Ronaldo

World Class Football, World Class Coiffures

What Makes a World Cup Footballer Great?

By Mike Eckel   |

It takes a lot to be top-level footballer: Years of aerobic training, long hours of honing skills, plenty of time doing weight workouts, endless strategy sessions.

Don’t forget plenty of time at the hair dresser.

International superstar Christiano Ronaldo raised plenty of eyebrows in the Portugal-USA match Sunday with his finely etched sidewall hair-do. But he’s certainly not the only player in Brazil making a fashion statement on the top of his head.

Here’s a look at some others: (and if you see others that should be included, tweet them to #VOAfootball or send them to VOA’s football Facebook page)

Germany (4-0) Portugal

The “Marquee Matchup” Was All Muller

By Andrew Palczewski   |
here Pepe's headbutt earned him a red card.

UPDATE: As it turns out, the “marquee matchup” between Germany and Portugal never materialized. The Germans scored four unanswered goals – including a hat trick from Thomas Muller – in a surprising rout of Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugal teammates, the worst defeat by a Portuguese World Cup team at the World Cup.

Original post:

World Cup matches don’t get much more competitive than this one – especially in group play. Today at 12 pm ET (4 PM UTC), Group G  – the dreaded “Group of Death” – kicks off between football powerhouses Germany and Portugal.  Based on the FIFA world rankings, Germany (ranked 2nd best team in the world) is the slight favorite (Portugal is ranked 4th), but Portugal has the football power (and star power) of Cristiano Ronaldo on their side. No wonder many experts consider this to be the marquee matchup in this year’s group play.

For play-by-play, minute-by-minute coverage of every ball touch, throw-in, direct kick, indirect kick, yellow card, red card, corner kick, goal kick and every other possible football feat in every World Cup match, tap into VOA’s multilingual, multinational analysis.

Click here to follow the action live, or follow along on Facebook, or on Twitter with #WorldCupVOA.

And for even more exclusive VOA coverage with a special focus on Africa’s national teams, check out VOA’s Francophone blog.