I´ve been doing the math and the numbers are not lying. Juan Sebastián VERÓN will be 34 years-old come South Africa 2010.
Is he as old as we tend to think? Or will he be able to get to the next World Cup as an impact player?
We are moments away from the moment in which COCO will name his first 20-21 players from the local league to start building up a team with the focus on the Copa America Venezuela 2007 (starting in June).
When all the main newspapers and websites from Argentina start to talk about a name, it´s almost certain that some piece of info have leaked out from the AFA and it´s just a matter of time until we can confirm the rumours.
Now Juan Sebastián VERÓN talked with the media (Olé.com.ar) and he´s saying he is anxiously waiting for the list to be officialised and is dreaming of seeing his name on it.
He said:
“The desire I’ve got, leads me to feel that I could be on the list, but nothing is official yet, there are rumours, but so far they´re only that: just rumours.
“I would love to be in the next World Cup. The only thing standing in my way (to South Africa 2010) could be my age, but I still feel plenty of will to play and to be in our national team. Even though I consider that I had a good career, it´ll be like closing something very important.”
In that very last sentence, I don´t think it´s clear if he means he wants to finish his career playing “something very important” as a World Cup or if he means that it´ll be “closing something very important” referring to the very hard period he had after the 2002 World Cup in which he was blame by the entire public opinion for Argentina´s quick elimination.
He added:
“I went through different phases, anger, frustration and I was asking my self “why?”. Then I calmed down and started to live with it (being away from the National Team). Even if football is very important for me, it never stops being just a sport and sometimes we create a big drama around it. It was not a nice sporting moment for me, because when you play football you always have a number of goals and to be a part of our national team is always one of them.”
