Winston and Lose Some

These days it is not uncommon for a player to sell his potential, along with any personal ambition, for a huge wage and a spot on the bench. Look at Steve Sidwell; outstanding last season at Reading, but after a year of doing literally nothing at Chelsea for twice the money, his career’s basically over already. However, many people might not know that the man who laid the blueprint for this goes by the name of Winston Bogarde, who played just 11 times for Chelsea between 2000 and 2004, but earned more than £5million by recent estimations. Thing is, he was coming to the end of a stalling career, and following a quite farcical spell in this country, was able to bask in ridicule while sticking a couple of middle fingers up at everyone’s favourites Blues.

Going back a bit, he had a fantastic pedigree in the 90s. After a formative few years at Sparta Rotterdam, Bogarde moved to Ajax in 1994, where in one of the greatest club squads ever assembled (Marc Overmars, the de Boer twins, Clarence Seedorf, Kanu, Jari Litmanen, and Patrick Kluivert, to name just a few), he won the Champions League in 1995. A spot in the Dutch national team followed, but at the 1998 World Cup he was seen as a dissident to the team morale, filmed forcibly pushing two white teammates aside as they were trying to celebrate Davids' winning goal in the second round match against Yugoslavia. The year of the World Cup he was at AC Milan, but played just thrice before being somehow offloaded to Barcelona, where he sat for the next three years, playing just nine times in total in the second two years. His highlight at Barce was undoubtedly in a 1999 Champions League group match against AIK where he was humiliatingly substituted after just 20 minutes, prompted by nearly getting sent off for a horror challenge on an opposing striker.

Here’s where it gets good though. He signed for Chelsea in 2000 season, but literally weeks after signing his contract with the club, the newly-appointed manager Claudio Ranieri wanted him to leave. According to Bogarde’s biography (which has possibly the greatest title I have ever heard – This Negro Bows for No One) it would have been impossible to find a contract comparable to the one he had at Chelsea, so he decided to stay and honour the full term of the agreement. In the end, he appeared just 11 times during his four-year contract, reportedly earning more than £40,000 a week. Quite why Chelsea agreed to such a salary in the first place, given his lack of first-team play at Milan and Barce, is ridiculous, but kudos to Bogarde for sticking with it. Chelsea also won a domestic trophy during this period which hilariously actually triggered a bonus payment in his contract, despite the fact that Bogarde did not feature at all for Chelsea that season.

During his time at Chelsea, they repeated tried to offload him because of his inflated wages. When no-one was interested, Chelsea demoted him to their reserves and then even their youth team in an effort to force Bogarde to leave, however he just kept turning up every day and attending whatever training he was assigned to. Bogarde then claims to have been set-up in a strangely contrived drugs scandal (similar to other Chelsea players Mark Bosnich and Adrian Mutu), but still he refused to leave or sign a new contract for a reduced wage. Bogarde continued to work every day with the Chelsea reserves until he left in 2004 and retired to a life of luxury all paid by the West London club’s weeping coffers. He took a lot of stick in the press for being greedy and selfish, but whatever, if Chelsea were dumb enough to lock him into a four-year contract for such inflated wages, then how can you blame him for keeping them to their word? I reckon at about £750,000 a game he was pretty good value!

Justice is Served

Something strange is happening in the English justice system. Within the last two months we have seen first Pete Doherty, and now Joey Barton, finally sent to jail for a succession of crimes that any average joe off the street would’ve gone down for years ago. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Doherty; he’s a bit of an idiot sure, but a harmless rogue at heart. Barton however, is just a vicious piece of shit, showing his true colours time and time again without a hint of remorse. Today he was sentenced to six months in jail, for what the learned Judge Henry Globe QC called a “violent and cowardly act.” Sounds about right folks doesn’t it?

The court heard how Barton had been out on a Boxing Day bender with his brother, cousin, and assorted other ragmuffins in Liverpool city centre. Barton's cousin, the undoubtedly gorgeous Nadine Wilson, and his brother Andrew also pleaded guilty to their part in the assaults. Reportedly Barton had drunk more than ten pints of lager before understandably stopping into a McDonald's on Church Street. There the motley crew got into a heated exchange with some hooded youths inside the fine establishment, before leaving and walking away further up Church Street. Our Joey was then caught on CCTV knocking an unidentified man to the ground, before straddling him and cracking him four or five times as his cousin menacingly threw food at the victim. The Premier League star then punched the unconscious man many more times, before moving on to someone closer to his own mental age; the Newcastle midfielder randomly attacked a 16-year-old, punching him too and leaving him with a mouthful of broken teeth.

