Corinthians, Argentines, and MSI...

Tim Vickery's column, A View From South America, easily the most interesting, well-written, and relatively bias-free material on the BBC Football website, this week deals with the strange goings on at Brazilian giants Corinthians.

The club have come into a good deal of money through a partnership with the mysterious London company MSI, rumoured to be tied to Roman and his roubles in mysterious ways. The signing of Carlos Tevez for $20 million, an unheard of amount to bring a player into Brazil, from Argentina, a country which almost never exports players to Brazil, and the recent hiring of Daniel Passarella as coach are the latest in a string of weird events surrounding the club and its London cash source.

Vickery gives a good evaluation of the cultural problems that Argentine players, and coaches, face in Brazil, and does a good job at a thumb-nail sketch of the implications of MSI's involvement.

The only point that might be added is that Passarella's version of football is likely to be markedly different from what the Corinthians supporters expect, and also that Tevez, the Argentine player for whose benefit it is assumed the Argentine Passarella was hired, played for Boca Juniors, whereas Passarella was a die-hard River Plate player.

It's certainly an arguable case that River/Boca is the world's bitterest derby, and Passarella and Tevez, both quite stubborn and strong-willed, getting on at Corinthians is by no means a certainty.