Sport: No more red cards for sporting icons, please

It’s the year of the World Cup football championship, an event which puts almost every other sport on the back-burner. The fact that the soccer extravaganza is being staged in South Africa makes 2010 special because of the growing status of football in the African continent. Soccer evokes patriotic passions as the infamous Zinedine Zidane head-butting incident in the last edition proved.

The disappointment of not having qualified will haunt many a team while the exhilaration of making the cut will probably remain with many of the 32 teams much after the final whistle is blown and until the 2014 edition.

However, only a handful of teams apart from heavyweights like Brazil, Argentina, France and defending champions Italy, will go into the world’s biggest single-discipline sporting event with hopes of lifting the World Cup.

There are, however, a few other contenders who often flatter to deceive.

Will Spain, the reigning European champions and boasting of a bunch of players who have the ability, go all the way and deliver on their potential?

Or will England, backed by the sheer quality of the English Premiership, translate their club level dominance and emulate their 1966 triumph?
And can any one of the five representatives from Africa finally stitch together a World Cup winning combination?

All eyes will be on Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. But expect a few villains amidst the crop of individual stars that the World Cup may unveil.

The other two events which will generate interest this year are the Twenty20 World Cup to be held in West Indies and the Asian Games in China.

Twenty20 cricket

The shortest and most versatile versions of cricket, which has in fact become a major threat to traditional Test cricket, once again promises to be an explosive affair keeping nearly two billion-strong cricket fans glued to the proceedings.

Will it be India or Pakistan winning the title for a second time or can Australia dress up their trophy-cabinet with the one trophy that is missing?

The Asian Games will take centre-stage this year not only because they include India and China, which account for nearly half of the planet’s population, but because they give war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan a platform to display their sporting abilities.

Making a mark

Iraq stunned the world by winning the football gold in the last Asian Games held in Doha. One can expect such countries to make history in the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou, China in November.

Coming back to individual sport, the million-dollar question is whether 2010 will see billion-dollar golfer Tiger Woods successfully digging himself out of the hole he now finds himself in!

Having fallen from the dizzy heights of being one of the most-respected sports persons, it is not only the golfing world, but the whole sporting fraternity that will await his return.

The world will be keen to see how Woods fares and the resultant impact on the economics that are part and parcel of a sport icon’s stardom.

Just a few years ago the world saw Woods along with tennis great Roger Federer, Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid and French footballer Thierry Henry sharing space in a Gillette advertisement — a truly well-assembled foursome.

Dravid is no more captain of the Indian team, Woods’ image lies in tatters while Henry’s has been equally tarnished with the infamous handball incident which gutted the Republic of Ireland and helped France advance to the World Cup finals.

That leaves Federer alone at the top, a position he truly deserves particularly after starting the year as number two and finishing as number one with a clean record on and off court.

Perhaps Messi could come close with the phenomenal support he garners every time he is on the football pitch and much depends on how he fares in South Africa.

But for now we have to hope that Federer keeps the flag flying and pray that no new betting, doping or sex scandal will see our sporting icons being shown the red card in 2010.