For those that didn’t realise, last night the theme was “Small Leather Jacket” down at Funky Buddha - by far the most sensual of London’s sexy wine bars.
Of course, Lamps was there with pals Ballack and Carvalho, all guffawing and loving their body-tight jackets. Even cricket’s Kevin Pietersen stopped off to let girls stroke his leather jacket and offer to buy him Martinis. But, as is usual with any Chelsea event, one man decided to join in and just made an almighty hash of things - can you guess who?
Christ, what a couple of days for Princess Frank. First he has a rubbish time in Turkey, where he was spotted flouncing around the Chelsea dug-out being calmed down by a tiny little gentleman called Shaun Wright-Something.
Does the armband belong back with Terry, or should it grace another bicep?
Stevie G was handed the captaincy in Capello’s first match in charge, but should he be in command at the France game next week, and indeed in the run up to 2010? Other contenders include John Terry (who is as much of a bully as Capello, but prone to injury, unnecessary aggression and illegal parking), Rio Ferdinand (who’ll probably be too busy and ‘merking’ people), David Bentley (a young player who is likely to feature prominently in the future), Micah Richards (whose favourite film is Home Alone) or Frank Lampard (whose favourite film is a tie between Dirty Dancing and The Notebook).
New contract will buy Princess Frank a lot of pretty gowns
According to today’s Daily Express, Frank Lampard wants a £30m four-year deal to stay at Chelsea after his current contract expires. According to my super computer, that’s a cool £144, 230.77 a week, which will put him way above teammates JT (£135k) and Schevchenko (£130k), and also a few quid above Kaka, the current best paid player in the world who takes home £143,438 a week.
But will Chelsea pay out? And how will he manage if they don’t?
…And loads of other bizarre pointless stuff in new Pepsi advert
Usually, Pepsi adverts are great spectacles - previously, we’ve enjoyed Beckham in a Wild West shootout, and Roberto Carlos and co losing a game to a bunch of overweight Germans. The latest clip from the cola pushers, however, seems like a big ol’ mishmash of crap designed to get as many high profile names into a minute slot: Thierry Henry runs through the jungle in a dinner suit, Beckham as Indiana Jones mysteriously transforms into Cesc Fabregas, and Princess Frank gets all dolled up in a fetching little kimono. It really accentuates his hips, and black is a very flattering colour for the precious midfielder,
Tal Ben Haim might have been the most stylish guy in the dressing room back in his Bolton days, but bear in mind that he was up against Diouf’s eclectic hip-hop outfits, and an old woman in a flowery dress feverishly scrubbing her front step.
Line him up against style icons like Lamps and JT, and the guy looks like something a yachtsman just dragged in on his deck shoe (pictured).
It seems that in the world of professional football, right backs and left backs are like the hospital porters compared to the glitzy surgeons nodding them in up front. Not one of the tireless wing-backs features in the Top Fifty earners - not even Mrs Gary Neville, who you would think demands money for breakfast.
Hence, the highest earning XI finds itself having to go with a 3-4-3 formation, which in modern footballing terms, is ridiculous. Still, here they are in all their wealthy glory:
Goalkeeper: Iker Casillas (£114,750/week)
Defenders: Rio Ferdinand (£96,581), John Terry (£130,050), Sol Campbell (£105,188)
Midfield: Cristiano Ronaldo (£122,400), Frank Lampard (£130,050), Steven Gerrard (£122,400), Michael Ballack (£124,313)
Forwards: Kaka (143,438), Ronaldinho (£135,788), Fernando Torres (£126,225)
Fans of great lists: get your reading slippers on. A terrifyingly solemn Portuguese website called futebolfinance.com has compiled a list of the fifty highest earning European footballers. It being Portugal, the sums are in euros (and it being Portugal no one playing for a Portuguese club side is on the list), but with one euro worth about 76p, by subtracting a quarter of the sum, the all-important pound value will be revealed.
Once you’ve managed to control the powerful waves of envy and indignation crashing together inside your head, the list makes for some interesting reading. Who’d have thought Darren Bent was top twenty? How much higher would he have been if he’d gone to West Ham instead? And since when was a Harry Kewell worth more than a Joe Cole?
