Lapuente in Picture for Old Job
The search for Mexico’s next national team coach may lead to a familiar face.
Former coach Manuel Lapuente’s name has been thrown into the hopper of potential replacements for Javier Aguirre, who resigned to take over Spain’s Club Atletico Osasuna after jump-starting a foundering Mexico and leading it into the second round of the World Cup this summer.
Others mentioned are former Mexican player Hugo Sanchez and four foreigners, Argentine Carlos Bianchi, and Dutchmen Guus Hiddink, Johan Cruyff and Leo Beenhakker.
Alberto de la Torre, the Mexican Federation president, has confirmed that he has talked to three candidates.
Lapuente, who resigned under fire as coach in September of 2000, after Mexico failed to win the Gold Cup and had missed qualifying for the Olympics, is the coach of Club America. He is on medical leave but is expected to return in less than a month.
A Hard-Hitting Tome
Roy Keane’s controversial autobiography, in which the Manchester United captain acknowledges having tried to hurt Manchester City’s Alf Inge Haaland, did more than earn Keane two charges of misconduct from the Football Assn. Manchester United warned its players to refrain from writing such tell-all memoirs while with the team.
“We need to make it clear that we don’t think it’s appropriate for players to publish a book while they’re still playing for Manchester United,” the team’s managing director, David Gill, said Thursday on the club’s Web site. “We want them to concentrate on playing. We believe they can do other commercial deals. David Beckham’s doing Castrol and Pepsi. Roy Keane does Aer Lingus. That’s fine. A book is another issue.”
In his book, Keane said he’d planned to injure Haaland because Haaland, while playing for Leeds United, had accused Keane of faking an injury in a game four years earlier.
Haaland injured knee ligaments in Keane’s revenge at the Manchester Derby in April 2001 and has not played a full game since.
“I’d waited long enough [to get revenge],” Keane said in his book, before recounting his words to a fallen Haaland: “ ‘And don’t ever stand over me again sneering about fake injuries ... and tell your pal [David] Wetherall there’s some for him as well.’ ”
Keane has since said that he never intentionally set out to hurt opponents and that his words were paraphrased by the ghostwriter who did the book.
The FA, though, was not amused and has issued a statement, explaining why Keane was charged with two counts of bringing the game into disrepute for the same play.
“The first charge follows the challenge itself on Haaland, which is now alleged to have been improperly motivated with an apparent element of revenge,” the statement read. “The second charge relates to Roy Keane allegedly publishing for financial profit or reward an account in his autobiography in which he speaks of his desire to exact revenge on Haaland, therefore bringing the game into disrepute.”
Keane, who earned his 10th red card over the weekend and underwent hip surgery Tuesday, has 14 days to respond to the charges.
