#Final fight streetwise transcript series#

Simon Kuper is a sportswriter and columnist with the Financial Times. GARSD: El potrero has always been a really important place in Argentina's mythology, the dirt womb from which our soccer gods are born. The players run over uneven terrain through clouds of dust. GARSD: Kids might use bricks or bottles or whatever they can find to mark goalposts. GARSD: In Argentina, most kids learn to play this rougher, more individualistic style of soccer on neighborhood dirt fields known as potreros. But in South America, nothing is given to you - nothing. GARSD: Felipe Cardenas writes about soccer for The Athletic.ĬARDENAS: It's players that figure out moments of the game and use their skill and their creativity and what we call picardia - you know, that bravery and that arrogance that you have on the ball. To understand Messi's style, you have to understand where he comes from.įELIPE CARDENAS: I think Latin American football - a lot of it is off-script. And isn't that what every person who leaves home has to do - learn to be someone else? Messi did such a good job that years later, when he tried to go back home to Argentina, many fans wouldn't let him forget the way that homegrown legends are supposed to play in Latin America. To become the Leo the world loves, Messi had to leave a part of himself behind. Welcome to THE LAST CUP, co-produced by NPR and Futuro Studios. GARSD: Messi had been far away for too long in Barcelona, where he'd been taught to play more like a European. If you don't run and score, people here will spit on you. Here we play with a knife under our poncho. SALORIO: (Through interpreter) I told him, here, if you don't run, they're going to kill you. But something was missing - the edge, the passion, the punk rock which makes Latin American soccer so unique.

GARSD: After three years of training abroad, Salorio says, yes, he played like an extraterrestrial. When he lost the ball, he'd act like it wasn't a big deal. GERARDO SALORIO: (Through interpreter) He played like he played in Spain. He was there at that game when Messi scored his first goal. GARSD: Gerardo Salorio, aka el Profe, the Professor, was Messi's trainer in that under-20 national Argentina team. GARSD: Remember in the last episode I told you about that friendly match between Argentina and Paraguay? OK, so that was Messi's introduction into the high-stakes world of Argentine international soccer. UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #1: (Speaking Spanish). The first signs of trouble appeared very early on, almost as soon as Lionel Messi began playing with Argentina on the under-20 national squad.

A warning before we start this episode - today's story contains explicit language. An emulation of the arcade version of the original Final Fight is also featured as an unlockable extra.THE LAST CUP is available in English and in Spanish. Three of the four missions also must be unlocked. Kyle and Cody are the two characters unlocked from the start, with Guy and Haggar as unlockable characters. The gameplay mechanics are simpler in this mode, including an arcade-style scoring and lives system, and a basic movelist.

#Final fight streetwise transcript series#

Hugo Andore (also from the first game) and Cammy White (from the Street Fighter series) also make an appearance as 'pit fight' opponents.Īlong with the single-player campaign, the game includes a traditional 'arcade mode', in which up to two players fight through four linear series of battles (known as missions) in a similar vein to the original Final Fight.

Guy and Mike Haggar (the other two protagonists from the first game) make an appearance to help the player. After discovering that Cody has been mutated while using a powerful strength-enhancing drug (called 'glow'), Kyle must search out Metro City for the distributor of the drug (a man known as Father Bella) while fighting various punks along the way. Set several years after the original Final Fight, players take the role of Kyle Travers, an underground 'pit fighter' and the younger brother of Cody Travers (one of the protagonists from the first game). It is a grittier spinoff of the Final Fight franchise. Final Fight: Streetwise is a 3D Action adventure beat 'em up developed by Capcom Studio 8 and published by Capcom for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 on February 28, 2006.