2003.10，隆哥在切尔西的采访

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从英国报纸找到了采访，很意思。 October 24, 2003 Juan Veron Interview The Argentine is enjoying his new life at Chelsea, and is putting some of his wealth to work easing poverty at home, writes Jonathan Northcroft. More than two in three children in Argentina live in poverty. Child labour and child prostitution are on the increase. Since the economic collapse of 2001, the country's young have borne the brunt. Earlier this year the United Nations registered "deep concern" about the growing instances of reported torture in Argentine prisons in which children were said to be victims. The phenomenon of extra-judicial killings of children in street shoot-outs by the police has mushroomed. It is against this black background that the Semilla School attempts to bring light. Set up by Juan Sebastian Veron in his home city of La Plata, a port 40 miles from Buenos Aires, it provides free education for 160 of the city's most disadvantaged kids. As well as lessons, pupils receive three full meals a day and an afternoon snack. Each month a doctor and a dentist visit, and the social services are brought in to address problems in the children's home lives. "I know I'm not going to change society in Argentina," said Veron, "but when you look at the situation, you've got to do something." Veron foots the cost of Semilla from his football earnings. When he can, he sends home signed shirts and memorabilia for auction to raise more funds. "We're just about to build a second wing at the school so we can take more kids," he said proudly. "We're looking to increase the numbers to 200, maybe even 230." You do not necessarily think "social conscience" when you look at this player. Diamond earrings twinkle from both his ears, and when he smiles, it is to reveal a gold tooth. WHEN Veron was christened, he was given two names. Juan, after his father Juan Ramon Veron, a famous winger for Argentina in the 1960s, and Sebastian, after the martyr and patron saint of archers and athletes. Two names, two Verons, it has often seemed. He was a boy born into football royalty who enjoyed a feted and comfortable childhood, taken on by Estudiantes, his father's old club, almost as soon as he could walk. Yet he was a youth determined to pay his own way, who would get up at five in the morning to sweep the floor in a tyre repair shop. "He was shy and would speak few words," according to Carlos Bilardo, his first coach. Yet the teenage Veron would go out with his cousin and steal cars. "Managuillo y putanero," people called him. Altar boy and whoremonger. Nowadays he lives a quiet and committed family life with Maria Florencia, his wife, and Iara and Dejan, their daughter and son. Yet once he was a nightclub tearaway who punched a paparazzo during a fancy dress party at a Buenos Aires disco (Veron was wearing a clown costume) and had a celebrated liaison with a model, whose pneumatic charms earned her the nickname Pan Am (picture the nose cones of two jumbo jets.) In his CD collection Metallica shares space with Mozart. In football, there seem two sides to him also. There is the talent that has persuaded clubs to pay a total of ￡84m for him over six different transfers, yet there is his medal haul, which, until winning the Premiership last season with Manchester United, included only two gongs of substance: the Italian title with Lazio and the UEFA Cup with Parma. For Chelsea he has been sublime, against Liverpool on the opening weekend of the season, and so ineffective, versus Besiktas, that it was ridiculous. Never mind Claudio Ranieri. Veron operates his own rotation policy, with performances. Maybe his duality explains Sir Alex Ferguson's behaviour. In Ferguson's mind he appeared to have two ￡28.1m Argentines. There was "Seba", the trusted soldier, whom he defended to the four-letter hilt, and about whom he stopped taking press questions during Manchester United's summer tour of the US because "he's a United player and in my plans, I keep telling youse". Then there was the Veron who was flogged to Chelsea as soon as United touched down in Europe, and on whom Ferguson was prepared to take a ￡13.1m loss. It takes a lot to upset Veron, but he was peeved at Ferguson. "He wasn't sincere with me," Veron alleged in an interview. When Ferguson read this, he branded the player "a disgrace", saying Veron had engineered his switch to Chelsea. The engine of the transfer, as far as Veron was concerned, had been Ferguson. Now that time has put some distance between him and the affair, Veron is reluctant to start another slanging match. "I don't want to talk about it too much, the whole thing's in the past. It's not something that's been eating me up. I'm not bothered (about being called a disgrace). I know what happened, and so does he". "The first conversation I had with Ferguson was before we went on tour, and the transfer was