FOOTBALL: PATO, MOURINHO AND CASILLAS

Well, after the world had witness the overhyped talk about Robinho and later Messi in their respective debuts, Pato will made his. Alexandre Pato signed from Internacional and will be eligible to play starting January 2008 with Milan.

His bold remarks of scoring twice against Napoli gave me a bad first impression of him. Robinho or Messi were a lot more humble than he is.

“On Sunday I will play and I will score,” Pato told Milan Channel.

“I will score a goal…actually I will score two goals.”

Let's just watch and see if he can live up to his hype.

Next, we talk about Mourinho. Where will Mourinho be going? Milan or Barcelona? The speculation is about him taking over either Frank Rijkaard's position or Carlo Ancelotti's position. Whichever of the two he is going, it will be interesting if it comes true. I myself think that he could fit into Barcelona better given that he is Portugese and had a stint there in the past too helping Sir Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal.

Finally, let's talk about Casillas. His incredible performance against Real Zaragoza last weekend had caused him to be labelled as Saint Iker. People has been saying that the best goalkeeper in the world is Gianluigi Buffon for the fact that he won bigger things than Iker Casillas. For me, to really measure the ability of the goalie is to see how he can perform well himself. Casillas does not have the luxury of a solid defence in front of him since the era of Hierro. I can recall he is always left alone to take care of offensive attacks for many seasons now. Madrid are attack minded and always have the leftback and rightback in attack. Buffon in contrast has always got a great defence line for club and country. Well, if you ask me, Casillas has more one on one or one on two to one on three encounters than Buffon can ever imagine in his football career. That's how I distinguish a good goalie against a bad one as well as the frequency of careless mistakes he makes per match.