Two absolute standouts for us. Firstly, this one we received in January from Phil:
I saw your recent advert which featured a photo of Robbie Fowler’s infamous “snorting the touchline” celebration [see above].
Watching the game as an eight-year-old, I didn’t understand what the celebration meant. So the following week, when I scored in a match at school, I ran to the touchline, got to my knees and snorted it like a fat line of bugle.
The parents looking on were absolutely horrified, especially my own.
Second, and probably just edging it for the title, was this from Alistair, who wrote in after we mentioned the story of Bin Laden attending an Arsenal game:
I sat behind Bin Laden in the Clock End at Highbury at the match vs Liverpool on March 26th 1994, the week before the Torino game you mention.
It was only after he emerged as leader of Al-Qaeda and it was revealed that he had been in London in 1994 that I realised who he was, but he was pretty damn unmistakable. Very tall, beard, limped, and like a true Arsenal fan, he left early.
Years later, when the news got out that the man behind 9/11 was a Gooner, Arsenal banned him from the ground. In your face, international terrorism!
This award is part of the Shotties 2021, our annual ceremony recognising the athletes whose squabbles and scandals have entertained the most this year. You can view all the awards here.
Inspired by King Cantona’s striking look from 1995, this award goes to the sportsperson who most aggressively pushed the boundaries of taste.
In second place, the greatest F1 driver of all time, a bloke whose style is best summarised as “do whatever it takes for the girls in the year above to notice you”. Mr Lewis Hamilton…
But Hamilton’s seemingly random plundering of charity shops and fancy dress boxes was upstaged by the carefully curated haute couture sported by Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Dom treated us to some fascinating styles this season including a Colonel Gaddafi inspired beret/coat ensemble and what appeared to be the girls’ uniform from the local grammar school.
We have a feeling this won’t be the last time he wins this gong.
This award is part of the Shotties 2021, our annual ceremony recognising the athletes whose squabbles and scandals have entertained the most this year. You can view all the awards here.
The Upshot would be nothing without the odd sordid tale, so we’re grateful 2021 was a bumper year for sexting disasters.
Tim Paine fell on his sword after it emerged the Australia captain sent an “unsolicited” dick pic and ordered a Cricket Australia employee to “finish me off now!!” in 2017. Ironically the scandal did finish him off and he quit immediately.
But Paine was upstaged by Michael Owen, who demanded nudes from a glamour model with his trademark cocktail of arrogance and utter dreariness.
“Come on then, fire them through. It’s a long boring trip to London so I need something to do… leave nothing to the imagination,” snapped an impatient Owen, before commending her on her “tremendous” breasts and asking if they were “falsies” in the manner of a mechanic admiring a new carburettor.
Elsewhere, our Paris bureau kept the lights on thanks to the French football team’s dark sexual psychodrama, which shows no sign of abating.
Things reached a particular nadir with the rumour that a current French international had a party where he pooed in people’s mouths while filming himself. If you’re wondering who it was, ask an Upshot Gold member – we told them back in November.
But for all the undeniable excitement of the stories above, there was one tale which really caught our imagination. It concerned a video of Arsenal defender William Saliba, captioned “Saliba in the splash zone”.
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.
Probably the weirdest thing we wrote about, and because it appears to have been totally swept under the rug by everyone except this newsletter, we have to hand Saliba the gong.
This award is part of the Shotties 2021, our annual ceremony recognising the athletes whose squabbles and scandals have entertained the most this year. You can view all the awards here.
It’s always hard to top the painting Eamonn Holmes commissioned, which portrays the TV host as a key lieutenant to Sir Alex Ferguson in the Old Trafford dugout, with Fergie’s hand resting on Eamonn’s shoulder to symbolise the unspoken bond between the pair.
Still, this mural celebrating the return of Pat ButcherCristiano Ronaldo to Manchester came very close, and it takes the crown in 2021.
This award is part of the Shotties 2021, our annual ceremony recognising the athletes whose squabbles and scandals have entertained the most this year. You can view all the awards here.
A can of motor oil, 5gb of mobile data, a chicken korma, a silver hake fish, and a replacement shower head. Leagues across the world dished out some absolute tat to their star performers this year.
But our favourite comes from Gaelic football, where they handed Wicklow Town‘s Reece Kelly several kilos of potatoes.
He looked bloody happy with it too.
This award is part of the Shotties 2021, our annual ceremony recognising the athletes whose squabbles and scandals have entertained the most this year. You can view all the awards here.
Always a richly contested category, mainly thanks to the sport’s habit of imprisoning wealthy children in the pampered but soulless hothouses of Florida academies and then forcing them to travel the globe playing a very frustrating game under the glare of the world’s media.
An honourable mention to Vasek Popisil, who concluded a on-court meltdown by announcing, with the air of an international school kid whose Dad just made partner, “I will gladly sue this whole organisation.”
There was more of the usual spitting, shouting and racket smashing from resident lunatics Benoit Paire and Fabio Fognini (pictured above punching his racket til he bled).
But it’s always tough to beat world number one Novak Djokovic, whose voodoo rituals have long been a source of fascination in this parish. Novak scoops the award, thanks to the story we heard about his dogs, Tesla and Pierre.
Apparently the two poodles join the Djokovic family for dinner every night, sitting on chairs and eating from bowls on the table like they are people.
This award is part of the Shotties 2021, our annual ceremony recognising the athletes whose squabbles and scandals have entertained the most this year. You can view all the awards here.
