Beckenbauer and Lehmann fail to see eye to eye over dissent issue

After seeing yellow for protesting over an opponent’s feigned injury in a 2-2 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt at the weekend, Stuttgart keeper and perennial complainer Jens Lehmann said the standard of refereeing is so bad he may retire from the Bundesliga:

“There was a situation in which a Frankfurt player feigned an injury so we could not launch a counter-attack.”

“The referee said he had to stop play for the injury and then the man stands up and doesn’t even leave the field to be treated. I told the referee, ‘Look! There he goes!’ and he shows me a yellow card - incredible.

“That was so bad that I may as well not bother playing in future. I did not even say anything nasty to the referee.

“Surely there are better ones. I am sorry, but things cannot go on like this. This is sad for the whole of the Bundesliga.”

Jens is clearly outraged for receiving his third yellow card of the season for dissent, but if Franz Beckenbauer had his way, those cards would have been a different colour. The German legend has told Bild that the Bundesliga

… and he might have a point.

With Spurs in crisis, Martin Jol’s continuing success in the Bundesliga - where his Hamburg team is flying high - seems to rub razor-like shards of salt into a fresh weeping wound. Not that any of that could stop Franz Beckenbauer having a dig over the weekend.

“I don’t know the exact circumstances of what happened at Tottenham but it’s hard to believe any team would not want Martin Jol as coach. He is doing a fantastic job at Hamburg. Your loss, if you like, is our gain. It’s another huge victory for German football over you English!”

And, depressingly, Jol’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes isn’t the only thing making Germans look better than us at the moment. Remember You Bet!, the former teatime abomination hosted by Matthew Kelly? The Germans have a version of that called Wetten, dass…?, and it looks brilliant. While ours featured the likes of Capes, Fashanu, and Bruno Brookes as the big-name celebrity guests, the Germans get to enjoy Sylvie van der Vaart (above), fancy dress icon Karl Lagerfeld, and a severely bosomy Salma Hayek falling out of her top (after the jump).

That’s 2-0 Germany.

Unpopular FA head honcho will leave Soho Square 

FA chief executive Brian Barwick will be leaving his post at the end of the year, amid speculation of a rift between him and independent FA chairman Lord Triesman. It is also thought that since Alex Horne’s appointment as chief operating officer in May, Barwick has had his responsibilities diminished. But don’t feel sad: on another miserable night for English football, this was the one positive. Here are five reasons why we’re not sad to see the back of Mister B:

England missed out on Big Phil because of him
Luiz Felipe Scolari recently revealed that he would have taken charge of England in 2006, but the FA told him they wanted to announce his appointment before the World Cup, something he felt would have unsettled his Portugal squad. (Note how the Brazilian had no problem unsettling his squad during Euro 2008.)

He appointed Schteve McClaren
The human resources-based mistakes didn’t stop at missing out on Scolari. After settling for second best (or third in many people’s minds behind Martin O’Neill), Barwick tried to convince everyone that Middlesbrough’s Steve McClaren was his “first choice and the FA board’s unanimous choice.” Despite offering such vocal support to the FC Twente boss at first, he didn’t waste any time firing him the second England failed to qualify.

He’s the reason hardly anyone gets to watch England
Okay, maybe it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after last night, but last April Barwick negotiated a £425 million