South American Euros

By: Lugo | May 24th, 2008

In this day of the official birth of the south american union I’ll take the occasion to make the list of (confirmed or potential) representatives of this continent at the Euros, the flaghip tournament of the bloc that the UNASUR wants to model itself after. So far we have…

Croatia: (Mention of Honor) Eduardo “Dudu” Da Silva-BRA. No doubt he would have been on the list for the tournament if it wasn’t for that BUTCHER named Martin Taylor who should be banned from anything resembling a soccer field for the rest of his miserable existance.

France:

Florent Malouda- French Guiana. The Chelsea winger will probably start for les bleus. No matter that the french got a little corner of our continent for themselves, the boy is still a born and maybe raised South American.

Not making it in the squad is Argentinian-born David Trezeguet from Juventus.

Germany

Kevin Kuranyi- BRA and some others: The quick Shalke forward is, according to wiki, born to a German-Hungarian father and a Panamanian mother, but born in the home of the Carnival, Rio de Janeiro.

Italy

Mauro German Camoranesi- ARG. The Argentine is a well-known name for the Azzurri. Already a world cup champion and a lock at serie A outfit Juventus.

Amazingly, this time we’re skipping the Netherlands as no player born in Suriname is into the squad this time (After Seedorf decided to quit) Altough Ryan Babel has Surinamese ancestry.

Poland

Roger Guerreiro- BRA. The newest naturalized player and the source of much controversy. After a few years at Legia Warsaw, he’ll be providing some good support in the midfield.

Portugal

While Anderson de Souza “Deco” is the highest-profile Brazilian player not to play for Brazil, Kleper Ferreira “Pepe” was pretty much out of the radar for the verdeamarelha.

Spain

Marcos Senna- BRA. Is an established midfielder at Villarreal and also traveled to the last world cup with La Roja. Missing from the squad is Argentinian winger Mariano Pernía.

Switzerland

Johan Vonlanthen- COL. So HE IS the reason why this post is in this blog. you got it. Vonlanthen would be a regular with the swiss squad if he was not so injury-prone.

Turkey

Marco Aurélio Brito dos Prazeres “Mehmet Aurelio“- BRA. He had to adopt a turkish name to be able to get citizenship. Now, that’s a stretch…

So next time you’re thinking about saying “The Euro is like a World Cup without Argentina and Brazil”, think again…