Archive "Titanic"

Long Lost Hero Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira

He stands a place in the top 125 footballers ever, and imagine the list is made by non other then Pele  himself. This the old photo of one of the most respected and intelectual footballer in the history of football. He is a Doctor, and guess what he did his MD when he was playing proffesionally as a footballer. Hats-off to you Dr. Socrates. 
Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (born February 19, 1954 in Belém do Pará, Brazil), more commonly known simply as Sócrates, is a former Brazilian footballer. He was an excellent assister and team organiser, with great through passes and vision of the field. He was also a two-footed player and a prolific goal scorer. His ability to read the game was highly valued, and his signature move was the blind heel pass.

Sócrates is a doctor of medicine, a rare achievement for a professional footballer (he is a graduate of the Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto). Even rarer is the fact that he earned the degree while concurrently playing professional football. There are persistent rumours that Sócrates turned out for the University College Dublin. However, the player himself has denied this saying that he has never even been to Dublin.

He is also noted for being an intellectual (he holds a doctorate degree in philosophy), a heavy drinker and smoker, and for his height (193 cm, 6 ft 4 in). His brother Raí won the World Cup in 1994 and played for São Paulo and for Paris St. Germain.


Sócrates' hometown is Ribeirão Preto in São Paulo state. As one of the best midfielders in football history, Sócrates played for, and captained, Brazil in the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. He began playing football professionally in 1974 for Botafogo in Ribeirão Preto, but spent the majority of his career (1978 to 1984) with Corinthians in São Paulo, where he became famous for using football to challenge the existing military dictatorship. During his time there he co-founded the Corinthians Democracy movement. Sócrates and his team mates protested against the regime's treatment of footballers, and showed support to the wider movement for democratisation, by wearing shirts with 'Democracia' written on them during games.

Sócrates was capped sixty times for Brazil between May 1979 and June 1986. He also played for Italian club Fiorentina and the Brazilian clubs Flamengo and Santos towards the end of his career.

In 2004, more than a decade after retiring, Sócrates agreed to a one month player-coaching deal with Garforth Town of the Northern Counties East Football League in England. He made his only appearance for the club on November 20, 2004 against Tadcaster Albion, coming on as a substitute twelve minutes from time.
Pelé named him as one of the Top 125 Living Footballers in March 2004, and World Soccer named him one of 100 best footballers in history.
In October 2008, Sócrates was inducted into the Pacembu Brazilian Football Museum Hall of Fame.
He presently works as a practitioner of sports medicine in his hometown.


Today's Socrates

"KIM CLIJSTERS" The woman power

She's done it when every body and anybody have
doubted her. In the last 29 years history of this
cup "the US open" is being taken by a mom. She is
the second to repeat the history by participating in
the final and the first ever to have won this title.
The first one to have done it was Evonne Goolagong,
she took the wimbledon cup in 1980.
Its unimaginable when she entered she was
like unseeded and, as she was with the most
challenging job of a lady, she was more concentrated
on bringing up her beautiful daughter, when every
body doubted she had stayed focused and created a
history. Even she her self was not sure about how
she will do it. Hats of to you KIM you've done a
miraculous job.

Lets probe in to the champions early life and find
out how the star shines so bright even we all saw
the way she handles her emotions when the opponents
are throwing their bats and breaking them you
yourself must have felt a bit shaky. But keeping the
cool is the only way a Champion is distingiushed
from the commoners



Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters born 8 June 1983 is a
Belgian tennis player. She is a former World No. 1
ranked player in singles and in doubles. As of 14
September 2009, she is ranked World No. 19.
During her professional career, Clijsters has won 35
WTA singles titles and 11 WTA doubles titles. She
won the US Open singles title in 2005 and 2009. She
also won the WTA Tour Championships singles title in
2002 and 2003. In doubles, she won the French Open
and Wimbledon titles in 2003. Clijsters was twice a
singles runner-up at the French Open and a one-time
runner-up at the Australian Open, also reaching two
Wimbledon singles semi-finals. She announced her
retirement with immediate effect on 6 May 2007, but
almost two years later, on 26 March 2009, she
publicly declared her intent to return to the WTA
tour for the 2009 summer hard court season. In only
her third tournament back, she won her second US
Open title, becoming the first unseeded player and
wildcard to win the tournament, and the first mother
to win a major since Evonne Goolagong in 1980.

She had proven so many points in just one go, its
not like that once you are out of the circuit you
can never return back or clench a title. once you've
become a mother your body is so out of shape that it
takes hell a lot of job to actually fit in to your
old clothes what to talk about taking on title war.