Judge Globe told presided: “Without doubt, the most serious of the three offenders is you. You were restrained by others but ignored them and acted in an extremely violent and aggressive manner.” He added: “You have a high profile as a footballer and you know that draws attention to you. Yet you drank to excess and behaved in an aggressive, disgraceful manner.” Barton was also ordered to pay a pathetic £2,500 to the youth whose teeth he broken, but let’s hope he pays more with his pretty little mouth in jail. This heinous human really should never play professional football again, but undoubtedly he’ll be given a pay rise or something after spending (realistically) about a fortnight in the nick. His club said in a statement to the BBC this afternoon: “Newcastle United notes the sentence passed to Joey Barton at Liverpool Crown Court today. The club is considering the verdict and will be making no further comment at this moment.”

Ascend it With Beckham

Bono just doesn’t give up does he. Not content with recycling his shoes to protect the rainforest, the U2 frontman has now asked David Beckham to join him on an expedition up Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro. If only somehow we could just trap Bono and that other twat Geldof in a Superman-esque Phantom Zone then maybe we’d all get some peace and quiet. If you care about stopping AIDS so much, why don’t you donate some of your hundreds of millions of pounds instead of just organizing circle-jerk concerts for all your wanky friends to promote new albums at?

Anyway, despite a punishing media schedule, already inconveniently interrupted by having to play football, Beck-hizzle is “absolutely set” on completing the climb in order to help raise funds for children’s charity Unicef, with whom Beckham has already journeyed to Sierra Leone this year. No date has been set as yet, and there is still the insurance situation to iron out, but reportedly nothing will stand between Beckham and almost certain death. Crusader Bono helpfully took some time to jump down off his cross to tell us exclusively that U2’s newest Greatest Hits album will be stores the week before the expedition leaves.

The trek up Kilimanjaro, a 19,340ft snow-capped behemoth in northeast Tanzania, will take roughly six days. At 48, Bono might be struggling, as mountaineering experts have claimed that the ascent might even be a bit much for ultra-fit 32-year-old D. Beck. He is however determined to do it, even threatening to bizarrely drag along West Ham keeper Rob Green too, after the ex-Norwich man presumably lost a bet. A source told us: “(Beckham) was a bit uncertain at first but he found out, like many celebrities before him, that Bono can be very persuasive.” Rumours that Bono had two of Beckham’s children captured and held for ransom have yet to be confirmed or denied.

Monsters, Inc

Now normally we malign footballers for hooking up with rough birds, but in Sulley Muntari’s case we accept that he has to take pretty much anything he can get. As great a player as he is, Mr Muntari was clearly cellotaped to lamp-post when God was handing out looks, and has unfortunately been cursed with a face that makes him look like an old X-Files monster. The fact that he managed to hook up with a former Miss Ghana, Menaye Donkor, then is as inexplicable as Rhys Ifans somehow coupling with four-finger stunner Sienna Miller. However, in a mistake only a footballer could make, Sulley apparently went out of his way to trash the relationship by cheating on Menaye with Amanda Jones, a classy blond-haired lap dancer from the south coast.

The pair romantically met in a Bournemouth strip-club, where the Ghanian-born star splashed out on a £300 bottle of Cristal champagne and took her mobile number. Presumably they bonded over the misery felt by constantly having to wear paper bags over their heads during sex, but in smitten Amanda’s eyes, there was more to it than that. She therefore felt the lifeblood ooze out of her heart when she saw the Portsmouth midfielder house-hunting with 2004 Miss Universe contestant Menaye on a prime-time ITV show. Hosted by professional disease Piers Morgan, the show charted the lives of the mega-rich residents of the Sandbanks estate in Dorset, home to many footballers and reclusive criminals. She cried to The Sun: “He promised me the world and even hinted that marriage could be on the cards. I feel such a fool.” Surely for not the first time in your life though love?

