s list.

    There were only five other sports dignitaries noted on the magazine’s 2014 list. They were Brooklyn Nets star Jason Collins, Seattle Seahawks SuperBowl champion Richard Sherman, Tennis virtuoso Serena Williams and golf pro Lydia Ko.

    Brazilian soccer legend Pele heralded his fellow ‘futball’ star on the magazine page featuring the FIFA Ballon d’Or 2013 winner.

    “Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the most influential athletes in sports today. I greatly respect his competitive mind-set on the field, and it’s no surprise that he is currently considered the best soccer player in the world. He reminds me a bit of my late friend and Portuguese soccer legend Eusebio,” said Pele.

    “I had the opportunity to share his joy onstage at this year’s FIFA Ballon d’Or ceremony in Zurich. Cristiano never ceases to give his best for his national team. He reminds me a bit of my late friend and Portuguese soccer legend Eusébio. They have the same elegance and creativity,” said Pele.

    “Back when I played, I would have loved having a teammate like Cristiano to play with up front. I would like to encourage him to keep up the hard work and to continue to fuel the passion for the sport among today’s youth.”

    The Portuguese native is the only Real Madrid player in history to have scored more than 30 goals in four consecutive seasons and the fastest player to have reached 100 goals.

    Image via YouTube

  • Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro Talk Football

    Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro talked U.K. football recently, and the even though the two didn’t agree on who might win, they both believe football is “the greatest sport ever.” The Grudge Match stars were in the U.K. promoting their new film, that opened in the U.S. on Christmas Day.

    De Niro readily admitted to not having much experience playing the sport. Stallone actually thought he had a chance at being a decent player, but found out otherwise when starring the the film Escape to Victory, which featured some bona fide football players, including Pele, Bobby Moore and John Wark. Of course you’ve certainly figured out by now that U.K. football is actually soccer. Sylvester Stallone learned he really was pretty bad at playing.

    “That was one of the low points of my life,” Stallone recalled. “What a butt-kicking I got! I still have a broken finger from trying to block a penalty by Pele. He put on a pair of World War II shoes which were steel-tipped, and the ball was like a cannonball – it was twice as thick and heavy as footballs are today. He was telling me he was going to take a shot and I thought ‘it’s soccer, what’s the big deal? It’s easy’. He came to take one penalty shot and he told me exactly where he was going to put it, so I stood there but the ball still flew past me before I could move.”

    Things went downhill from there.

    “He put it literally right where he had said. He did it again, and it ripped through the back of the net and broke a window in the barracks where we were filming,” Stallone added. “I went ‘are you kidding me?’ I found a new kind of respect.”

    Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro were really pretty funny when discussing the sport at the BBC in England.

    “I have played it, and my kids played it but not much. I am not into the sport,” De Niro said.

    “So you are not ready to go pro?” Stallone asked.

    “No, not unless there is a part in a movie for me,” De Niro replied.

    “We could do a film called ‘Sludgematch’ about the slowest soccer players in the world,” came Stallone’s reply.

    Wouldn’t you have liked to seen the expression on De Niro’s face when Stallone threw that quip at him?

    These two are absolutely priceless together in person and in Grudge Match. Have you caught them together yet on the big screen?

    Image via Wikimedia