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Who are the 50 best players in the French top flight? We don’t know either but these guys do
( The Offside )

A Czech paper has offered a whole lot of shekels to encourage San Marino against Slovenia tonight. If the Slovenians win, the Czechs will be spending next summer on the beach.
( Off the Post )

Interestment round up the week’s international action

Fabio Cannavaro tries to suppress his laughter at his boss falling over
( Dirty Tackle )

Jamie Redknapp glows in this lovely jacket
( Kickette )

Its not just Manchester United who score late, by Danny Harris

Republic of Ireland were robbed of a credible draw at the weekend, after scoring late only to see their opponents Italy equalise with stunning impertinence.

After the jump, we choose our six favourite similarly chaotic upside-down closing stages:

England manager would like to have been a pilot

Fabio Capello made his professional football debut as an eighteen-year-old, and has been a key figure in the beautiful game ever since. Had he not discovered his talent for kicking a piece of leather, and subsequent talent for telling other people how to kick a piece of leather, the manager would have taken an entirely different career path.

He told the Italian edition of Marie Claire:

‘If I had not become a footballer, I would have flown Boeings. Football is just a job to me. The three things I could not give up are my own home, my family and travelling.’

While a career in flying for the military would probably be unlikely for a man who needs to wear glasses, it would not be a problem for a commercial pilot flying Boeings. A career in the airline industry would also have helped Capello avoid the shine of the media spotlight. While he may enjoy the benefits of fame, being an anonymous citizen would have made it much easier to keep his penchant for massive tax evasion under wraps.

Spoiler promotion: Play Fantasy Football and win Champions League Final tickets!

World Cup winner shows he’s not made of stone

Much has been made of Emmanuel Adebayor’s irresponsible reaction to the torrent of abuse he received from Arsenal fans at the weekend, but Roma’s Daniele De Rossi was also subjected to offensive chants on Sunday. The Italian, however, dealt with the crowd banter a little differently.

After a mistimed tackle, Siena fans started singing a song about his father-in-law (i.e. the daddy of his not-unattractive WAG Tamara), who was apparently executed in a mafia hit last year. When the whistle blew, the midfielder’s reddened eyes quickly turned into full-on waterworks, as his teammates tried to console him.

Siena manager Marco Giampaolo offered an apology on behalf of the callous fans:

“To De Rossi, I express my solidarity as a man and as a footballer for what has happened.”

[Hat tip: 101GG and Dirty Tackle]

An Italian involved in corruption - who’dve thought it?

To most Britons, Fabio Capello is known as a saviour of English football, who enjoys the occasional televised lapdance. To the Italian treasury, however, he is renowned for a lengthy history of tax evasion, financial deceit and eyebrow-raising offshore bank accounts.

Capello’s battle with the Italian authorities dates back to 1999, when he claimed to be a resident of a Swiss tax haven called Campione d’Italia. When he failed to recall the address of his studio flat in court, he signed a false residency declaration and paid a €2,300 fine.

The authorities’ suspicions were aroused once again towards the end of his spate with Roma, when the club paid €2m to a company named Sport 3000 for a range of Fabio Capello fragrances, scarves and designer items.

Sport 3000 turned out to be a subsidiary of the ‘Capello Family Trust’, an offshore holding company based in tax-friendly Guernsey and owned by England’s current manager. The items were kept under lock and key by customs officers for two years, and eventually destroyed. It was discovered that Roma agreed to purchase the smellies and designer tatt from Capello as a means of giving him a ‘low tax’ bonus on his salary

Rossoneri is “no longer a worthwhile investment” for Italian PM

Since their two countries made peace with one another, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister/AC Milan owner/caricature sex pest Silvio Berlusconi have bee getting on like a house on fire.

Such is the strength of their relationship that Italian newspaper la Repubblica are today reporting that Berlusconi wants to sell his beloved AC Milan to the man who recently made his people take part in a compulsary celebration of the 40th anniversary of his military coup d’état.

On Sunday, the day after the Rossoneri were pummeled by their fierce Milan rivals, Berlusconi flew to Tripoli to attend a ceremony marking the first anniversary of the 2008 cooperation treaty between the two nations. While there, la Repubblica say the Italian offered the Libyan leader the chance to buy his club, and also requested references from the Libyan Central Bank, Foreign Bank of Libya and Libyan Investment Authority. Incidentally, these institutions have also been linked with Juventus and Roma in the past.

Berlusconi no longer views the club as a “strategic asset”,

There are too many distractions…

Parma FC recently held one of their training sessions in the Cittadella park, an area of Parma that is invariably occupied with scantily clad beautiful Italian ladies on a sunny day. Suddenly, straying outside the confines of the training ground doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Spoiler bonus: The distracted players in the picture above are defenders Christian Panucci and Mohamed Traoré - the former has an excellent reason not to look at bikini-clad strangers.

He’s been too busy eating

[Marca Blog]