Boris Becker isn’t the only fan favourite in trouble with the law – former Aston Villa striker John Carew is facing six years in the slammer over tax fraud.
Tough break, although still not the most unfortunate thing that’s happened to the Norwegian target man.
That accolade belongs to the tattoo on his neck, which was meant to spell out “my life, my rules” in French.
Sadly a minor typo means the tattoo actually reads: “my life, my menstruation”.
Still, it’ll make a good icebreaker if he ends up in the joint.
Enjoyable anecdote from Alan Shearer in The Athletic (£):
When I was leaving Blackburn, I also had a few options and Italy was one of them; firm interest from Sampdoria and Roma were sniffing, too.
So I flew to Rome with my agent, all very hush-hush, and in between meetings he suggested we pay a visit to the Trevi Fountain. I was keeping my head down for obvious reasons but, “What’s the harm?” I thought. “Nobody will recognise me.”
And wouldn’t you know it… a coach pulls up, rammed with Geordie tourists. “Hoy man, Shearer! What are ye deein’ here?” Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. Even in the Eternal City, I was being pointed home.
Another ludicrous twist in the PSG soap opera: technical director Eric Abidal has been accused of trafficking human organs.
The former Barcelona defender has always claimed his 2011 liver transplant came from his cousin Gerard Armand, who insisted “I never received a dime for it”.
But now it turns out the pair aren’t related at all, raising concerns that Eric may have paid Gerard for the donation or, worse, bought it from some other, sinister source.
Police first became suspicious after hearing secret recordings of former Barcelona president Sandro Rossell discussing “the purchase of an illegal liver”, which is a tough one to explain away.
It’s caps off an eventful six months for Abidal – in November he was caught doing the dirty on his wife with Kheira Hamraoui, the midfielder who masked men attacked with iron bars.
We’ll never understand why JoeHart‘s career nosedived to the extent it did, but he’s finally found his feet at Celtic, who won the Old Firm derby 2-1 on Sunday.
Hart arrived in Scotland after Spurs boss Nuno Espirito Santo froze him out at the club, and the keeper recently recalled the meeting where the gaffer told him he wasn’t wanted:
He was like, ‘I’ll speak first. Just to be clear, there’s someone I’m signing, there’ll be three goalkeepers. Let’s be absolutely clear: no matter what happens, you’ll not kick a ball this year’. I was like ‘right, okay’…I said ‘just out of interest, remove yourself from the situation, you used to be a goalkeeper… apparently… why has it come to this? Why am I now completely surplus to requirements in a squad, to not even be able to back up the first-choice? Speak freely’.
He just went ‘in my opinion, we all reach a point in our career where the body won’t allow you to play football. We’re at it now. I would not feel comfortable with you playing one minute for me. The ball’s too quick for you, you’re too old, you’re not moving, you’ve got no strength in your body’. I’m starting to chuckle here. He literally buried me and I’m laughing, because, whether I’m deluded or not I was like, I don’t agree with any of that.
I went to the sporting director, he went ‘erm, err’, I was like ‘yeah I get it, it’s pretty awkward’.
Saturday night’s Khan v Brook fight was a magnet for drama – brawls broke out in the crowd, Brook settled a 17 year feud by winning in the sixth round, and Jordan Pickford called someone a parrot.
Meanwhile, Man City wonderkid Phil Foden and his mum Claire were involved in an ugly backstage scrap with a group of men, one of whom punched Claire.
The fight, captured in a fairly shocking video, started after the blokes taunted Foden over his side’s 3-2 loss to Tottenham and called him a “cunt”, leading his mum to come looking for the culprits.
There’s rightly been a lot of condemnation for the guy who hit her, but frankly we think Claire deserves some praise for her mean right jab.
If we’d taken a punch from some lowlife in a dingy corridor, we’d be running for the safety of the VIP room, but Claire came out swinging, and landed several shots to the face before one of her entourage brought the noise with a fire extinguisher.
We’ve watched the full tape a few times, and while overall it’s a fairly horrible scene, it’s a clear points victory for Ms Foden.
Just when Sunderland fans thought they had their club “back”, their hated former CEO Charlie Methven popped up in the stands at the Stadium of Light.
It turns out Methers and his pals are still very much the majority owners of the club, despite previously suggesting they’d sold most of their shares and handed control to 25-year-old billionaire Kyril Louis-Dreyfus.
Personally, we’re delighted at the return of a character who provided so much comic relief in the Sunderland ‘Til I Die Netflix documentary.
In the very first episode, with the club in financial and footballing crisis, Methven hauled his direct reports into his office to discuss the pre-match music, which he wanted to be “like a massive rave, a bit like Ibiza”.
Asked about his personal philosophy, he replied: “Fearlessly ‘going for it’ – in life, in business, and sport – begets precisely the positivity and desire required to be a winner.”
As Private Eye wrote last year: “Given that he is a Brylcreemed, permatanned, Thatcher-worshipping Old Etonian Hooray, Wearsiders were not expected to make Charlie their darling”.
But even by those standards, Methven did his absolute best to piss off the Mackems, telling them they “lacked the understanding of business” that “people in the south” had, because there were “less entrepreneurs” up North.