Amanda was a regular visitor to his swanky pad before having the rug pulled away from underneath her, but didn’t know he was a Premier League star until her dad told her. Describing the wild lifestyle they shared, she said: “we’d snuggle on the sofa with a Chinese takeaway. I’d watch a movie and he’d play football games on his PlayStation.” Sounds like a match made in heaven to me. Drawing together everyone’s favourite gossip points, sex and religion, Amanda continued: “He’s a proud Muslim and doesn’t drink or smoke, but when it came to sex with me he was like a kid in a candy store.” Presumably she means just blindly dribbling and indiscriminantly grabbing at stuff before you get thrown out? Sounds pretty standard to me. She added helpfully though: “He kept his prayer mat and beads on a banister outside the bedroom.” I’m not quite sure if they’re suggesting that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but suffice to say, no-one wants to get bollock yoghurt on a prayer mat.

Destroy and Rebuild

Things are not right at Barcelona or AC Milan. For clubs used to national domination and European success, this season has been nothing short of a catastrophe for both super-powers. Milan have basically the same team that won the Champions League last year, bolstered mainly just by the Brazilian prodigy Pato, but for one reason or another things really have not come together over the last 12 months. Age is a factor certainly, but more so is complacency; too many of their guys have been there together too long, and thus a mass injection of youth and hunger is on the cards this summer. At Barce, the usual footballing demons of money and ego have gotten the better of them apparently, and after somehow stitching together a team for the last few years, Frank Rikjaard seems to have finally lost control this season. Injuries to key players have not helped, sure, but the lack of cutting edge up front and a half-hearted approach from some of the established stars has been their undoing, despite sterling efforts from new prospects Bojan and Giovanni Dos Santos.

After protests before, during and after their defeat to Mallorca only hours before, just 8 first-team Barce players showed up for training earlier this week, with manager Rikjaard and 16 well-known stars all A.W.O.L. Deco, who was comprehensively booed before being substituted against Mallorca, was given a few days off to lick his wounds, while Samuel Eto'o, Gianluca Zambrotta and Rafa Márquez were all nursing injuries. Conspicuously all four of these men are prevalent on a supposed register of transfer-listed players, with a mass clear-out also expected this summer. Gaby Milito, Sylvinho and Albert Jorquera were all absent with long-term injury problems; Yaya Touré, Lilian Thuram, Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry and Edmílson were all reportedly training in private, whatever that means; Andrés Iniesta and Eidur Gudjohnsen just did laps of the pitch in the Nou Camp; Xavi was away with a fever; and finally Ronaldinho was doing, well, whatever he’s been doing since his last appearance for the club at the beginning of March. Frequenters to our good friends over at The Spoiler might have noticed a couple of interesting pieces recently investigating exactly what’s going on with the former World Player of the Year, but as major clubs back away from buying him, one has to feel that something’s not right. He’s always had the reputation as a party animal, but until two years ago, his performances were still nothing short of stellar. Now though, he looks like damaged goods, lacking the appetite to play and perhaps even the physicality to carry him through another season at the top level.

Top of the list to help steady the Barce ship is reigning World Player of the Year Kaka’, with an audacious swap deal including Gianluca Zambrotta, Deco and Ronaldinho reportedly tabled to tempt Milan to part with their crowning jewel. In addition to Kaka’, latest reports from Spain indicate some more seriously heavyweight targets for the Catalans as they desperately attempt to recover both pride and a support base, with back-to-back Real Madrid La Liga titles upsetting plenty of the Nou Camp faithful. Cesc Fabregas would be the other real coup for Barcelona, but as he seems unlikely to leave to Arsenal in reality, Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano has been touted as a suitable second-best having impressed so much this season. Other rumoured targets include Chelsea’s Frank Lampard, Bayern Munich’s Philip Lahm, plus the fantastic Brazilian duo from Sevilla, Dani Alves and Luis Fabiano. The three aforementioned Barce gentleman join a considerably long shopping list for AC this summer then, which currently also includes Chelsea’s Petr Cech, Bayern Munich’s Willy Sagnol, Valencia’s Joaquin, Chelsea’s Didier Drogba, Spurs’ Dimitar Berbatov and Arsenal’s Emmanuel Adebayor, with Andriy Shevchenko also expected to return to his pals at the San Siro after a couple of troubled years in West London.

