Contract-termination of the week: Midfielder Jeffrey de Visscher (right) insists he and Dutch second division club FC Emmen mutually agreed to end his contract simply because he’d struggled to get in the team. De Telegraaf, though, alleged that was only part of the reason.
The player, they claimed, had engaged in a spot of “drunken wildpoeper”.
Drunken what?
Sounds a bit like “wild pooper”.
And, indeed, that’s what it is: doing a number two in the, well, wild.
“The police saw De Visscher in a somewhat strange position next to his car [on a road through a forest late at night],” they reported.
“He was heavily under the influence but said he had not driven the car, claiming that a friend had sat behind the wheel. He just did not know who his friend was or where he had gone.”
The police, surprisingly unconvinced by his story, promptly arrested him and he has since lost his licence.
And, alas, his club.
Kick in the teeth for 'gay hero' suggestion
The Guardian had an interesting piece last week on a blog post by Manchester United goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard (above), who wrote “passionately about the need for a gay hero” in football.
The Dane conceded that gay players were still afraid to come out because of the fear of the reception they would receive from fans, but said “my impression is that the players would not have a problem accepting a homosexual”.
Meanwhile, in other news: Liverpool midfielder Suso Fernández posted a photo on Twitter last week of his team-mate José Enrique having his teeth whitened.
“What the **** is he doing,” he wrote, “this guy is gay. He has some mental problems.”
Upon being informed by a fellow Twitterer that “being gay isn’t a mental illness”, Suso deleted the tweet and replied: “I didn’t mean it in that way about ‘gay’ . . . just joking.”
Lindegaard might need to edit that blog post.
Tattoo of the week
The quote Mario Balotelli had etched on his chest.
And whose quote is it?
Someone like, say, Mahatma Gandhi? No: the Mongolian rowdy, Genghis Khan.
“I am the punishment of God,” it reads. “If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
Roberto Mancini must, occasionally, feel like the greatest of sinners.
Trip of the week
The one made by Japanese reporter Daisuke Nakajima from Tokyo to Moray in Scotland to cover Rangers’ game against Elgin City, part of a feature the Footballista magazine asked him to write on the Glasgow club. The journey, according to the London Metro, involved “a 14-hour flight, an overnight stop in Edinburgh and then a five-hour train journey”.
Yep, as you feared: the match was postponed.
Seven deadly trials
“There is an element of getting involved with one manager and then you are on trial again,” said Chelsea defender Gary Cahill last week.
The poor lad’s had quite a few trials in 2012. Since the start of the year, he’s had seven managers at club and international level: Owen Coyle (Bolton), André Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo, Rafa Benitez (Chelsea), Fabio Capello, Stuart Pearce and Roy Hodgson (England).
Gafferitis, they call it.
Quotes of the week
"How many people does it take to make a banner? One. And maybe two to hold it." 'Possibly In Denial' Benitez on that 'Rafa Out' message.
"Wasn't it Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid who once said 'I want to fight them, I want to fight them . . . so stay there and fight them'." - Raindrops keep falling on his head, so to speak, but Martin O'Neill insists he's going to battle on at Sunderland.
"These little things are not the main issue. My first tie was blue." - Rafa Benitez on being criticised for wearing an orange tie for Chelsea's game against Fulham.
"If I was going to lie to you, honestly I would lie." - Paul Lambert speaking truthfully about why he's dumped Darren Bent from his squad.
"I remember in the 1980s when they were European champions and had fantastic players." - Reading manager Brian McDermott trying to be nice about Aston Villa, but.
"Even when I said in my last conversation with him that I loved him, it was not good enough to keep him here." - Fulham manager Martin Jol on the loving lengths he went to to keep Clint Dempsey at the club.
Apology of the week
“The use of the word was not intended to cause offence and was used in the heat of the moment, in the frustration of the defeat. It was a poor choice of language to define those emotions and wasn’t meant in the true meaning of the word,” said Scunthorpe United manager Brian Laws.
He had suggested his team’s defending in their 4-0 thrashing by Doncaster Rovers was “as bad as the Holocaust”.
Number of the week - 77
You’d wonder how football agents can feed themselves — £77m is all they were paid by English Premier League clubs during the last two transfer windows, Manchester City topping the list on £10.5m, Wigan bottom on £1.9m.
