It takes a lot to get banned from owning a football club – neither state-sanctioned murder not heroin trafficking will do it – but Laurence Bassini managed it.
Bassini, a twice bankrupt 12-year-old trapped in a businessman’s body, served a three year ban following a catastrophic reign at Watford, which ended with him making off with £1.5 million in club cash and sending gloating texts to the local paper whenever they lost.
Now Bassini is back, and he’s hell bent on digging his filthy claws into troubled Championship side Birmingham.
The 52-year-old fantasist insists he is about to buy the club, and he made a batshit crazy phone call to Jim White and Simon Jordan’s Talksport show the other day.
It’s worth a listen – after teasing some “big news”, Lozza claims to be worth £235 million and insists “I’m going to win the league next season”.
And then he turns to his real goal – scoring playground points over Simon Jordan.
“Simon! You’re a failed owner of Crystal Palace” – Lozza shrieks, before hooting triumphantly, “Simon! You did a film with Kevin Spacey and it failed”, as if a successful movie with a notorious sexual predator would be something to brag about.
White and Jordan make some incredible, pained expressions throughout, here’s a taste.
They do a good job of mocking him too. When Bassini claims he’ll win the league, Jordan hits back with “the village idiot league?”
That probably explains this text Bassini sent him later…
Given the fact he lives on another planet, The Shot strongly suspects Mr Bassini does not have the funds to buy the club, but it’s going to be a hell of a Netflix doc if he somehow pulls it off.
There’s more, so much more, and we’ll keep it coming in future emails.
Claire Foden cemented her status as an Upshot Favourite last week when she took a punch and dished out a few of her own in a scrap with some horrible blokes abusing her son.
https://twitter.com/JonnorQuinn3/status/1495189064240320524
Ms Foden‘s formidable ring IQ will come as no surprise to longstanding fans of the Man City matriarch.
Last summer she got into a proper brawl at a female friend’s birthday party, leaving guest Katie Skitt with two black eyes and bite marks.
According to reports at the time:
A source said: “It all kicked off just after the male stripper had done a turn.
“Claire asked Katie for a cigarette, but what happened next is unclear as the Prosecco had been flowing.”
The row spilled out into the street in front of horrified neighbours and a bottle of vodka was hurled and smashed.
The source added: “Lots of people got involved. It was like something from an episode of Shameless. There was hair pulling, scratching and punching.”
Katie was left covered in blood and needed a tetanus jab after sustaining bite marks to her stomach and face. Pretty hardcore stuff.
Tell you who we’re really looking forward to seeing in the Premier League – Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis.
Back in his native Greece, the portly shipping magnate – who owns Olympiakos – has been accused of a series of colourful crimes, including heroin trafficking and match-fixing.
He denies all those charges, was acquitted of the heroin stuff and prosecutors dropped the match-fixing charges, but only after making some very colourful allegations.
They claimed Marinakis tried to pressure a referee into favouring Olympiakos in a crunch match. He refused, Olympiakos lost, and three days later there was a bomb attack on a bakery owned by the referee.
An Athens gallery owner had a similar story: she says she once refused to sell a valuable painting to him. Two days later, a group of men stormed the gallery and threw cups of yoghurt over her.
Marinakis also has a habit of visiting the referee’s dressing room during important matches – something he once explained as “just wishing them good luck”.
Darren Bent surprised a few people this week when he chose the 2000s as the decade in history he would go back to.
“The music was better back then,” Bent explained, although the decade also coincided with Dazza’s goalscoring (and presumably shagging) pomp.
https://twitter.com/talkSPORT/status/1534181637604274177
But it got me thinking – when was the best time to be a professional footballer? Here are my rankings…
1. The 90s
Unquestionably the golden age. The big money has arrived, and so has the fame. But Arsene Wenger’s Mars Bar ban has yet to fully usher in the soulless hyper-professionalism that would turn playing football into an actual job.
Players still get their dentist chair nights out, and while increasingly hostile, the press haven’t started rummaging through their bins yet. Shagging is still a virtue and the fans are a lot less terrifying than in the 80s.
2. The 2000s
More money, more tabloid hell. This was the decade where the papers fully turned on footballers, hacking their phones and exposing England’s golden generation with a series of mean-spirited stings like the News of the World’s moral panic about spit roasting and that weird (false) rumour about Ashley Cole, DJ Masterstepz and the mobile phone. Plus, you had to take fitness seriously.
Otherwise, it was basically a continuation of the 90s.
3. 1960-1980
Let’s deal with the big glaring con first of all – there was nae money in it. In 1961, the average top flight player earned £20 a week – £17k a year in today’s terms. By 1979, when Trevor Francis became the first million pound player, they earned the equivalent £90,000 a year. Hardly terrible, but it doesn’t fly your extended family to Mykonos every summer.
But put cash aside, and this was an incredible time to have the job. On the pitch, it was one of the great romantic eras, as the World Cup expanded and clubs carved out their identities in the new European competitions.
And yeah, a wonderful time to go on rampage of boozing, shagging and drug-taking. If that was your thing.
4. The current era (2010-22)
There’s a lot to like about being a footballer today. The game is more skilful and fast. The money is simply ridiculous, even for lesser stars. The press are both weaker and kinder than they once were. Managers are softer too. And the entire world seems to care about what you do.
But… what the fuck is up with the fans? If they aren’t hounding you on social media, they’re invading the pitch and harassing you for a selfie like you’re a zoo animal.
The online abuse is the really bad part. It’s one thing to hear 40,000 people chanting that you’re a “cheating little cunt” once a week, but to have it pumped to your phone every few seconds is something new and soul-sapping.
Due to fitness demands and the terrifying public, it’s extremely hard to have any kind of “normal life” outside football. So you retreat to your gilded cage.
5. The 1980s
A dark decade. In it’s defence, the 80s was the last era of innocent charm, before the big money Premier League washed it all away. The FA Cup was still the pinnacle of the sporting calendar, and Maradona brought unimaginable mystique and stardust to World Cups and European club football.
But the cons list is long: Hooliganism. Tragedies. Empty stands. Very overt racism. Bastard managers and violent defenders.
Great music though.
6. Before 1950
A simpler time – when 300,000 fans wearing ties and collars would cram into Wembley to watch the Cup final. Players moved freely among fans, without the stresses of celebrity status.
But in every other respect, it was a pretty bad time to be a pro. The cash was almost non-existent, and for most of the period your status as a top athlete didn’t preclude you from scrubbing factory floors or choking on chlorine gas in some lice-infested shell crater in Northern Europe. So for that reason, it’s in last place.
It’s a well known fact that Americans absolutely hate diving and time wasting in football. Exhibit A: LeBron James losing it with Real Madrid’s delaying tactics at the end of Saturday’s Champions League final.
In exclusive footage sent to The Upshot, the NBA legend was seen yelling “He’s stallin’! He’s fucking stallin'” as Real saw off his beloved Reds (who he also owns 2% of).
What do you do when you forget your scarf for the pre-match rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone? Just hold up your arms and pretend.
Reminiscent of this Celtic fan who held up his own son a few years back…
