Gio's Future

On the strength of his four games in South Africa, Giovani Dos Santos is one of the three finalists for the best young player award. You'd think Germany's Thomas Mueller is a shoe-in, but nonetheless Dos Santos deserves plaudits for his performance, especially in the first two contests. His World Cup run resembled Messi's (though of course at a signficantly lower level) in the sense that he set up teammates, opened up space, made some great runs, threw a bunch of shots on goal, and played, generally speaking, pretty darn well, though he never found the net himself.

Where he will play next year remains up in the air. Harry Redknapp says he can come back to Tottenham (who still has his rights), but he needs to stay out of the nightclubs. I always figured his departure had less to do with his being dragged from a London bar and more to do with performance and the general state of his development as a player, but this makes you think maybe it was more about the partying. Anyway, it'd be great to see him with a Champions League team (not to mention one that I'd be able to see a lot of, unlike Galatasaray).