Without any Premier League football, I’ve had to venture outside England and Europe to find the contenders for Wally of the Week. This week’s top three include a German goalkeeper, a former Chelsea star and the FIFA president (yep, here we go again).
3. Bernd Leno
We start off at the Confederations Cup in Russia where Germany played Australia in Sochi. Despite Germany winning the game 3-2, the efforts of Bernd Leno in goal didn’t go unnoticed, but not in a good way. The Leverkusen man let a tame shot from Tom Rogic underneath his body for Australia to equalise and then was also at fault for the second goal. Tomi Juric guided the ball towards Leno in the German goal with his shoulder but Juric was stunned to see his weak effort bounce back off the gloves, then the feet of Leno, straight into his path. Juric slotted into an empty net and it was Leno who was left red-faced once again.
2. Oscar
Chelsea were left stunned in January when Shanghai SIPG tabled a £60m offer for out-of-favour Brazilian Oscar. The offer, unsurprisingly, was accepted and Oscar packed his bags and moved to China to play in the Chinese Super League. Last weekend, his team came up against Guangzhou R&F and Oscar grew frustrated with his Chinese opponents and proceeded to boot the ball at them, not once but twice. This sparked a mass brawl between the two sides and Oscar was knocked to the floor, deservedly so really. During the incident, just before half time with the game level at 1-1, 4 Guangzhou players were booked and each team had a man sent off. No action was taken against Oscar but he’s not so popular in Guangzhou anymore.
1. Gianni Infantino
After Sepp Blatter lost his post as FIFA President, an election was held to determine the next leader of football’s governing body. Gianni Infantino, formerly of UEFA, beat Prince Ali of Jordan in the election and he was seen as the fresh, new face of a cleaner, more transparent FIFA. However, this week, reports emerged that he had been investigated by FIFA Ethics Committee (who must be the busiest people in the world) for malpractice. It was alleged that Infantino had offered faster payments of FIFA funds to presidents of some associations to elect his preferred candidate in the President of CAF (African football association) election. The members of that Ethics Committee were then dismissed by Infantino and it all became a bit suspicious. Infantino has faced no charges as yet but his reputation has been dampened.