👪 The Neymar Shield for most dysfunctional family
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.
