Portugal soccer coach Luiz Felipe Scolari is crediting regular sessions of bingo for helping the national team develop team spirit ahead of the soccer Euro 2004 finals.
“The locker room atmosphere is very good,” he told a news conference, after the squad spent 12 days at a training camp in the central town of Obidos.
“A few days ago all the players had fun playing bingo. Today there will be another bingo with really good prizes.
“There is always a lot of craziness at these sessions, it helps create a really good environment.”
Scolari, who led Brazil to a record fifth world title in 2002, says Tottenham striker Helder Postiga has been one of the team’s most successful bingo players.
MGM Mirage Juggernaut Rolls On
LAS VEGAS – MGM Mirage, the world’s largest casino company, has made an offer of $4.85 billion in cash for the Mandalay Resort Group.
MGM Mirage would control about half the hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip if it manages to pull off the multibillion-dollar buyout, which includes assuming $2.8 billion in Mandalay debt.
MGM Mirage, as the world’s largest casino company, also would dominate the most lucrative gambling market in the world with 10 hotel-casinos bitcoin dice along the famous five-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, including the immensely profitable Bellagio and Mandalay Bay resorts. It also would control about 40 percent of the slot machines and 44 percent of the gambling tables.
MGM Mirage would hold sway over Las Vegas if its purchase is successful, Deutsche Bank gambling analyst Andrew Zarnett said Monday.
MGM Mirage offered $68 a share, but analysts said negotiations and a possible bidding war could drive the price above $75 to $80 share.
Mandalay’s stock soared 10 percent on the news.
It’s not clear if merger rumors prompted the run-up in prices. Mandalay Resort Group announced record first-quarter earnings late Thursday thanks to its new tower at Mandalay Bay called THEhotel and a lucrative convention center that opened in 2003.
Mandalay said it’s evaluating the $7.65 billion offer, which was characterized by a source close to the talks as “friendly but unsolicited.” It has hired Merrill Lynch and the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore as financial and legal advisers for the negotiations that began last week.
Odds on J Lo’s Divorce
According to a Reuters report, British bookmakers are offering odds of 3-1 that singer/actress Jennifer Lopez and her new husband Marc Anthony will divorce by the end of the year.
Lopez, 33, has already been through two marriages that lasted little more than a year.
She broke off an A-list celebrity engagement to actor Ben Affleck in January after the couple called off their wedding last September.
Anthony was granted a quickie divorce in the Dominican Republic a week ago from his wife of four years, a former Miss Universe.