Clijsters is recognized for her deep, powerful,
well-placed groundstrokes, as well as her court-wide
defense, characterized by speed and athleticism.
Clijsters, along with Jelena Janković and Svetlana
Kuznetsova is among the few tennis players on either
the Association of Tennis Professionals or Women's
Tennis Association tours who can slide (known as the
straddle) on all surfaces. After being defeated by
Clijsters in the 2005 Nasdaq-100 Open, Maria
Sharapova implied that Clijsters' strength lies in
how she always forces her opponent to hit an extra
shot, that "you just have to expect that she's going
to get every ball back".
Only great players can
attain that kind of strategy where you force your
opponent to play according to you.

Tennis career

Clijsters was an accomplished junior player. In
singles, she finished as runner-up in the 1998
Wimbledon junior event, placing 11th in the year-end
singles ranking. In the same year in doubles,
Clijsters won the French Open title with Jelena
Dokić, and the US Open with Eva Dyrberg, ending the
season as number four in the International Tennis
Federation junior doubles world ranking.

1999
In 1999, Clijsters made her breakthrough
professionally. Playing through the qualifying
rounds, she made it through the main draw of
Wimbledon, wherein she defeated tenth ranked Amanda
Coetzer en route to the fourth round, where
Clijsters lost to her childhood idol Steffi Graf.
Later that summer,
Clijsters reached the third round of the US Open, losing to
eventual champion Serena Williams after serving for
the match. In the autumn, Clijsters won her first
Women's Tennis Association (WTA) singles title at
Luxembourg. She followed up with her first WTA
doubles title at Bratislava, partnering Laurence
Courtois.

2000-2002
Clijsters climbed up the rankings over the next
couple of years. In 2001, she reached her first Tier
I final at the tournament in Indian Wells,
California, losing to Serena Williams in a match
overshadowed by controversy. Clijsters also reached
her first Grand Slam final at the French Open, where
she lost to Jennifer Capriati 12–10 in the third
set. This two-hour, 21-minute match featured the
longest third set in a French Open women's final.
Clijsters was four times within two points of
winning before Capriati prevailed. Her next
important breakthrough came at the end of 2002, when
she won the year-end Home Depot Championships in Los
Angeles, defeating top ranked Serena Williams in the
final. This was only the fifth defeat of the year
for Williams and snapped her 18-match winning
streak. On her way to the final, Clijsters defeated
fourth ranked Justine Henin and second ranked Venus
Williams, becoming just the fourth player to beat
both of the Williams sisters in the same event. She
also equaled the event's record for the fewest games
dropped.

2003
Clijsters won nine singles tournaments and seven
doubles titles in 2003, including the WTA Tour
Championships and two Tier I singles tournaments.
She also reached two Grand Slam singles finals,
losing at both the French Open and the US Open to
Henin. At the Australian Open, Clijsters lost in the
semi-final to Serena Williams 4–6, 6–3, 7–5 after
Clijsters led 5–1 in the third set and held a match
point at 5–2. She also lost in the semi-final at
Wimbledon. Her Tier I singles titles were at the
Telecom Italia Masters in Rome, where she defeated
Amélie Mauresmo in the final, and at the Pacific
Life Open in Indian Wells, California, where she
defeated Lindsay Davenport in the final. On 11
August 2003, Clijsters attained the World No. 1
ranking, holding the spot for 12 non-consecutive
weeks during the remainder of the year, and was the
first player to be top ranked by the WTA without
first winning a Grand Slam singles title. The World
No. 1 ranking was at stake in October during the
final of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in
Filderstadt, Germany. Clijsters rallied from a set
down to beat Henin. The match marked only the eighth
time that the top two players battled for the top
ranking. Even though Clijsters won that match, she
finished the year ranked World No. 2, just behind
Henin.

2004
Clijsters started 2004 by reaching her fourth career
Grand Slam final at the Australian Open, where she
lost once more to Henin. She then won two
consecutive titles in Paris and Antwerp. While
defending her Tier I title at the Pacific Life Open,
however, Clijsters began to have problems with her
wrist, eventually requiring surgery and forcing her
to withdraw from most tournaments. She attempted a
comeback towards the end of the year, winning
several matches, before reaggravating the injury.

