Football chiefs could face £900k compensation bill…
Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard has been forced to pull out of England’s Qatar-based friendly with Brazil on Saturday, after picking up a hamstring injury brought on by the ‘cramped’ team plane.
The FA are now reportedly facing a £900,000 compensation claim from the Blues, as they look to reclaim the £151,000 p/w wages they’ll be shelling out while Lampsie is sprawled out over a physio’s bench.
According to The Sun, Lampard tore a thigh muscle during England’s first training session, after attempting to “burst into a sprint” (seriously, those were the words they used.) The finger of blame was immediately pointed at a pokey jet the FA had chartered to fly its team 3,000 miles to Qatar.
Weeks after The FA was embroiled in a row over appearing to buy off the FIFA’s executive committee (or at least their wives) with designer handbags, in the hope of securing some votes for England’s World Cup 2018 bid, FIFA vice-prez Jack Warner has decided he doesn’t want his anymore.
The £230 Mulberry bag has been sent back, along with a tear-stained letter claiming it’s brought him nothing but bad press:
Had [my wife] or I known then that the acceptance of what we all felt was a kind gesture would have resulted in the tainting of her character and mine together with the untold embarrassment to which we are still being subjected, none of us would have attended the dinner, nor would she have accepted what we thought was a gift in honour of her birthday [We’ll assume she thought it was in honour of the all the other wives’ birthdays as well - The Spoiler]
I have faced and continue to face all kinds of indignities from all manner of persons, but when these insults touch my wife, it represents an all time low.
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.
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
Those who were hoping to watch England’s October 10th clash with Ukraine from the comfort of their sofa or the local public house will now find themselves crouched over a computer instead.
The Ukrainian FA appointed the rights to the game to an agency named Kentaro, who in turn did a deal with Setanta. Since their collapse, only one broadcaster has put in a bid for the rights, and it was deemed ‘very low’. In light of this, the match is set to become the first England game to be shown exclusively over the interweb for a one-off fee.
Kentaro head honcho Philipp Grothe says:
“We have spoken to every traditional UK broadcaster and currently have no offer on the table. We therefore feel the internet delivers the most viable option to deliver an important England game directly to the fans.
“It will be the first time in history that an England game has had an exclusive web broadcast.”
The game will be broadcast by internet TV specialists Perform, who happen to be the handsome devils who provide the banner adverts on this site. Just look at those lovely banner adverts promoting goods and services that will make your life better. They just look so damn clickable, don’t they?
In case you missed it on Wednesday night, Arsene Wenger showed his players that he too can break out some dance moves when celebrating a goal [Youtube]
Sir Alex Ferguson has accused Rafael Benitez of “arrogance” and “contempt”
[F365]
Jose Mourinho taunts Alessandro Del Piero ahead of tomorrow’s Derby d’Italia
[Goal]
West Ham are about to be taken over by a consortium of international banks
[The Guardian]
The FA have assured David Moyes that Mike Riley is not a Man Utd fan
[The Sun]
Illegal sites are damaging the game, funding terrorists etc.
Fancy watching all this week’s Champions League games without splashing out on a Sky subscription? How about the 3 o’clock kick-offs in the Premier League this Saturday?
Those out there who prefer to illegally download (read: “steal”) their entertainment will no doubt be aware of sites like justin.tv, where live streams of virtually every sporting event are just a guiltless click away. On the San Francisco-based site, people in countries with legal access to Premier League games simply point a webcam at their television and stream it - nearly 150,000 people, for example, watched the recent north London derby on the site.
Naturally, the big dogs at the FA and Premier League are awfully unhappy with the amount of English fans who are watching their teams live via the intertubes:
Premier League spokesman Dan Johnson insisted: “We are in contact with this
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