It was a bumper year for incest as Pakistan cricket star Babar Azam married his cousin, Moto GP rider Miguel Oliveira secretly wed his stepsister and footballer Hulk got his niece pregnant.
As for seven time winner Neymar, the family soap opera was surprisingly quiet following a bumper 2020 where he was implicated in the violent assault of his mother’s toy boy.
In the greyer areas of family life, we saw Paul Scholes suck his daughter’s toes, Eric Abidal implicated in some kind of Fatal Attraction murder plot, and Indian batsman Shubman Gill sent to his bedroom without any tea after he fell eight runs short of a century.
But our favourite Freudian nightmare of 2021 came courtesy of France midfielder Adrien Rabiot’s overbearing mother.
As Les Bleus were knocked out of the Euros by the Swiss, Veronique Rabiot turned on her son’s teammates’ families.
The Parisian battleaxe told Kylian Mbappe’s father his son was “arrogant” after his missed penalty, adding: “It is embarrassing how he struck that, for a player of his level. He hit it too lightly. I hope you are going to scold him.”
And she had a 20 minute row with Paul Pogba’s friends and family, after she blamed the Man United midfielder for Switzerland’s late equaliser. It became so heated the stadium stewards had to intervene.
Veronique, who is also Rabiot’s agent, is famously protective of her son. She previously wrote a letter to manager Didier Deschamps to demand he picked Adrien more often.
For Madame Rabiot’s myopic worship of her little boy, and her total aggression in promoting his interests, her family are worthy winners of this prize.
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.
As much as we enjoyed two weeks of “Olympic spirit” and sportsmanship, we started to crave something a little bit more red-blooded toward the end of the Tokyo Olympics.
So our huge thanks to Morhad Amdouni, who resorted to extreme cruelty to gain an advantage in the Olympic marathon.
Approaching the 18 mile mark, the Frenchman knocked down an entire row of water bottles, preventing his rivals from getting a vital drink in the 27 degree heat.
His pursuit of 1% gains didn’t achieve much: Morhad ended up finishing 17th. But he pockets a deserved silver medal from us.
And yet even he was upstaged by the exploits of Royal Antwerp striker Didier Lamkel Ze, who tried to force a transfer to Panathinaikos by turning up for training wearing the shirt of his club’s bitter rivals Anderlecht.
Sadly for poor Lammers, the club’s security guards saw the Cameroon striker coming. They locked him out of the training complex by holding the door shut like an older sibling, leaving our hero to unsuccessfully tug on the door handle to try and gain entry.
He eventually gave up, but so did Antwerp – Didier is now plying his trade in Slovakia. And he’ll always be our hero.
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.
Finally, to the biggest prize of them all. After putting a shortlist of four to our Upshot Gold members, we held a vote to determine the winner.
And the results are…
4) Charlie Perry (12% of the vote)
England failed to win the Euros, but when it came to horrifying the rest of the world, their fans were comfortable champions.
And no one gave more to that effort than Perry, the 25-year-old roofer with a big heart, a flare up his bum and an ungodly amount of coke up his beak.
Reflecting on the final, he told The Sun: “There were no rules that day. All I know is that I loved it all. I was off my face and I loved every minute. My mates and I had one of the best six weeks of our lives. See you in Qatar.”
Looking forward to reporting on his Midnight Express ordeal in some Doha slammer next Christmas.
3) Ronnie Brunswijk (14%)
When Honduran giants Olimpia visited the team he owns, Suriname’s 60-year-old Vice President did what any responsible owner would do: he picked himself, as captain.
Ronnie managed 54 minutes and took all the kick offs before his son replaced him in the 6-0 defeat, which was held at the club’s ground, the Ronnie Brunswijk Stadium.
Sadly an Interpol warrant prevented him from travelling to Honduras for the second leg, but the extensive corruption allegations couldn’t stop big Ron from edging out a cocaine-addled self mutilator to snatch a podium finish in the Shotties.
2) Reanne Evans (20%)
The Shot has been staunchly Team Evans ever since her ex, Mark Allen got her booted out of the BBC Studio because her punditry was “distracting him”. Allen followed up a few weeks later by sneering at her promotion to the men’s tour, telling the press: “I don’t see what she will add”.
So when the pair squared up in the British Open, in a match dubbed Battle of the Exes, we prayed for an Evans victory.
Sadly Reanne came up just short, but she did give us the most delightfully spiteful moment of the year, when she refused Allen’s offer of a pre-match fist bump, live on national TV.
And for that, she secured the backing of one in five Gold Shotters, and takes the runner up spot.
But in the end, it was a landslide victory for our winner. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you…
1) The steward kicking the dildo in the goal (54%)
What is it about this clip that is so heartwarming? The grin, the fact it takes him two attempts to get it in the goal, the way he peels off to celebrate in front of the adoring fans. It’s all magic.
Most of all, it’s the sheer Britishness of the scene: a lower league tie interrupted by a man with a goatee and an SIA licence, joyfully booting a dildo into the back of the net. There can be no more worthy recipient of the title.
We’ve contacted Lincoln City to track down our mystery champion and formally hand him the trophy (we’re thinking a golden dildo). Stay tuned for more updates on that.
For now, we salute him.
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.
