WELL, WE KNOW HEADING THE BALL CAUSES BRAIN DAMAGE...:

The Idiots Abroad (John Tierney, 11/08/05, NY Times)

If President Bush wants to know what went wrong on his trip south, I recommend a book by three Latin American journalists. Their Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, a best seller when it was published nine years ago, remains indispensable for understanding phenomena like Diego Maradona.

Maradona, born in a shantytown near Buenos Aires, became the world's most famous soccer player in the 1980's after he left Argentina to play for teams in Spain and Italy. Besides collecting his $5 million salary in Europe, he played exhibition games in Arab countries at $325,000 per appearance and made $10 million annually in endorsement contracts with corporations based in at least four continents, companies like Puma, Fuji-Xerox and Coca-Cola.

And what did he learn from this international rags-to-riches tale? During Bush's visit to Argentina, Maradona took time out from his busy schedule (he now has a television show) to help rally tens of thousands of people against that horrible modern scourge: free trade. [...]

''Maradona embodies the wonderful possibilities of globalization, yet he does everything in his power to deny people poorer than himself to participate in that world,'' said one of the ''Perfect Idiot'' authors, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian journalist (and son of the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa). ''Everything Maradona and Chavez stand for has been tried before. These populists are repeating the mistakes of the Mexican Revolution, of Brazil in the 30's, of Argentina in the 50's, of Peru in the 80's.''