Football players, a life full of glamour... and of risks (Yahoo)

Every time more, the footballists occupy a distinctive place in the rose press, linked with matters of private life and specially of “heart”, due to the position they are occupying in a social scale, but lately, have repeated cases in which they should confront problems related to their star state, which are not precisely to be envied by common people.

As we do see the manner the David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo, should use bodyguards to walk through any city of the World thanks to the mediatic diffusion of their deeds, in those last days there occurred at least three cases of footballists to bear in mind upon the hour of judgment.

One of them is the great Paraguayan forwarder Salvador Cabañas, who is fighting between his life and death in a hospital in Mexico city, after having been shot in his skull by a fan of his team, the America, surely under alcohol, who claimed for more goals and put a revolver in the temple in front of resistance of the player to continue the dialogue.

By these hours, Cabañas received a moving letter by an ex Argentinean player. The ex defender of Boca Juniors, River Plate and several Spanish clubs, as Celta, Zaragoza and Valencia, Fernando Cáceres, who after a strong fight, hospitalized in Buenos Aires, could recover after having been seriously injured by another shot in an apparent assault on behalf of those knowing about his large economic situation..

Cáceres is recovering now his mobility and is aspiring to be coach (he was already an assistant in Independiente), and he lost an eye by the impact of the bullet in his skull, and he sent an encouraging letter to Cabañas, who may lose the World Championship, after a large eliminatory with Paraguay in Southamerica, but much more than this, his career and even his life.

Another case to bear in mind as to what can derive from the suffering of a famous footballist, the Italian forwarder of the Inter, Mario Ballotelli, Son of ghanaian parents, who left it, and raised by Italians, he has black skin and due to this, he is bearing insults of the “tifosi” rivals at every match, up to some months ago at an opportunity he was at the point to leave the game field, tired of the terrific shouts against him, and without referee protection.

Balotelli, a very good figure with the Inter, must listen to racists shouts in the stadium and even considerations as due to be black he should not play in the team of their country, in a context in which even the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, also strongly linked to the Milan, insists in maintaining that the growing presence of immigrants is the cause of major quantity of crimes.

One of the strongest debates around Italian football, in this country as well as in the rest of Europe, was produced since the reaction of Balotelli as not to rest quite and to react in a match of Inter vs Verona, saying, after eighty eight minutes of insults and seamanlike noises, every time he touched the ball, that this public “loathes me”.

The reactions were against him instead against the public and the Federacalcio itself punished him with a fee of seven thousand Euros and the president of Chievo Verona stated that the insults arrived “due to his attitudes that provoke the reaction of the people”.

What should do the player who is insulted due to racists reasons? The great Spanish writer, Javier Marias, in his habitual weekly column in the magazine of the newspaper “El País” of Madrid, defends Balotelli citing that the only way to confront the violent is to confront them and cites as example what Germany did not do with the growing of Adolf Hitler in the years thirties. To maintain the forms.

Polemic as always, Marías sustains in his column that he agrees to that reaction of the French Eric Cantoná, when he returned insults to the fans of England when he was playing for the Manchester United, with a historical flying kick towards a fan for what he had to come specially near that zone of the gallery.

Marías says that none of those fans who were insulting Cantena would confront him being alone without the mass guarding him and where he is unseen and for that the reaction of the French is just and necessary.

Not the same luck had in 1994 the defender of the Colombian team Alex Escobar, killed by a fan, when he returned from the World Championship in the United States. Just because he had the bad luck to concrete a goal to his own goalkeeper and that his team did not advanced to the eighths of final, as it was expected in accordance with a certain logic.

The footballist of today has turned out into an aspiration model as few in a society with big injustice and where only a few situations as that in this sport allow to climb socially but also confront the tremendous risks due to that popularity as well can confirm Cáceres, Cabañas or Balotelli.