Ernesto (Che) Guevara

Ernesto (Che) Guevara was born in Rosario in Argentine in 1928. After studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires he worked as a doctor. While in Guatemala in 1954 he witnessed the socialist government of President Jacobo Arbenz overthrown by an American backed military coup. Disgusted by what he saw, Guevara decided to join the Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, in Mexico.

In 1956 Guevara, Castro and eighty other men and women arrived in Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the government of General Fulgencio Batista. This group became known as the July 26 Movement. The plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro's guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.

When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista's soldiers. In some cases the peasants also joined Castro's army, as did students from the cities and occasionally Catholic priests.

In an effort to find out information about the rebels people were pulled in for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured. Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining the revolutionaries. The behaviour of Batista's forces increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958 forty-five organizations signed an open letter supporting the July 26 Movement. National bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants and social workers were amongst those who signed. Castro, who had originally relied on the support of the poor, was now gaining the backing of the influential middle classes. 

Source : http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

Read more »

Sandro Rosell

Born in Barcelona on 6.3.64. Degree in Business Administration and MBA at ESADE. In 1990, he started working in the international marketing department of the Organization Committee of the 1992 Olympic Games, as person responsible for the international sponsors.

In 1993, he was the Spanish director of Swiss company ISL, a sports marketing company and the comercial agent for the IOC, FIFA, FIBA, UEFA and IAAF, as well as of the LFP.

In 1996, he joined multinational Nike, as person responsible for the sports marketing in Spain and Portugal, a position he held for three years. He was the architect of the contract with FC Barcelona, which is still in force.

In 1999, he went to Rio de Janeiro and worked there as Nike's Sports Marketing Manager for Latin America. Among others things, he closed the deal between Nike and the Brazilian Football Federation.

He came back to Spain in 2002 and founded the company Bonus Sports Marketing (BSM), which works in the sports marketing field. Among other important projects, he has developed Football Dreams.

This project is now in its third edition and takes place in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The main goal is to use football to help the social development of the African continent.

Sandro Rosell was also Vice-President of FC Barcelona for two years (2003-2005).

Source : http://barcaelections2010.blogspot.com/

Read more »

Diego Armando Maradona

Diego Armando Maradona born 30 October 1960 is a retired Argentine football player, and current manager of Al Wasl FC in Dubai. Many people, football critics, former and current players consider Maradona the greatest football player of all time. He won FIFA Player of the Century award which was to be decided by votes on their official website, their official magazine and a grand jury. Maradona won the Internet based poll by wide margins, garnering 53.6% of the votes against 18.53% for Pelé.

He is the only player in football history who set world-record contract fees twice. The first, when he was transferred to Barcelona for a then world record £5m and the second, when he was transferred to Napoli for another record fee £6.9m. Over the course of his professional club career Maradona played for Argentinos Juniors, Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Napoli, Sevilla and Newell's Old Boys. In his international career, playing for Argentina, he earned 91 caps and scored 34 goals.

He played in four FIFA World Cup tournaments, including the 1986 tournament, where he captained Argentina and led them to their victory over West Germany in the final, winning the Golden Ball award as the tournament's best player. In that same tournament's quarterfinal round, he scored both goals in a 2–1 victory over England that entered football history, though for two different reasons. The first goal was via an unpenalized handball known as the "Hand of God", while the second goal followed a 60 m (66 yd) dribble through six England players, voted "The Goal of the Century".

Maradona is considered one of the sport's most controversial and newsworthy figures. He was suspended from football for 15 months in 1991 after failing a drug test, for cocaine, in Italy, and he was sent home from the 1994 World Cup in the USA after testing positive for ephedrine. After retiring from playing on his 37th birthday in 1997, he gained weight, suffered ill health and the effects of cocaine use. In 2005, a stomach stapling operation helped control his weight gain, and he overcame his cocaine addiction. His outspoken manners have sometimes put him at odds with journalists and sport executives. Although he had little managerial experience, he became head coach of the Argentina national team in November 2008, and held the job for eighteen months, until his contract expired after the 2010 World Cup.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/

Read more »

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country. An engineer and teacher from a poor background, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity after the Islamic Revolution. Appointed a provincial governor, he was removed after the election of President Mohammad Khatami and returned to teaching. Tehran's council elected him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became President on 3 August 2005. His second presidency term ends on August 3, 2013. He is not eligible to run for another term under the current Iranian constitution.

Ahmadinejad is a controversial figure both within Iran and internationally. He has been criticized domestically for his economic lapses and disregard for human rights. He launched a gas rationing plan in 2007 to reduce the country's fuel consumption, and cut the interest rates that private and public banking facilities could charge. He supports Iran's nuclear energy program. His election to a second term in 2009 was widely disputed and caused widespread protests domestically and drew significant international criticism. In 2011 the presence of a so-called "deviant current" among his aides and supporters led to the arrest of several of them.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Read more »

Josep Guardiola

Josep "Pep" Guardiola i Sala (Catalan pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛb ɡwəɾðiˈɔɫə]; born 18 January 1971 in Santpedor, Barcelona, Catalonia), is a Spanish football manager and former player. Guardiola played as a defensive midfielder and spent the majority of his playing career with FC Barcelona, whom he currently manages. He was part of Johan Cruyff's dream team that won Barcelona's first European Cup. Guardiola also played for Brescia Calcio and A.S. Roma in Italy; Al-Ahli in Qatar; and for Dorados de Sinaloa in Mexico while attending managing school. While playing in Italy, he served a four-month ban for a positive drug test although he was cleared of wrongdoing twice on appeal in 2009 before the Courts of Justice of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and the Federal Anti-Doping Courts of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI).[1] As an international, he played for Spain and friendly matches with Catalonia.

After retiring as a player, Guardiola became coach of FC Barcelona B. On 8 May 2008, Barcelona president Joan Laporta announced that Guardiola would succeed Frank Rijkaard as the first team manager. He signed his contract on 5 June 2008.[2] In his first season as manager, Barcelona won the treble of La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League. In doing so, Guardiola became the youngest UEFA Champions League winning manager ever. The following season, Guardiola and Barcelona won the Supercopa de España against Athletic Club Bilbao, the UEFA Super Cup against Shakhtar Donetsk, and the FIFA Club World Cup against Estudiantes, bringing the manager's tally to the maximum of six trophies in six competitions in one year, thus completing the first ever sextuple.

On 8 September 2011, Guardiola was awarded the Catalan Parliament parliament's Gold Medal, its highest honor.[3]

On January 9, 2012 Guardiola received the FIFA World Coach of the Year for Men’s Football award.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/

Read more »

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler (German: 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained support by promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. He was appointed chancellor in 1933 and transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His avowed aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.

Hitler's foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germanic people. He oversaw the rearmament of Germany and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, which led to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Under Hitler's direction, in 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. Hitler's supremacist and racially motivated policies resulted in the systematic murder of eleven million people, including nearly six million Jews.

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945—less than two days later—the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned.

Source :  http://en.wikipedia.org/

Read more »