taken out of my hands. My conscience is clear. All I can do is give my best to the club I am at, and right up until the last minute that's what I did for United. At no point did I go to the manager, and say, 'Look, I want to leave'". "Sure, when I heard about Chelsea I was interested. It was a good offer. But I remained committed to United. They knew what I was capable of and I did have some good performances for them. The transfer was their decision." When reminded how positive Ferguson was being about him, right up until the point of sale, Veron flashed a piano-ivories grin. "There's a saying in Argentina: 'When they pat you on the back and are all nice to you, that's the time to leave'." Ironically, Veron had just enjoyed two of his finest moments in United colours while in the US. When the team hammered Juventus, he gilded a man-of-the-match performance by setting Ruud van Nistelrooy up to score with a pass whose angles Pythagoras could not have judged better. At training in Portland he scored with a 25-yard half- volley struck by bringing through one leg crossed behind the other to make contact with the ball. It brought a practice match to a standstill as players stopped to applaud. Ferguson said it was the best goal he had ever seen. Yet these moments changed nothing, and Veron believes he is still suffering because of the tour. After the Besiktas debacle he went to Ranieri and asked to be taken out of first-team action so that he could put himself through a fitness programme. When I arrived to meet Veron at Chelsea's training ground near Heathrow, he was still out on the wind- whipped playing fields, woolly hat on, teeth bared, ploughing through sprint repetitions alone. He does not say it is United's fault in so many words, but added: "It's very important to me, the pre-season, and with all the travelling we did in America, on top of coming back here for the transfer and then going into a game almost straight away with Chelsea, I never felt I had time to get myself fit." His current regimen is a demonstration of his determination. "I don't like training on my own, but at the same time I'm keen to do it. I'm keen to get on with things at Chelsea and play a role for this club throughout the whole season, and it gives me the best chance of doing that." Later, while Veron was talking in the players' canteen, Ranieri came over for a word. He wanted to check his progress: Chelsea meet Lazio on Wednesday in a Champions League game that they need to win, and Veron feels he will be ready to play. Most managers would think nothing of interrupting, or even curtailing an interview in such circumstances, but Ranieri almost tiptoed across the room to minimise any disturbance, and waited for a break in conversation before he spoke. When the interview had still not finished half an hour later, Ranieri appeared again. "It's okay. I'll phone you," he told Veron. A decent man indeed. "He's a lot more similar to what I'm used to. He's more like an Argentine-style of manager," Veron said. "Fortunately, I can understand what he's saying. I don't have to listen to Scottish any more." A wry expression. "That was a joke, by the way." Ranieri was wearing a pastel pullover befitting an uncle. Below Veron's biker jacket was a T-shirt bearing the words "Be Corrupt." Yet the pair appear on the same wavelength. "I've had a very good impression of the manager so far. I knew him in Italy. We both lived in Rome. I think we understand each other." Veron's presence at Chelsea is one of the main pieces of "evidence" cited by those who say Ranieri is merely warming a berth in the dug-out until Sven-G?ran Eriksson is ready to take over, however. Veron was Eriksson's key player at Lazio, and the Swede directed Roman Abramovich to sign him - or so the conspiracy theory goes. Such whispers anger Veron. "I signed for Claudio Ranieri, not Sven-G?ran Eriksson. It (speculation about Ranieri shouldn't happen. We're top of the Premiership. We're certainly not out of the Champions League. People should leave the manager alone. But this is the madness of football. It's a mad world, and we're all part of it, players, managers, fans, chairmen. It's not just you (the press. We've all created this." Ranieri will need time, says Veron. "It's going to be a long job to get to where Manchester United are. United didn't become a team able to win eight League titles in 11 years overnight. We're just at the start of our journey." Abramovich, though, will expect his money to have the effect of rocket fuel. The Russian has been making visits to the players' lounge in an attempt to get to know his vast squad personally. "He's an everyday kind of guy. He doesn't turn up with 25 bodyguards. He's just got an ordinary manner, and dresses in an ordinary way, sometimes in jeans and trainers, and never a tie." With so many other big signings at Chelsea, there is less focus on Veron than when