The ‘official’ (or at least Jamie Carragher’s) account of what happened in Liverpool’s dressing room at half-time during the 2005 Champions League final isn’t particularly exciting - Rafa Benitez mumbled something semi-inspirational, switched to 3-5-2 and tried to start the second half with 12 men.
Four years later, the real story of those 15 minutes has finally surfaced, reconstructed by the players themselves. I think we can now safely say it was in fact Dietmar Hamann, with a war cry so rousing it would’ve had William Wallace and Winston Churchill teary-eyed, who changed football history that night.
Manic keeper caught living it up hours after defeat
The German festival of Oktoberfest (which actually happens mostly in September) is great. It takes place in Munich and provides a good excuse for everyone to get bladdered on quality beers for two and a half weeks, while dressed up in comedy blonde pigtail wigs.
However, it’s not the best place to be spotted if you’re a professional footballer whose team has just lost a bottom-of-the-table clash, and you were at fault for one of the goals.
That’s the pickle legendary ex-Arsenal keeper ‘Mad’ Jens Lehmann finds himself in today, having been dropped by Stuttgart after being snapped (pics here) gallivanting round the beer halls hours after a 2-0 defeat to FC Koln on Saturday.
Referee Massimo Busacca, the man tasked with overseeing Man United’s schooling at the hands of Barcelona in last year’s Champions League final, was embroiled in sweary scandal this weekend after pointing with the wrong finger during a Swiss Cup game between third division minnows FC Baden and Swiss Super League runners-up, Young Boys (who infamously play at the lap dance-hosting Wankdorf.)
Home team Baden took a shock lead after nine minutes, which set off a mini pitch invasion and prompted Busacca, whose history of refereeing incidents on Wikipedia reads like an instruction manual on ‘how to lose friends and enrage people’, to order a loudspeaker announcement for fans to stop scaling the fences.
It’s not been a good September for Diego Maradona. Having starting the month with humbling defeats to Brazil and Paraguay in Argentina’s beleaguered World Cup 2010 qualifying campaign, he’s since been told by Viagra-hawking legend Pele he wasn’t actually that good at football after all and endured ridicule for being packed off to a fat farm in Italy.
The latest ignominy was suffered after Italian fraud squad police followed him to said fat farm last week and raided it, in an attempt to try and recover some of the £28m Diego owes in back taxes from his time at Napoli between 1984 and 1991.
The private beef which caused Emmanuel Adebayor to moonwalk over Robin van Persie’s face a fortnight ago has been revealed to be the same reason he fell out with Nicklas Bendtner last season - an unhealthy shoe obsession.
According to the News of the World, following Arsenal’s final day win against Stoke last season, Emmanuel knee-slid into the Gunners’ dressing room with an extra-strength bin liner and (as one club rep put it) ’swept the place’, bagging as much of his team-mates’ kit as would fit - including a pair of boots Robin van Persie had planned to give to friends - before hauling ass.
A member of the Arsenal backroom staff was left break the news to the players:
“We never saw him - or the boots - again. Robin was going mad.
Crawley boss set for two months on the naughty step
Mark Hughes might feel hard done by over Emmanuel Adebayor’s recent three-game ban, but spare a thought for Conference side Crawley Town. Their manager Steve Evans has been slapped across the chops with a thirteen match penalty.
With the sort of speed and efficiency you’d expect from the FA, Evans has only just received a three-game ban for using ‘foul and abusive language’ in a match against Salisbury City last February. An additional 10-game suspended penalty was tacked on from a 12-match ban the manager previously sat out last season.
This could have just been one in a long list of examples of how not to take a penalty if you’re going to be smug and put it down the middle.
But thanks to Glentoran striker Kyle Neill’s shoddy attempt at trying a dainty Fat Ronaldo-esque side foot on the rebound, instead of lashing it as any good Irish league player should, it becomes a good example of how to a make an absolute fool of yourself twice over. Excuse the (understandably) colourful language right at the end.
Last night’s round of Europa League games saw two unfamiliar blokes cutting rather lonely figures beside each goal. Making its trial debut as part of Michel Platini’s grand plan to cut out diving, ghost goals and general tomfoolery, was the ‘Additional Assistant Referees’ (AARs) system - basically plonking two flagless linos goalside.
Their biggest challenge, last night’s tie between Everton and AEK Athens, was a mixed bag. A contentious penalty shout was turned down, probably correctly, but Louis Saha was then sent off in the dying minutes for raising his hands, after having his legs used as kicking posts by AEK defender Juanfran.
Despite coasting to victory 4-0, David Moyes found time to moan about the new system:
‘It’s amazing - they see the small arm from Louis but not the big kick that was aimed at him beforehand, despite all those officials in and around the box now.
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