Planet Football: Take yourself off to YouTube and type in "Trapattoni" and "subtitled". What should pop up is footage from a press conference held by Giovanni Trapattoni in 1998, near the end of his second spell in charge of Bayern Munich.

Valiantly attempting to address the media in German Trapattoni, enraged by his players' performance in a match earlier that week, merely served to befuddle his audience. An extract: "Saturday these players must show me and his fans must alone win the game! Must alone win the game! A coach not an idiot! A coach show see what happen in field. And these players, two, three these players, were weak like a bottle empty. You know why Italian team not buy these players? Because have seen many times to game. Strunz! Strunz is two years here, has played 10 game! Is always injured! What dare Strunz?!"

And on it went. Before departing, Trapattoni, somewhat wearily, declared: "I am tired now the father these players and defend these players. I have always the blame."

By all accounts he has less English than German so, well, there could be fun times ahead.

No forgiving or forgetting

Speaking of Trapattoni. Don Givens was criticised in some quarters recently for not letting bygones be bygones when he opted not to include Stephen Ireland in his squad for the Brazil game. Trapattoni, it would seem, isn't a man to easily forgive either. He fell out with Paolo di Canio at Juventus in 1993. Seven years later, when he was manager of Italy, he was asked if he would pick the player for his squad. His reply: "There will have to be a bubonic plague for me to pick di Canio." Paolo took that as a no.

Quotes of the week

"I am reluctant to tell you all I know as I really do not know anything."

- Kevin Keegan - who else? - on the appointment of Dennis Wise as Newcastle director of football.

"A blind man can see what the problems are here, we are just not good enough. But I won't run away from it all. You have to take some rubbish - and heaven knows we've had plenty of that recently."

- Are you beginning to suspect Derby manager Paul Jewell regrets not taking the Irish job? Us too.

"It can be very exciting because you can be there waiting for a long time for just the one number to make the game complete."

- Cristiano Ronaldo on the new love of his life: bingo. Seriously.

"They're shit."

- Roque Junior's exhaustive explanation for why he walked out on Bundesliga bottom club Duisburg.

"Beckham is a nice man . . . but he is just a good player, nothing more. He's not a great player - he doesn't belong to the superior group of players. There are hundreds of Beckhams playing football all over the world."

- Diego Maradona, sounding a bit Dunphyish.

"It's intrinsic skill combined with exploiting chaos. When it's turbulent, imperfections in the ball will come into play, you can't predict the outcome. The ball isn't a perfect sphere, it will do funny things."

- Robin Marshall, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Manchester, explains how Cristiano Ronaldo scored from that free-kick against Portsmouth.

"I look at the ball, I look at the net and I say to myself 'take the kick, Ronaldo' then I shoot."

- But Ronaldo himself has a somewhat less complex explanation.

Little lament for loss of Vera

We've heard some nasty football chants in our time, many of them much too vile to repeat here, but West Ham fans reached new depths on their recent visit to Manchester when they played City in the league. A city in mourning it was too, after all it's the home of Coronation Street.

Take it away Hammers: "Vera's dead, Vera's dead, Vera's dead . . . (repeat ad nauseam)." How low can you go? Rest in peace, Vera Duckworth.

Portly prose hailed in Spain

If you're going to comment on someone's weight it's probably best that you're not on the tubby side yourself, as discovered by one reporter who attended a press conference held by Frank Rijkaard. When asked if he thought Ronaldinho was overweight the Barcelona manager said no, certainly not when compared with one of his Brazilian team-mates.

"Ronaldo was the one who was fat, but I mean no disrespect because I still think he's one of the best strikers - but I have to say he was fat because he was," he said.

"Does that mean you have something against fat people," asked the overly sensitive tubby reporter. "Not if they're talented fatties," said Rijkaard, "and you have a lot of talent my friend."

More quotes of the week

"I know I will get booed but maybe in 10 years' time I will be able to go back and the fans will think of me as a Birmingham great. They know . . . that the club sold one of their better players when they let me go. I did a fantastic job for them."

- Robbie Savage, now with Derby, reminiscing modestly about his time at Birmingham City.

"Many great people, many great players, many coaches, great politicians, business people have a lot of failures in their life before they succeed."

- Steve McClaren, still writing post-England job applications.

"Like most fans I'm thinking 'why can't they just appoint someone?' They're going around the houses . . . it's laughable it's taking so long. I don't know what goes on in those meetings. What actually is happening? Do they meet every month and say 'leave it to next month?'."

- Patience Shay Given, patience.

"I'm amazed he hasn't been snapped up. I haven't worked with him but I think he'd be fantastic. But that's my opinion and I'm not on that panel thing."

- Given again, hoping that panel thing will snap up Tel O'Venables.

"The players have started calling him Dick Dastardly because he drives around the training complex in Carrington in a golf buggy. It's been personalised with an SGE1 number plate. It's like something out of Wacky Races."

- A Manchester City, eh, insider provides the Sun with an image of Sven-Goran Eriksson that will live with us forever.

"The only way we will get in to Europe is by ferry."

- He might be the Messiah, but even Kevin Keegan is losing hope.