The Spain-Ivory Coast soccer friendly played last night in Valladolid was entertaining. Both teams actually played fairly hard and generally clean. The big news for the Spanish national team was the fine play of 18-year-old Cesc Fabregas in midfield. Cesc is a starter for Arsenal, one of the top English clubs, and comes out of the FC Barcelona system. He saw his path to advancement blocked by Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta, and took off to London for lots of euros. If I were Real Madrid I would pay lots of money for this guy right now. If I were Barcelona I would hold off a few years and see whether Iniesta can succeed Xavi or not before making an offer to get him back.

Barcelona has a history of developing these "organizing midfielders" who play sort of like the point guard in basketball or the quarterback in American football, the guy who makes the play. If he doesn't make the pass that becomes the goal, he makes the pass that sets up the pass. The first one I remember was Guardiola, then Gerard, who had one good year with Valencia, then Celades, who went first to Real Madrid and now Zaragoza, then Xavi, who has done very well and really came into his own last season, now Iniesta, who is only about 21 and subs all over the field for Barça right now, and Cesc, who had to go somewhere else to get his chance.

The funny thing was that the Spanish announcers on TVE1 could not pronounce the Catalan name "Cesc," which is short for Francesc, i.e. Francisco or Francis. It's perfectly easy for an English speaker--"Sesk". However, Spanish speakers aren't able to finish a word with the "sk" consonant combination. The closest they can come is by reducing the cluster to either "s" or "k", or inverting the cluster to "ks". So the announcers kept calling him "Sex." As in, "Carles Puyol has the ball, he passes to Sex Fabregas, Sex to Albelda, Albelda quickly back to Sex, Sex is very good tonight, Sex looking for David Villa on the left wing..."

Don't get mad. I'm perfectly aware that my own accent in Spanish is atrocious.

My absolute favorite local sports name is a Croatian basketball player on the FC Barcelona squad whose name is Gregor Fucka. It's actually pronounced something like "Fooska." However, I can't help pronouncing the gentleman's surname in English. I have given him the nickname "Mutha."