2005
In February, after almost a year of inactivity
caused by injuries, she made her return to the
Women's Tennis Association tour by participating in
her home country tournament at Antwerp, losing to
Venus Williams in a quarter-final. She then
completed her comeback in March and April when she
won, as an unseeded player, 14 straight matches to
claim two Tier I titles and regained a top-20
ranking. At the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells,
California, Clijsters was ranked World No. 133 but
defeated World No. 5 Elena Dementieva in the
semi-final and World No. 1 Lindsay Davenport in the
final. Immediately after that win, Clijsters
defeated four top-6 players in straight sets to win
the NASDAQ-100 Open in Key Biscayne, Florida.
Clijsters joined Steffi Graf as the only women to
win the Indian Wells-Key Biscayne double. After
losing to Clijsters in the Key Biscayne final, Maria
Sharapova said, "I think the biggest surprise was
that it was her 14th match and yet I didn’t feel
like she was physically fatigued at all. She is a
very strong girl and she can play all day. Running
from corner to corner is like a piece of cake for
her."
Clijsters finally won a Grand Slam singles title at
the US Open. It was her first victory after reaching
four Grand Slam finals previously. Clijsters
defeated tenth-seeded Venus Williams in the
quarter-finals 4–6, 7–5, 6–1, winning 11 of the last
13 games after Williams had led 6–4, 4–2. Clijsters
also needed three sets to defeat top-seeded
Sharapova in the semi-final but needed only two sets
to defeat Mary Pierce in the final. By winning the
US Open Series—a string of summer tournaments in
North America before the US Open itself—Clijsters
received a 100 percent bonus to the US$1.1 million
in prize money she received for winning the US Open.
Her US$2.2 million paycheck was the largest payday
in women's sports history.
On 15 September, within days after her US Open
victory, it was announced that the cooperation
between Clijsters and her coach, Marc Dehous, would
come to an end; it was rumored that this was due to
her not granting Dehous a bonus following her
victory.
At the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships,
Clijsters was eliminated after only two matches. She
lost her first match to Pierce 6–1, 4–6, 7–6 and her
second match to Amélie Mauresmo 6–3, 7–6. Clijsters
said in interviews that her defeats were due to
fatigue and maybe jet lag, having had a relatively
short time to adjust and acclimatize before the
tournament began. Although she won her third match
in the round-robin tournament against Dementieva, it
was considered a dead rubber.
Overall, she won nine singles events in 2005, her
last one being at the Gaz de France Stars in
Hasselt. She ended the year ranked World No. 2.

2006
Clijsters started the year by winning an exhibition
tournament, the Watson Water Challenge, in Hong
Kong. On her way to the title she defeated Jie
Zheng, Elena Dementieva, and top ranked Lindsay
Davenport. Clijsters then withdrew from her
semi-final match at the WTA tournament in Sydney,
citing a left hip muscle strain.
At the Australian Open, Clijsters defeated former
champion Martina Hingis in the quarter-finals 6–3,
2–6, 6–4 before retiring from her semi-final match
with Amélie Mauresmo. Despite the loss, the ranking
points she accumulated were enough to regain the
World No. 1 ranking, a position she last held on 9
November 2003. She was the first tennis player, male
or female, to rise from outside the Top 100 (World
No. 134) to World No. 1 in less than a year.
Clijsters' loss to Mauresmo in the Australian Open
semi-final was due to an ankle injury. Although she
had been expected to miss at least eight weeks to
recover, Clijsters returned two weeks later at the
Proximus Diamond Games in Antwerp. She lost the
final of that tournament to Mauresmo in three sets.
Clijsters won her first title of the year at a clay
court event in Warsaw, defeating Svetlana Kuznetsova
in the final. At the French Open in May, Clijsters
reached the semi-final without losing a set,
defeating Hingis in the quarter-finals 7–6, 6–1.
However, she lost to Justine Henin in the semi-final
6–3, 6–2 on her 23rd birthday. She was seeded second
going into Wimbledon but was again eliminated in the
semi-final by Henin.

Clijsters at 2006 Wimbledon
Clijsters collected her second title of the year as
the top seed in Stanford, defeating Patty Schnyder
in the final. Clijsters then reached the final in
San Diego, falling to second-seeded Maria Sharapova
in straight sets. This was her first loss to
Sharapova in five career meetings.
On 16 August, after receiving a first round bye at
the Tier I Rogers Cup in Montreal, Clijsters faced
Canadian Stéphanie Dubois in the second round.
Having won the first set 6–1 and trailing 2–3 in the
second set, Clijsters slipped and fell on her left
wrist and was forced to retire from the match.  On 18
August 2006, Clijsters announced on her official
website that the condition of her wrist was worse
than she had expected and that she would be unable
to defend her title at the US Open.  She also missed
the Fed Cup final against Italy, which Italy won
3–2.

