Franz Beckenbauer, who won the soccer World Cup both as player and team coach and is referred to in Germany as the ``Kaiser,'' is the highest-grossing marketing personality at the 2006 tournament.
Argentinian soccer remains the Diego Maradona show.
Chinese NBA star Yao Ming has returned to his home in Shanghai on Wednesday evening. According to Yao's agent Zhang Mingji, Yao has made significant progress in his recovery from foot surgery.
One moment he acts like a schoolboy, juggling a ball and mischievously playing word tricks with the German language.
Reveling in his status as an ordinary tournament spectator, five-time World Cup coach Bora Milutinovic said he never knew the experience could be so much fun.
This has already been a big year for Shaquille O'Neal.
Three Argentine merchants yesterday retrieved their missing World Cup tickets that one of them left at an airport bank last week.
England captain David Beckham blasted the "sad" writer at a German tabloid who described his sister as "Fat-ham" and his mother as having the "smile of a peasant," a British daily reported.
The legend of Guus Hiddink keeps growing.
He guided his native Netherlands to the semifinals at France in 1998 and his run to the semifinals with South Korea in 2002 was nothing short of stunning.
World champions Brazil became the first team in World Cup history to win eight successive matches in the finals when they opened their campaign with a 1-0 win over Croatia at the Olympiastadion on Tuesday.
One less thing for Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo to worry about in the run-up to the World Cup -- his supermodel girlfriend says she will never pose in the nude.
Midfielder Shao Jiayi is to return to the German Bundesliga after Chinese Super League club, Beijing Guo'an, agreed to transfer terms with newly promoted Energie Cottbus, according to a Beijing newspaper.
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 20100000002731 
