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He Watched. And He Was Still Bored

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Daniel Ruth

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 12, 2008

Farrukh Quraishi was understandably miffed.

This space had just suggested Quraishi's former walk of life, professional soccer, was about as much of a thrill to watch as being stuck at a train crossing meets pulling weeds.

"What are you doing Sunday June 29 at 2:30 p.m.?" Quraishi implored in an e-mail. "Euro 2008 Final between Germany and Spain on ABC. Please watch it and then tell me it's boring."

Farrukh, my old friend? In deference to you, I watched it. It was boring. I went out to pull some weeds just to wake up.

For a moment in the soccer match, which seemed to last longer than "Finnegan's Wake," one of the contestants - I think it was either a German guy, or a Spanish guy - started bleeding, an encouraging sign.

At last! Some violence. Now we were getting somewhere, I hoped. Alas, the bloodshed ebbed and I was left to watching the players run back and forth on the pitch, for what felt like a week or two.

Finally the game ended with a score of 1-0. Either Germany or Spain won. And there was great excitement because the whole thing was over with.

Tax Code = Soccer

Even though soccer to me is an experience somewhere between a colonoscopy and reading the U.S. tax code, the indomitable Quraishi still thought it would be a swell idea to have lunch with Andre Nestor, 25, who, along with his business partner Hinds Howard, 26, announced plans recently to reconstruct the old Tampa Bay Rowdies franchise.

We were joined by former Rowdy superstar Perry van der Beck, who was known to have occasionally scored a goal in a soccer game, which caused cows to come home, hell to freeze over and pigs to fly.

Young Nestor is a quiet, polite young man, the kind of lad who probably dreamed as a child of someday growing up to become an - actuary.

He has only lived in Tampa three months and thus has not received a full body rubdown greeting from former Mayor Dick Greco. I demurred in asking him if he had been to the Mons Venus yet, but I had a sneaking suspicion he likely knew where PricewaterhouseCoopers was located.

Lucky Us

Picking away at his Mis en Place Cobb salad, Nestor explained with all the enthusiasm of an embalmer that he and Howard spent a year of due diligence in exploring markets such as Boston and San Antonio as possible sites for what is, in effect, their minor-league soccer version of the reconstructed Rowdies.

In Tampa, though, they saw a fan base, "We felt could be leveraged." Lucky us.

And so Nestor will spend the next two years here in Tampa preparing for the team to take to the field in 2010, trying to raise private financing to build a 7,500-seat capacity soccer stadium.

As if by fate, the Hillsborough County Commission recently gave tentative approval to build a $15 million soccer complex somewhere in the county. Nestor insisted he's had no communication with Commissioner Jim Norman, who uses Gatorade for deodorant every morning, on what appears to be a convergence of interests. Young Nestor said this with a straight face, exuding an earnestness that would make Eddie Haskell swell with pride.

Something tells me Nestor has a future here.

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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