Brazilian legend Ronaldo promises great things for Ft Lauderdale Strikers

MIAMI, Florida (AFP) — Brazilian football legend Ronaldo is promising great things for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers after becoming part owner of the North American Soccer League club.

“I will be very involved with the management of the team and have already started to make introductions that will certainly help us to turn the Strikers into a global powerhouse,” Ronaldo said in a statement last week, when his ownership stake was announced.

“There are no doubts the beautiful game is growing exponentially in the United States, and I guarantee you that the NASL will play a key role in the rise of professional soccer here.”

The NASL, now a second-tier league behind Major League Soccer, enjoyed its heyday in the 1970s, when such global icons as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, George Best and Giorgio Chinaglia were lured Stateside to spread the gospel of soccer.

A match between the Strikers and the New York Cosmos drew a crowd of 77,691, and the Cosmos last year launched their own reincarnation with a 2-1 win over the Strikers in a match attended by a host of the Cosmos’ 1970s stars.

In October, the Cosmos announced the signing of Real Madrid legend Raul, but it remains to be seen just how much celebrity ownership and the presence of brilliant, if aging, names on the squads will boost the NASL’s influence.

In New York, the re-booted Cosmos will compete for fans with MLS’s New York Red Bulls and a new MLS rival owned by English Premier League side Manchester City and baseball’s New York Yankees.

The Strikers could eventually face MLS competition in South Florida as well, although England icon David Beckham is still trying to get his planned Miami MLS club off the ground.

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Brazilian legend Ronaldo promises great things for Ft Lauderdale Strikers

Samuel Rosenberg: The worst things you can do on a job interview

Samuel Rosenberg

NEW YORK, United States, Thursday July 3, 2014 – Once you know about all the worst things you can do during a job interview, you can plan and prepare properly so that you can commit to an excellent employment interview which will rapidly increase your chances of landing the job and increasing your financial reserves.

You would have heard that it is vital to make a good first impression when you go on a first date with a potential new partner because, according to experts, you make up your mind about somebody during the first five minutes when you meet them. Interviewers, even subconsciously will be using that same first five minutes to decide whether they are likely to employ you or not, so you need to plan to make a positive impact during the entire interviewing process.

You will know that it is wrong to turn up for an interview as a bank manager, dressed like you have just left the gym, because if you are not extremely presentable and wearing smart clean clothes, you may start your interview by providing a very poor first impression.

Even if the job doesn’t require you to be dressed smartly, it will still pay you to present yourself beyond the standards required during your interview. Dressing smartly, yet flamboyantly, may also prove off putting for the interviewer.

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You will be asked, at some stage during the interview, why you want the job. If you fail to answer the question with enthusiasm and conviction, the interviewer will know that you have not prepared an answer for the easiest question they will ask.

There are a range of questions you should ask and others that you should avoid at this early stage as they will only become valid if it is likely that you are to be offered the position.

Telling the interviewer which days you don’t want to work or asking how much holiday time is available, will make you sound as though you are bothered more about the time you’re not going to be at work, than when you are there.

Although you may wish to take your potential boss’s place in the next few years, it won’t help your application when you offend or threaten the interviewer’s own job.

When you are asked if you have any questions, the worst thing you can say is; “no”. This shows that you are not interested in the job, the company or the people involved. You should have at least three good questions ready to ask your interviewer so that even if they have already covered one answer for you, you still have two in reserve.

You can prepare questions to ask specific information about the job to show your level of interest. By asking about the immediate needs in your new workplace, they will understand that you wish to know about the challenges ahead of you. It is permissible to ask why the position has become available as this will let you know if a problem existed before that you can overcome or whether a new position is being opened at this time. By asking questions about the company, you will have proved that you have taken the time and effort to do your homework about the business.

People like to talk about themselves, so asking a little about your new manager’s background will give them the opportunity to talk while you weigh up whether you want to work with this person.

By asking about the next steps in the process, they will understand your level of interest in the position.

Leave your cell phone off during the interview, giving it no chance to ring, bleep or vibrate. Leaving it on will embarrass you and will show the interviewer that you haven’t prepared properly.

One of the ways that you can create a great first impression, is to follow up with your interviewer as soon as you can, by sending them an email to thank them for the meeting and to provide them with any positive points you forgot to mention, to correct any mistakes that you are sure they will have noticed and to highlight your major skills and applications. You won’t get every job you apply for, but you must learn how to make the best from your errors so that your next interview gives you a
better chance of being successful.

