During the finals of the FIFA U20 World Cup yesterday, La Rojita took 3rd place with a 1-0 win over Austria. The goal is accredited to Martinez, but the overall stellar performance and professionalism demonstrated on and off the field has to go to Cristopher Toselli, goalie/my personal favorite. He also broke a U20 record for number of minutes without a goal scored against him (492... so he only beat the record by a minute or so, but who´s counting?!)

It´s been interesting to see the difference in press coverage over the incident in Toronto following the Thursday slaughter by Argentina and the fights that broke out with Canadian police. The same AP story I see repeated over and over in Canadian and US publications says the players were completely out of line, attacking the cops to the point where they had no choice but to whip out the taser. Chilean news (which, by the way, every major news station and newspaper in the country was in an uproar over this for all of Friday and Saturday... if there was any other news going on in the country I´m not aware of it because this was basically the only story covered) said it was more or less a case of discrimination... the players were only trying to meet-and-greet with fans when the police came out of nowhere and attacked them, treating them "like animals." And last I heard, I think FIFA said the players were only responsible for their actions on the field... but don´t quote me on this.

I love the media.

As for me, I think they were young, rowdy, frustrated guys who stepped a little bit out of line and the police totally overreacted. I don´t think there was need to attack , taser and injure 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds whose careers (and physical well-being) could be put in jeopardy. I think a few of the hotheaded players made some bad decisions to act up, and this could come back to bite them in a few years. I feel bad for their parents who had to watch their sons in the spotlight like this, and i feel really bad for the players who felt the need to stick by their teammates but didn´t want to get involved and now may face consequences in the future.

But overall, I´m really pleased with them this year. So they acted up a little, and perhaps they wanted to be world champions. But they played an incredible season that totally compensated for the failures of La Roja in the Copa America. And I am so stoked to see what some of these boys will do in the future.