2010 FIFA World Cup: It's a Family Thing

The World Cup is famous and entertaining for a number of reasons, including the fans, the games and the inaugural celebration, which former South African president Nelson Mandela will attend, just to name a few.

There is also a lot of fun stuff about it, like the promotions some companies do (ESPN's poster, Hyundai’s buses, etc.). 

In this article I'm going to comment about another thing involving the World Cup: family relationships between players, or between players and coaches.

Any and all possible family relationship between two male family members is covered in this World Cup, there are brothers, cousins, fathers, sons, and in laws playing.

Brothers

There are five sets of brothers playing in the World Cup: the Nakamuras (Kengo and Shunsuke), playing for Japan; the Toures (pictured, Kolo and Yaya), playing for Ivory Coast; the Palacios (Johny and Wilson), playing for Honduras, the Barretos (Diego and Edgar), playing for Paraguay, and the strangest brothers, the Boatengs, they were born in Germany from Ghanaian parents, and while Jerome will play for his birth nation Germany, his brother Kevin-Prince will play for his parent’s nation, Ghana.

There could have been a sixth couple of brothers, but Mexican coach Javier Aguirre finally decided to only call one of the Dos Santos brothers, and while Giovanni is going to play for his nation, his brother Jonathan will have to see it from the stands.

Father and Son

There are two coaches who have called their own sons to be in the national team, USA's coach Bob Bradley called his son Michael to be in the World Cup. This is also the case of Slovakia's coach Vladimir Weiss, who will have his son, also called Vladimir Weiss, playing for him.

In Laws

There are also two coaches who called their sons-in-law to the national team, Argentina's coach Diego Armando Maradona called Agüero, who has made Maradona a grandfather, to play for the team. Netherland's Mark Van Bommel is also married to his coach's (Bert Van Maarwijk) daughter, with whom he has three children (Thomas, Ruben and Renée).

Cousins

There will also be some cousins in the World Cup, like Slovenia's goalkeepers Samir and Jasmin Handanovic or Cameroon's Rigobert and Alexandre Song.

This continues the tradition of having families playing in international competitions, after the De Boers (Frank and Ronald) who played for Netherlands or the Maldinis (Paolo and Cesare) who played for Italy, just to name a couple of famous families that have played.