“El chulo” has arrived

Manchester United Football Club is nothing in comparison with Real Madrid. They are not big enough and not rich enough. Playing in the Premier League is not challenging anymore, either. So, Cristiano Ronaldo decided that he has grown too big for the English Champions and has engineered a move to Real Madrid since last year. He finally succeeded.

Ronaldo’s arrival to Madrid, for sure,  has cost Real Madrid a fortune. Mind you, Alex Ferguson will never make it easy for any club who want to buy his players. David Beckham costs Real Madrid 23 million poundsterling. Ronaldo costs Real Madrid 80 million poundsterling, therefore he’s now the most expensive footballer on earth. He will also earn a lot of money on his weekly salary for the next 6 years.

People would think that Real Madrid’s fans will be very excited because they have the most expensive football player on earth. Some of them are excited, especially young girls, but others are sort of undecided and like Kaká more than Ronaldo. “Ronaldo es un chulo” and “he’s too individualistic” are the two main reasons mentioned by many people in Madrid.

This evening, apparently Santiago Bernabeu is full of Ronaldo’s fans. El País mentioned that it was predicted that there will be more than 75.000 people watching Ronaldo being presented in the stadium, which surely surpasses the numbers of people who were watching Maradona being unveiled in San Paolo stadium, Naples. Has Ronaldo just won a world cup or the Champions League or what?

Some people are stupid enough to pay that sort of money to get him. 80 million poundsterling is too much for a player who likes to hide during big games, who believes his own hypes of how great he is and who thinks he deserves to make this sort of history. Kaká is 10 times a better player and man than Ronaldo is, for sure.

The New Number 8 of Real Madrid CF

Ricardo Izecson Santos de Leite (27 years old), or famously known as Kaká, the playmaker of Brazilian national team, is now officially a Real Madrid player. He was presented to Real Madrid’s 30.000 fans and the media this evening in Santiago Bernabéu.

Kaká arrived in Madrid from Johannesburg, South Africa this morning at around 7.30 CET. He was driven to Sannitas’s Hospital La Moraleja to do final medical check-up prior to signing officially for Real Madrid. It was just a routine-formality procedure before all parties agree with the health insurance Kaká will get while he’s playing for Real Madrid.

Real Madrid paid as much as €67.2 million to AC Milan to bring Kaká to Madrid. He is the first signing of Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, who recently won the club’s presidency election for the second time. Pérez’ “galacticos” policy is now running for the second time. His first “galacticos” included players such as Zinedine Zidane, the Brazillian Ronaldo, David Beckham and Michael Owen.

Kaká will wear the number 8 shirt of Real Madrid. In his first speech to his new adorers in Madrid, he said that he is very happy to start a new stage of his career with Real Madrid and wants to put his name to become part of the history of the club. At the end of his speech, he promised to help his new team “to win” and “to conquer”.

The successful attempt of bringing Kaká to play for Real Madrid of course has made Florentino Pérez a happy man. In his speech before Kaká, Pérez assured the fans that “Kaká has chosen them over other clubs”. Pérez also said that Kaká is the image of solidarity and elegance; and he is a symbol of all qualities that form the Madrid people. Pérez even welcome-home Kaká as if Real Madrid is Kaká’s real home in term of football.

Kaká, no doubt, is a great player despite he’s not as expensive as Cristiano Ronaldo. His talent, skill, football intelligence, humility and likeable attitudes are priceless. He’s not only a great player, but also a great man. It’s just difficult not to love and respect him.

Bad-mood Bus Drivers in Madrid

Bus drivers, in Madrid, can be very rude sometimes and abuse their passengers with passion. There have been several cases in which ladies, majority of the cases, quarrelled with bus drivers, throwing arms and swearing.

Life is not easy for a  bus driver, especially in a hot condition as it is now in Madrid. Summer and hot weather can make people get angry very easily. It is easier for a bus driver to get mad when passangers complained and criticised them directly. If the bus driver has a hard-heady character and cannot accept criticism, then for sure you’ll be given a show of quarrels in the bus.

Most of the bus drivers in Madrid are friendly, they happily say “Hola” to their passangers, look at you and even smile nicely. The young drivers in their 20s to 30s usually are more friendly. But the 40s something drivers are the dangerous ones, especially when they don’t want to look at you when they give you a short answer of your initial greetings to them. It means that they are in a bad-mood and something or someone may have given them a problem.

In this case, as a passenger, we have to make sure that we don’t give the bus driver more problems, for example by complaining the way they drive (sometimes they can speed-up very fast) or by being too late in pressing the “STOP” button so that they cannot stop properly in front of the bus stop we are requesting.

There was a case where a lady wanted to get off at one bus stop, but she forgot to press the “STOP” button and the bus didn’t stop at the bus stop she wanted. When the bus was just about to speed-up again leaving the bus stop, she pressed it, yelled to the driver and requested him to stop. It was only about 1 or 2 meters over the bus stop. The driver wasn’t happy at all and instead of stopping, he kept driving even faster, blamed the lady and they quarrelled for 2 or 3 minutes. When the bus was approaching the next stop, the bus driver’s voice was even higher, faster and sounds like it was filled with more anger and passion.

There was another case when some passengers complained to a driver because he stopped for far too long at the original stop of the bus. The driver didn’t want to acknowledge his problem at all and instead of closing the front door and starting to drive his bus, he responded to the criticism with throwing arms and words to the effect of asking the passengers not to make his life more complicated by complaining and telling him what to do about his job. Some of them really have a lot of problems and they do not want more problems from their passengers.