The writer is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to srosenberg@axcelfinance.com

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Samuel Rosenberg: The worst things you can do on a job interview

Henry S. Fraser: Things that delight me over and over!

Jamaica national flower, Lignum Vitae

Henry S. Fraser

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Sunday June 29, 2014 - In 1949, a splendid little book, Delight, by English author J.B. Priestley, was published, to the delight of thousands of readers. It was described as a collection of short essays on the little things in life that caused even him, a self-confessed old monster, to stop and smile! A few years ago a new and equally whimsical version appeared – Modern Delight by Nick Hornby and others – a collection of the little things that delight a wide range of people. It encouraged me, ever since, to enjoy even more the many things of great beauty and charm that we often take for granted. So this column is, in a way, a personal confessional.

One of my greatest delights at this time is the spectacular carnival of bougainvillea, in every colour, on every corner, around the country. But I’m equally delighted by the sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic sequence of flowering trees bursting into bloom. This display in our garden usually starts with a few lonely frangipani flowers, and the delicate blue flowers of the lignum vitae. This elegant tree has perhaps the hardest wood in the world and its flower is the national flower of Jamaica. Its reputation for producing abortions (and a haemorrhagic cystitis) allegedly led to a law banning it in Barbados, and so there are only a few really old specimens – the avenues at Harrison College and Queen’s Park House – but happily it’s popular once again, and I have both mature and younger specimens.

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The lignum vitae is followed sometime in April / May by our two yellow classics… the poui and the cassia fistula. I planted mine side by side, but they rarely coincide exactly in their proud displays. And then there are the hundreds of flamboyants everywhere (Poincianas in the rest of the Caribbean, named for the Duke de Poince, the seventeenth century French Governor of St. Kitts). Temperature and humidity determine their day of display – April in the drier coastal Christ Church, but not until May or early June on higher ground, in our “mountain districts”!

Other simple delights: the wonderful warm, wet welcome of our many dogs. The affection of the tough “rescue dog” Bruno, the Rottweiler-Mastiff, which I found at the RSPCA. He’s the best of watch dogs, but has a really soft heart for his rescuer, and eyes that would melt the hardest heart. And then there’s my big Dog de Bordeaux; Simba who loves to give paw, and Tiger the Doberman, who can smell a stranger a mile off and barks like mad! What’s great about them all is that the later I come home the happier they are to see me!

And the beauty of trees … in my garden; at Queen’s Park, with our magnificent baobab; at Andromeda; at the Flower Forest; at Welchman Hall; at Bath; those splendid palms along the highway; the spiritual silk cottons and ficuses everywhere. Stand and look up at them at dusk and sense their majesty and the power and beauty and grace of God and all creation.

And the sea – the glorious sea, that most Bajans ignore. Enjoy its calm on a sunny day, when you can float at peace, and enjoy the sense of strength and health as you swim and feel truly part of the universe. And enjoy the energy and beauty of the surf at Accra or the Crane or Bathsheba, our most sacred place in the great cathedral of the Scotland District.

Other simple delights I enjoy every day are the warm and sincere exchanges with people I meet every day. A greeting, a word of “Hello”, “Good morning” or “How are you”; and simply “making four eyes” with the other person is a pleasure for everyone who shares in that way, and a privilege many in this world never have. (And yet how many people move through life with eyes averted, sullen, sad, bored or rude, never caring to share the warmth of a simple greeting.)

And then there are the gastronomic delights, which for some seem to be the only pleasures, creating morbid obesity, illness and early death. I can think of nothing more delightful than Greek yoghurt with honey – one of my few imported favourites, with which I’ve had to replace my favourite Pine Hill yoghurt, now no more; and then there’s my wife’s hot coconut bread and cassava pone – to die for! And as a West Indian, nothing delights more than my first taste of red pea soup and ackee and salt fish whenever I go to Jamaica, or a shrimp roti in Trinidad!

But what is life without love. The delight of sharing with close friends and family is exceeded only by the infinite joy of going to sleep and waking up with the most wonderful wife in the world! Amen!

Brickbat: To FIFA, the World Cup and the entire game of football, which has deteriorated into an aggressive, all-in wrestling match. The fouls that are allowed, the fisticuffs and wrestling, the tripping and the dramatic histrionic displays of pretended injury with instant recovery have made a mockery of the game, formerly known as football and now more correctly designated “Wrestle ball”. I’ve been frankly disgusted by the whole charade. And I condemn equally the local game, where photographs show wrestling players with the caption “fighting for the ball”.

Professor Fraser is past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine. Website:  profhenryfraser.com

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Henry S. Fraser: Things that delight me over and over!