Euro Trash

You know those nights where you’re playing your favourite football video game and you want to spice up your life a little bit? What do you do? Have a curry? That’s too literal. How about finding yourself a lady or man friend? That’s too much effort.

There really is only one option in a time like that. Take your goalkeeper for a run. Nothing screams repeated heart attacks like pressing Y/Triangle and just sprinting with your begloved (is that even a word?) hero. If you’re extremely lucky, your opponent will be so terrible you can saunter through him and you feel like a virtual god. Usually, though, it all ends in a horrible mess like that fart you thought was a fart but it wasn’t really…just me?

Anyway, the point to this is that on-loan Trapani goalkeeper Mirko Pigliacelli decided he wanted to take his virtual spicing of life into his actual life. Having collected a corner, the Pescara loanee shot off out of his box and ran near 60 yards unchallenged to set off a counter attack before simply passing it. This made worldwide news strangely, with many of the “banter” sites all over this like a scabby rash, but I can’t understand why.

He bottled it. Why only go part of the way? Why didn’t Mirko take the ball all the way? If he truly was to be crowned king of SportBible then he really needed to take the ball all the way, then score a scorpion kick, then pull out one of those group fish celebrations.

Speaking of kings of banter sites, Real Madrid and Cristiano Ronaldo made their way into another Champions League final where they will take on Gianluigi Buffon. Juventus will be there too, but the way people talk now, you’d think it was an 11-on-1 shooting drill. Gigi may have never been beaten by Lionel Messi, but he’ll have to be wary of that slippery fish Karim Benzema who, on the evidence of the game at the Calderon, would be able to escape a prison with nothing more than a spatula and three used matches.

The Dutch crowned their Champions this past weekend, and for the first time since Kylian Mbappe was just a sperm, Feyenoord are Champions of Holland. They tried their best to bottle it last weekend but they did enough to hold off Peter Bosz’s creche at Ajax. Rumour has it the Ajax kids threw a tantrum when they found out they weren’t getting the shiny trophy.

Grandad Dirk Kuyt and unspellable full back turned boss Giovanni van Brock…Brokc…Bronco…Bronckhorst were the most recognisable names in a Feyenoord side that dominated the Eredivisie fairly comfortably in the end. Even Karim El Ahmadi of Aston Villa “fame” got a winner’s medal, showing you just how much Villa suck the life out of footballers.

And finally, we will finish up in a different place this week. Israel is not a country that shows up on the footballing radar, but a story from there this week definitely did. Football Manager 2008 “legend” Toto Tamuz not only has a great name but he also has an arrest to his name as well. Tamuz’s side Hapoel Tel-Aviv played out a bog standard 0-0 draw against Hapoel Ashkelon before the carnage kicked off. A brawl was triggered somehow and police arrested a man for throwing bottles on the pitch.

Turns out it was Toto’s cousin, and Toto wasn’t having that so he decided to take the logical course of action and batter the police. Unsurprisingly, Toto was arrestedl, with videos of the incidents going around the internet. My favourite part? The fact that poor Toto didn’t even get a chance to take off his bib. It’s the minor details that add levity to assaulting police officers and getting arrested.