Assuming at best that half of the above moves do actually take place, we could see the resurgence of perhaps the two most glamorous European sides in history. Not forgetting too that new managers are expected to take the reigns at both clubs before kick-off next season, a change of regime, personal and attitude will undoubtedly shake some of the cobwebs from these two great dynasties. Exciting Milan and Barcelona teams are part of the fabric of European football, and anyone who calls themselves a football fan should be hoping for an end to this current blip, lest we face the infinite boredom of all-English Champions League semi-finals for the remainder of time itself.

You Can Take the Boys out of Scotland.........

Let’s get the fundamentals out of the way now: Zenit St Peterburg are the new UEFA Cup Champions after defeating Rangers 2 – 0 in a game where unfortunately the Scottish side rarely threatened. Having dumped ‘certain winners’ Bayern Munich out of the competition in the previous round 5 – 1 on aggregate, you can’t help but feel that the Russian outfit probably deserved the title, but after a thrilling series of matches to reach the final, I think everyone in the STT editorial office was kinda hoping Walter Smith’s men had just enough left in the tank to do the business, and then press on for a historic treble.

Unfortunately the game has already been forgotten, with focus instead on a whirlwind of violence in host-city Manchester that lasted pretty much all day yesterday, culminating in more than 40 arrests and a stabbing. Manchester Police chiefs were quoted today as being “sickened and disappointed” after Rangers fans ran amock through the city centre, with more than 100,000 supporters reportedly making the journey down from Glasgow. In a display of unforgivable naivety, beer was made available on tap from off-licences, with supporters also carrying crates of cheap lager around from as early as 7 am when the supermarkets opened. With fans spending hundreds of pounds on travel and accommodation to just be in the city to watch the game in designated ‘fan zones,’ spirits were understandably high all day, but when a “technical hitch” killed a big-screen TV set up in Piccadilly Gardens area, thousands of drunk fans started kicking off with rival supporters, each other, and then ultimately the Filth. The screen was pelted with bottles, as were riot police when they moved in to try to squash the beef.

One Russian fan was then knifed in the back outside the City of Manchester stadium just before kick-off, while rucks with the police continued throughout the night. Bloodied yobs were snapped throwing chairs and tables at police in full riot gear: “Hundreds of fans rushed at the police who charged back at them,” an on-looker described. “It was a war zone. There were bottles flying everywhere and guys getting dragged to the floor.” Witnesses said the situation descended quickly after a Rangers fan was hit by a passing minicab, sparking anarchy as angry and wasted fans shattered the motor’s windows in a frenzy. Yobs continued to smash the front of a Boots chemist as things exponentially worsened; cars were wrecked in the streets and there were widespread reports of looting. Calm was restored after five hours of battle lines between fans and riot police, but the city streets are still covered in cans of beer, broken glass, blood and urine.

There is No Story Here

Cheryl’s very upset blah, blah, blah…

Her weight’s plummeted blah, blah, blah…

Men are all such bastards blah, blah, blah…

I would literally kill a co-worker for an hour alone with her in a Travel Inn blah, blah, blah…

A new WAG on the Horizon

For those of you unfamiliar with this chap Sergio Ramos, he’s a young Spanish defender who plays for Real Madrid, and is really rather good. So good in fact that reportedly Chelsea are swimming around him, with an extortionate bid of £50million currently on the table if rumours in Spain are to be believed. Aside from actual footballing ability, he brings much more to the table though: he has plenty of tattoos, including one just above his joystick, and one depicting the dates of the terrorist attacks in Madrid and New York; he has a little dog named Odi; and his Madrid team-mates affectionately nickname him ‘gyspy’ because of his understandable love for flamenco music. On a more personal level, I’ve always thought that Sergio Ramos would make a very convincing woman, with his thin hips, long beautiful blonde hair and delectably high cheek-bones. In a dress he would be quite the confusing proposition because on paper he has everything I normally look for in a lady-friend.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there because apparently very hot girls also value those attributes in him, as evidenced here by 2006’s Miss Spain, Elizabeth Reyes. The hot couple were recently snapped in lager-lout paradise the Algarve, and Ramos looks like he was trying to fit in with so-called British fashion by dressing like a complete muscle-beach homo. She’s clearly feeling it though so I guess he probably doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. Why don’t normal girls like these kind of looks, only insanely fit European models who I’ll never get to meet? Let’s hope he moves to Chelsea and then she’ll at least be in the same city limits as me…

