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Chpater1 - “Football is the Ultimate Media” A Game with a Special MagicCarlos Acosta, Mexican-American brothers, to be his pointmen for negotiating contracts.The fact that we finally managed to assemble such astellar roster of players may give the impression it was easy.That would be misleading. Getting the players on board wasone of the toughest parts of the whole job. The biggest obstaclewe faced was the World Cup being underway at the timein Spain. Naturally enough, the big stars of the game wantto perform to the very best of their abilities on that greatestof stages which only comes around every four years, so theywere unlikely to casually agree to some bloke who poppedout of the woodwork with a proposal like, “Hey, could youtake part in a charity match in about two months’ time?”Understandably, footballers often take a short vacation afterthe World Cup to rest mentally and physically for the upcomingseason and the last thing they want to do is cut short theirbreak and drag themselves off to far-away New York. Thiswas a further obstacle in our path.I have to take my hat off to Takahashi’s passionand powers of execution. Undeterred by all the difficulties,he persisted and negotiated successfully with the players.Working closely with George, the Acosta brothers, and his23