Pleased to bring you a new instalment of the weird sexual psycho-drama which is the French football team.
Striker Karim Benzema will finally stand trial in October, six years after he was first accused of helping a close friend blackmail his teammate Mathieu Valbuena.
Back in 2015, a mystery caller told Valbuena they had a video of him and his girlfriend shagging, which they would release unless he paid them off.
Soon after, Benzema approached Valbuena during a French training camp and urged him to pay off the blackmailers, adding: “Be careful Math, they are big, bigthugs“.
Police then secretly recorded Benzema discussing the plot with close friend (and convicted criminal) Karim Zaneti. There are plenty of incriminating lines, such as: “Do not worry. He has no choice. I’ll make him understand. He’ll pay”.
You do wonder why a guy earning £300k per week would get involved with this sort of thing, but Benzema has:
Always stayed close to his friends from his tough childhood in Lyon. In fact, Zaneti is on his company payroll.
A track record as being a bit of a lowlife: he was famously caught sleeping with an underage prostitute.
Plus, don’t forget the golden rule of the French national team: they’re really fucking weird.
The brats of the men’s tour just keep delivering: this week it’s Vasek Popisil who lost his rag on the court and threatened to sue tennis organisers after he was docked a point.
The world number 67 began to unravel at the end of the first set when he broke two racquets, launched a ball out of the court in anger and deliberately served the ball into the net to lose the set.
Umpire Arnaud Gabas then docked him a point for swearing, before kindly enquiring: “What’s happening with you?”
With the air of an international school kid whose Dad just made partner, Popisil replied: “If you want to default me, I’ll gladly sue this whole organisation.”
The Canadian also ranted about tennis boss Andrea Gaundenzi, telling the umpire: “An hour and a half the chair of the ATP fucking screaming at me in a player meeting for trying to unite the players. For an an hour and a half … The leader of the ATP… Fuckking asshole….”
Popisil and Novak Djokovic are currently leading a revolt to demand more player power and apparently their latest meeting with Gaudenzi had not been productive.
Between Djokovic’s endless controversies, the misery of the Covid bubble and the ongoing war between players and the sport, tennis is a very unhappy family at the moment. And we are loving it.
Asked this week who he least enjoyed playing against, Watford keeper Ben Foster replied, “It’s a good question and it’s Diego Costa because he was just a filthylittlerat.”
Hard to argue with that really. To take just one example, here’s Costa deliberately coughing in journalists’ faces as Covid swept Europe a year ago…
Ecco il fenomeno #DiegoCosta e il suo patetico tentativo di fare il simpatico, facendo <cough, cough> ai cronisti. E loro tutti a ridere, eh…
We’ve discussed the weird sexual energy of the French national team before: Franck Ribery’s brothel trips, the time Karim Benzema blackmailed a teammate over a sex tape, to name just two instances.
The latest example is a video filmed by Arsenal defender William Saliba while on international duty with one of France’s age group teams.
The clip shows Saliba in his France tracksuit, on a sofa next to a guy who is completely naked and masturbating while watching something (porn) on his phone. Two other team mates are sitting on the other side of him, both fully dressed in their national team tracksuits, and acting like nothing is happening.
The whole thing is filmed by Saliba on his phone’s selfie camera but has somehow ended up on Twitter, where someone has captioned it: “Saliba in thesplashzone“.
So yeah, bit of a weird one. Is it some kind of “soggy biscuit” initiation? Or just what counts as a good time these days? The French Football Federation is investigating.
Fans have only just returned to the NBA, and already they’re causing drama. This week, four fans were chucked out of a game after a war of words with LeBron James.
Booze baron Chris Carlos, 56, was abusing the basketball legend from his courtside seat when Lebron hit back, calling him “Ol‘ steroidass“.
This prompted Carlos’ 25-year-old wife, Juliana to stand up, pull off her mask and scream at LeBron, ordering him not to “talk shit” about her sugar daddy husband.
The game was stopped and security chucked the couple and their two friends out of the arena.
The footage really is a joy to behold, especially the moment when she realises she’s being filmed and gives her hair a flick.
For reference, here is a picture of her with Ol‘ SteroidAss, from Juliana’s Instagram:
India are still basking in the afterglow of their shock win at the Gabba, which ended Australia’s 33 year unbeaten streak at the ground.
It also sealed a 2-1 series win for a side missing seven first choice players. India were written off at the start of the tour, but everyone is praising them now.
Everyone that is, except for Lakhwinder Gill, whose 21-year-old son Shubman scored a heroic, series-winning 91 in only his third ever test.
“Shubman should have scored a century,” he told The Times of India. “He was batting so well and I don’t know why he suddenly played away from his body.”
He added: “Hopefully he will learn from it and not repeat this mistake.”
Love it, proper Asian dad move to publicly criticise your son’s near-perfect performance. Reminiscent of Nasser Hussain’s old man bollocking him for “only” taking nine wickets in an under-11s game.