Hleb and Flow

Alexander Hleb is a real cock; he looks like a pre-pubescent girl, fights like a tranquilized kitten, and has now claimed his main reason for leaving Arsenal is that London is too noisy. Poor sensitive Alex doesn’t like our fine capitol because it’s full of buildings and people and cars, and there’s almost no chance for him to just go into the woods and make daisy chains with his sisters. Hleb tearfully told The Sun today: “I’m not a big city man, I need my retreat, that’s why I’m often in Germany. Stuttgart is my second home, my friends are there and it is where I feel most comfortable.” I’m sorry, but isn’t Stuttgart also quite a big city? Wikipedia helpfully informs me that the Stuttgart metropolitan region has a population of more than 3.5 million, so I imagine that it probably gets a bit loud every now and then at the weekends? If you miss your friends and can’t hack it in the Greatest League in the World™ then that’s fine, but don’t cook up some pathetic excuse about London being noisy! Alternative options for Hleb include moving down to leafy Surrey, piercing his own ear-drums, or just permanently playing the soothing sounds of S Club 7 on his iPod. His agent Nikolai Shpilevski confirmed: “Alex is tired of the noisy and chaotic life in London and feels like living in calmer surroundings.” Fine, whatever, fuck off then.

However, it might not be up to Hleb anymore with Arsene Wenger assuring the Belarus winger that he is definitely not leaving this summer. The Gunners boss vowed to take him to court if he tries to buy out his contract, or make him rot in the reserves to block a move. Wenger says no-one will follow Mathieu Flamini out of the door: “I am confident of keeping Hleb. Nobody goes. It’s that simple. It’s about what is good for the club.” I’m sorry but does this sound a bit like someone else that’s been in the newspaper quite a lot recently? It starts with stopping a player transferring to another club, and it ends with an underground crypt full of incestuous children. Wenger concluded quite sinisterly: “You can’t come in the next day and buy it out. You may have to go to court and can be banned if it’s not done right. It takes months.”

Shine Your Boots Guv’nor

The position of boot boy is a hallowed tradition within professional football. It gives aspiring players a taste of the day-to-day life behind the glamour and helps them keep their feet on the ground. These days however, with Premier League debuts at increasingly younger ages, the natural order has been disrupted somewhat and many of these young stars skip the boot boy stage all together, instead being covered in Cristal and diamonds before they’re even old enough to drive. It makes me smile therefore that some clubs still pride themselves on maintaining this key formative stage, and furthermore, that some established stars still appreciate having their boots cleaned and their teas made. After the long slog of a season being essentially a grown-man’s bitch, one might expect to keep the player’s boots, or even have a jump on one of their girlfriends, but lucky James McPike at Birmingham got a Mercedes.

Having been assigned to French midfield talent Olivier Kapo, McPike was reportedly stunned when he was thrown the keys to the £30,000 run-about and told it was his to keep. His first thought was that Kapo was joking, or it was part of some cruel campaign of merc-ing from prime jokester Rio Ferdinand, explaining to the ex-Juventus man that he would struggle to afford the insurance for such an expensive car. So ever the gent, Kapo drove the incredulous trainee to his home, handed him the spare keys and log book, and then insisted on paying for a year's insurance. A club source told the Daily Fascist that McPike had initially asked Kapo for a pair of boots to mark the end of the season, and was obviously disappointed when Kapo said he’d taken them all home already. “He perked up considerably when he was tossed a set of keys,” the source glibly concluded.

Kapo is apparently on a £1.5m annual contract at the recently relegated Birmingham and is said to have just bought the Mercedes as a quick stop-gap when he arrived in Birmingham last year. He has added a Porsche and a Hummer to his fleet so decided to give McPike the Mercedes to avoid the questions that always come with controlled fires or staged robberies. Blues manager Alex McLeish said he learned of Kapo's generosity only when he saw James driving the Mercedes out of the training ground yesterday. “It was a magnificent gesture and one that's entirely in keeping with Kapo's character,” the Scot said. “He's been in Italy with Juventus, one of the biggest clubs in the world, but he clearly has not forgotten the time when he was an aspiring professional himself, hoping to go on to bigger and better things. McLeish joked: “As he was in such a generous mood, I asked him what he had done with the house he had left behind in Turin. Unfortunately, he smiled and said he wanted to keep hold of that.” Kudos to Kapo then for proving himself to be a nice guy in a world of selfish and conceited bastards.