he joined United, and less pressure to perform right away. On the other hand, Abramovich's riches mean that Veron, like every other player, is dispensable, an unusual position for a footballer accustomed to being regarded as special. Many have accused Veron of ego, suggesting he needs a team built around him before he can perform. The example is cited of the Argentina national side, whose members tend to look for Veron first, as soon as they get the ball. "Yeah, and if I don't get it, I get angry," he said sardonically, aware of this line of criticism. But he does admit the contrast between Argentina and Manchester United. "At United it's like Real Madrid. You get the ball, and who do you give it to? There are so many good players." The view of Veron as arch-individualist ignores his willingness to sweat. His effort level was good enough for Roy Keane (Veron is one of the few colleagues Keane exonerated in his autobiography for United's disastrous 2001-2 campaign) and he was friends with the down-to-earth Nicky Butt. Often he led the passing statistics for United. Yet overall he was never able - or willing, critics would argue - to hasten his game, when it came to dispensing passes or getting across to make tackles, to the quicker tempo United demand. Only in the Champions League, a perhaps more leisurely arena than the Premiership, did he seem truly comfortable. He admitted: "For United, that's where I played best." Will Chelsea provide a better framework? At United he prospered most alongside a sitting Butt, rather than a roaming Keane. Veron's style of always looking to play the penetrative ball is inherently risky, and already Ranieri has felt it unsafe, in several games, to deploy him centrally. He has tinkered with Veron left, right and centre. "I prefer the middle, but if I play on the flanks occasionally, that's okay," Veron shrugs. It is the same with Ranieri's rotation policy. "He's not doing it with bad intentions, but because he thinks it's best for Chelsea. Players will like it when they're playing and won't when they're not, but one thing is clear - at the moment it's getting results." All the time we have been skirting round the issue. Veron is aware he has been portrayed as an underachiever since he set foot in England. Can he change things at Chelsea? "Well, first of all, I don't read the critics. I don't need anyone else to tell me when I'm playing well or not. Against Besiktas, the team - and I - didn't do well. Sure, I'd like things to have gone even better (in England), but overall I'm happy with what I've done. I'm at a club where there's a new era dawning, and that motivates me. People have shown a lot of faith and paid a lot of money to bring me here, and I'd like to repay them. But the main thing is to show people I can play football. I'm here for the Chelsea 'project', but also because I want to make my mark." He laughs at one story which filtered from Old Trafford after his move, that he was so worried about his fleet of expensive cars getting damaged while being transported from Manchester to London that he spent a week personally driving each of the ￡600,000 collection (which includes two Ferraris and a US Army Hummer H2 truck that does one mile to the gallon) between the cities. A friend claims to have heard this from a United player. "Who was it? I'll cut his hand off," grinned Veron. THE SEMILLA is a million miles from the world of Ferraris and Hummers. "I visit whenever I'm back home," Veron said. "Footballers live in a separate world to almost everyone else in society. We live in big cities in nice houses and don't always encounter everyday life and the problems others have. When I set foot in the door of the school, it's as if someone is tugging me back to earth." "The thing is, it shouldn't be me that has to start a school, it should be the politicians, but I'm afraid the particular brand of politicians we have in Argentina do not care about such things. Anyway, the experience has been rewarding. We footballers moan about stupid things, when we lose a game, or when we can't get the car we really want, and it takes something like going to this school, or an orphanage, or Africa to put life in perspective." If Veron is a prima donna, he is the world's first humble one. He has chosen to live not in a footballers' enclave but the bohemian London borough of Barnes. He and Hernan Crespo, his new team-mate and old friend, have already found a great Argentine restaurant in London "with a real Argentine owner, Argentine staff and, of course, Argentine beef". He added: "I'm so happy me and Hernan have coincided at Chelsea. We can start this adventure together. If we win the League, it would be sweeter than when I won it with Manchester United. At United it's what's expected. At Chelsea we would be making history." Source: The Sunday Times.

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当年花前月下，如今人去楼空