DieBruderschaft.com

MILAN -- At 40, Francesco Totti may not be Romas `Golden Boy anymore, but he is still very much `the King of Rome.Totti celebrates his 40th birthday on Tuesday but the Champions Leagues oldest scorer is showing no signs of slowing down and indeed seems to have found a new lease of life.There was speculation last season that maybe the time had come for Il Capitano to hang up his boots and move into the boardroom but, with six goals in his past 11 league matches and several assists, Totti is proving his doubters wrong.Totti marked the final match of his 30s on Sunday by becoming only the second player to score 250 Serie A goals, reaching that mark with a penalty kick in Romas 3-1 loss at Torino.The man who upset Tottis pre-birthday celebrations, Torino coach Sinisa Mihajlovic, helped persuade then Roma coach Vujadin Boskov to hand a 16-year-old Totti his debut.Mihajlovic had been amazed by the precocious youngster, who was giving him and his fellow first-team defenders trouble in training as well as racking up goals for the youth team.On March 28, 1993, with Roma winning 2-0 at Brescia, Mihajlovic ran up to Boskov and said come on, bring the kid on... The rest is history.Mihajlovic joked at the weekend that Totti owes him a dinner for that, and it cant be at a pizzeria, it has to be oysters and champagne before adding he is the best player in Italy since Ive been here.And for nearly a quarter of a century Totti has been living up to those expectations. With his stunning goals and defense-splitting passes, Totti is, for many Roma fans, the epitomy of the Roman gladiator that he has tattooed on his right shoulder.If Rome is the Eternal City, Totti is Romas eternal leader and has been since he was first made captain in 1998, at the age of just 22.Zdenek Zeman, who promoted Totti to the captaincy, was such an ardent admirer that he once said: Who are the best five Italian players? Totti, Totti, Totti, Totti, Totti.Several teammates and coaches have compared Totti with a famous Roman monument, with Claudio Ranieri saying the star player is as important as the Colosseum is to Rome.He has been just as immovable.Totti has spent his entire career at Roma and when his current contract expires, he will have had 25 years in its first team -- remarkably more than 28 percent of the clubs existence.Totti could have won more than the solitary Serie A title, two Italian Cups and two national Super Cups he lifted with Roma, but he rejected offers of more money and glory to remain with his childhood club.I grew up playing for Roma and I want to die playing for Roma ... I have always been a Roma fan, said Totti, who was raised in the Porta Metronia area of the city.Tottis face adorns murals and posters across Italys capital, where he is loved by Roma fans and respected by supporters of bitter rival Lazio, despite his antics against them.Totti has scored 11 times against Lazio and often celebrates these extra-special goals with t-shirts made for the occasion. One famously said I have purged you again, while he revealed another reading simply Game Over after a victory in May 2015.He hit the headlines in January of that year when he scored the second of two goals against Lazio and, in a pre-planned celebration for becoming the all-time leading scorer in the derby, grabbed his phone off Romas goalkeeping coach and took a selfie under the Curva Sud with thousands of adoring fans in the background.Totti has also been a star for Italy and he helped the Azzurri to the European Championship final in 2000 as well as the World Cup trophy in 2006.He grabbed global attention at Euro 2000 with one of the moments of the tournament, in the semifinals against the Netherlands. In the tense penalty shootout, the 23-year-old Totti kept his cool to cheekily chip Edwin van der Sar with his spot-kick.Totti was named man of the match in the final, despite Italy losing 2-1 to France.Totti played in all seven of Italys World Cup matches in 2006 and his last match for the Azzurri was the final against France, concluding his international career with 58 caps and nine goals.Asked what gift Totti should get for his 40th birthday, Roma coach Luciano Spalletti was among the people who suggested a time machine. Mirco Mueller Devils Jersey . -- Aaron Murray threw for 408 yards and three touchdowns, ran for another score, and led No. Scott Stevens Devils Jersey . 4 Villanova with a 96-68 drubbing on Monday. Wragge hit 9-of-14 from behind the arc, matching Kyle Korvers school record for 3-pointers in a game set in 2003, as Creighton (16-3, 6-1 Big East broke a conference record with 21 treys in the rout. http://www.devilssale.com/authentic-blake-coleman-devils-jersey/ . -- Mike Smith never saw his first NHL goal go in. Sami Vatanen Devils Jersey . William Carrier opened the scoring for Cape Breton (6-4-2), but Andrew Ryan tied the game and Brent Andrews put the Mooseheads (8-6-0) in front for good with a short-handed goal at 13:49 of the second period. Will Butcher Devils Jersey . Olli Jokinen, Mark Scheifele, and Bryan Little each had a goal and an assist as Winnipeg won 5-2, handing Calgary its record-setting seventh consecutive loss on home ice. MOSCOW -- Its been the team of KGB spies, goalkeeping great Lev Yashin and Putin-era state capitalists. Despite its rich history, though, Dynamo Moscow is in deep trouble.Only a few thousand fans braved freezing temperatures to watch Saturdays drab 0-0 draw against the Zenit St. Petersburg reserve team in the Russian second division. Chants echoed around the mostly-empty stadium in a pale imitation of Dynamos fierce rivalry with Zenit, traditionally a major security risk given the animosity between the fans.Until a humbling relegation this year, Dynamo had never dropped out of the Soviet or Russian top division. And for much of its 93-year history, the very idea was impossible given Dynamos powerful political protectors, such as Stalins right-hand man and secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. On the field, Dynamo was renowned for the goalkeeping skills of Yashin -- the Black Spider -- and the innovative passovotchka short-passing style of the post-war years, a prelude to modern tiki-taka.The collapse of the Soviet Union curtailed Dynamos clout, and a solitary Russian Cup title in 1995 has been the only consolation for the 11-time Soviet champions. Still, Dynamo often remained in touching distance of a title, buoyed in recent years by a flood of cash from the state-owned VTB bank.VTB is now in the process of pulling out after years of big spending and few successes, leaving behind debts estimated by Dynamo general director Evgeny Muravyev at 13 billion rubles ($200 million). For a club with small crowds and minimal TV revenue, thats a daunting sum.Muravyev told Russian agency R-Sport this month that Dynamo iss trying to pay off some debts and restructure others but new obligations are piling up related to the fact that we dont have many sources of funding at the moment.dddddddddddd Were not in a great state financially.The cash crisis is serious enough that the government has issued a declaration that it wont allow Dynamo to die.Until recently, Dynamo had been notorious for overspending in the transfer market. After Portugal reached the final of the 2004 European Championship, Dynamo swiftly signed seven Portuguese players, most of whom made little impact, as did former Germany striker Kevin Kuranyi, signed in 2010 for a reported 6 million euros ($6.4 million) a year. All that spending created vast losses, attracting a financial fair play sanction last year from UEFA which barred Dynamo from European competition.A spending plan published by the club earlier this year shows more unusual spending for a struggling club, with $93,000 earmarked in January for a mascot which has yet to appear and up to $140,000 per game budgeted for VIP travel packages.Its not clear, however, how much was spent.Still, not all is lost for Dynamo. The draw against the Zenit reserves ensured that it will go into the winter break in the promotion places. But even if Dynamo makes it back to the Russian Premier League, it will not be the same free-spending Dynamo as before, and wary of repeating the fate of another famed Moscow club, Torpedo, now toiling in the third division after repeated financial problems. ' ' '