At the Gaz de France Stars, her first tournament in
more than two months, Clijsters successfully
defended her title by beating qualifier Kaia Kanepi
in the final. At the year-ending WTA Tour
Championships, Clijsters lost a semi-final to
Mauresmo 6–2, 3–6, 6–3 after defeating Dementieva
and Kuznetsova and losing to Sharapova in the round
robin phase of the tournament.

2007
Clijsters started the year by winning an exhibition
tournament, the Watson Water Challenge, in Hong
Kong. On her way to the title, she defeated Jie
Zheng, Patty Schnyder, and top ranked Maria
Sharapova. Clijsters then won the Medibank
International in Sydney, Australia, defeating Jelena
Janković in the final after being down a match
point. At the Australian Open, the fourth seeded
Clijsters defeated sixth seed Martina Hingis in a
quarter-final match before losing to Sharapova in
the semi-finals 6–4, 6–2.
She played her last tournament before retirement in
Belgium at the Proximus Diamond Games in Antwerp,
where she lost to Amélie Mauresmo in the final. At
the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Florida,
Clijsters lost in the fourth round to Li Na 4–6,
6–4, 6–2. In May, she failed to defend her title in
Warsaw, losing in the second round to Julia
Vakulenko 7–6(3), 6–3. This was Clijsters's last
professional match until 2009.
Retirement
On 6 May 2007, citing injuries, Clijsters announced
on her official website that she was retiring from
professional tennis immediately.

2009 comeback
Clijsters, along with Tim Henman, Steffi Graf, and
Andre Agassi, played an exhibition event on
Wimbledon's Centre Court in May, an event that she
and Henman won 7–6 in a tiebreak. She also played a
singles rubber against Graf, winning 6–4. In July,
she won both of her singles matches with the St.
Louis Aces of World Team Tennis.
She officially announced during a press conference
on 26 March 2009, that wildcards for the Cincinnati
and Toronto tournaments had been granted to her.
Additionally, she said she would be playing in this
year's US Open, after which she plans to evaluate
the comeback in terms of success and the feasibility
of combining it with her family life. Clijsters also
stated that she preferred to think of it as a
"second career" instead of a comeback, because so
many factors (marriage, a baby, the recent death of
her father) were different compared to her first
career.
Starting her second career at the Western & Southern
Financial Group Women's Open in Cincinnati,
Clijsters defeated World No. 13 Marion Bartoli in
the first round 6–4, 6–3. In her next two matches,
she defeated World No. 20 Patty Schnyder 6–2, 7–5
and World No. 6 and reigning French Open champion
Svetlana Kuznetsova 6–4, 4–6, 6–2.  In the
quarter-finals, she lost to World No. 1 Dinara
Safina 6–2, 7–5.
At her next tournament, the Rogers Cup in Toronto,
she received a wildcard to play in the main draw and
defeated British qualifier Elena Baltacha in the
first round. In the second round, she defeated World
No. 9 Victoria Azarenka 7–5, 4–6, 6–1 but lost to
World No. 4 Jelena Jankovic in the third round 1–6,
6–3, 7–5, after serving for the match at 5–3.
She then received a wildcard to play in the main
draw of the US Open. She easily won her first round
match over Viktoriya Kutuzova 6–1, 6–1. She won her
second round match, defeating World No. 14 Marion
Bartoli for the second time in three weeks 5–7, 6–1,
6–2. She then defeated compatriot Kirsten Flipkens
6–0, 6–2 in the third round. She went on to upset
World No. 3 Venus Williams in the fourth round 6–0,
0–6, 6–4. This was only Clijsters 11th competitive
match since coming out of retirement. Clijsters beat
18th seed Na Li in straight sets 6–2, 6–4 to reach
the semi-finals where she faced defending champion
and World No. 2 Serena Williams, winning 6–4, 7–5
after Williams was given a point penalty on match
point for verbally abusing an official over a foot
fault call. Clijsters became the first unseeded
finalist at the US Open since Venus Williams in
1997, and the first wildcard to ever reach the U.S.
Open final. In the final she defeated ninth seed
Caroline Wozniacki 7-5, 6-3 to win her second US
Open title. She became the first person to beat both
Williams sisters en route to a Grand Slam title
since countrywoman Justine Henin did so in 2007. Her
US Open victory placed her in the top 20 in the
world rankings. She also became the first unranked
and unseeded champion of a Grand Slam title in
history, and the first mother to win a Grand Slam
title since Evonne Goolagong Cawley won Wimbledon in
1980. Clijsters now has a winning streak of 14
matches at the US Open, not having played there
between her victory in 2005 and her victory in 2009.