"yo bastas, i'm trying to do football here."

He's succeeding at the sarcasm, at any rate. The subtleties of continental languages and the mercies of translation have allowed us to believe that Hernán Crespo, striker-extraordinaire and recent escapee from Chelsea, is not happy with his team after their Champions League-jeopardizing 2-0 loss to Bayern Munich. The ignominy was caused - or compounded - by the fact that the Nerazzurri were fielding only nine men at the end of the game, with World Cup star Fabio Grosso and ex-Juventus whiz Zlatan Ibrahimovic both red-carded for being dumbasses.

"The more experienced players need to bring a little bit more calm to the locker room and assure there’s no need to tear our hair out," remarked Crespo, whom the maintainers of this blog are seriously considering re-appellating Major Understatement. "If we can end games with 11 men on the field, then obviously it’d make things a bit easier for everyone."

"Okay, where's the logo for Fuckwit Inc.?"

The fact that Inter's European campaign currently looks like a piece of overripe fruit left out on the muddy streets of a tropical city induces mixed feelings for us. With Milan's steady showing in both Serie A and the CL stuttering over the last ten days with two frustrating goalless draws, and the exciting A S Roma defeated 2-1 in their away game against Valencia yesterday, our overemotional and neurotic interest in the fortunes of Italian fooball is feeling the first cold touches of gloomy suspicion. It's been a crazy year for calcio and we've been hoping that the 2006-07 season sees progress along the lines of 'OMG we won the World Cup!11!' rather than the 'OMG our system has been worm-eaten from the inside-out! And we're fugly lusars with a discount on mass buzzcuts!' aspect of things.

We at De Ludo Globi harbour a healthy dislike of all things Inter Milan, but the bastards do have a number of players we admire wearing blue and black this season, and none we love more than Hernán himself. He's put his bad spell at Chelsea behind him to come through, in word and deed, for the football he loves, in the sort of place that got him to, by his own admission, forsake Abramovich's offer of obscene riches. We'd take a goal like that over a private jet anyday, too. Are you listening, Sheva?

Don't consider it an endorsement of Inter when we say that we hope they'll stick around in Europe. We want to see them thrashed at an advanced stage by a club we actually like. We want to see Grosso and Ibrahimovic (both new fathers incidentally, someone think of the children l0l) grow up. We want to marvel some more at Major Understatement, damnit.

Footnote: Ciro Ferrara's Juventus youth team is already making other calciatores cry! In their first match of the season they steamrolled young Inter (insert evil laugh here) 5-1. This bodes well for the future of mean and vicious football, the sort we love best.

'Terry Aur Lampi'.

(One wishes.)
Thanks to Mimi for the heads-up. Ran to Google with obscene haste. Most wond'rous news for fans of crossover crack and spicy romance gossip!

Chelsea couple players John Terry and Frank Lampard to feature in Bollywood flim. You read that right. Finally. Gods. Yes. Guh. Lol. Etc.

We are not the only ones to express our enthusiasm for this project. See for example: the men themselves, John and Frank, pictured below, who charmingly display their wholly innocent affection towards each other.



It's the chance of a lifetime. Does silver screen stardom beckon? Dare we chez De Ludo Globi hope for a (tasteful, of course) item number?* Will they become Bollywood's next sizzling jodi? Only time can tell. Well, that and the box office.


But wait, aren't we forgetting someone? No way, Jose! The manager warms up to rehearse his spiffy moves for some deadly dhishoom-dhishoom.




Oof. May '07, please be here quickly!





* Here Mr Abramovich nods his head. Vigorously.

how much is that striker at the crossbar?

NOTES ON A WEEKEND OF FOOTBALL-WATCHING. PATHETICALLY LARGE AMOUNTS OF FOOTBALL-WATCHING. IN FACT, A WEEKEND SO FULL OF FOOTBALL, PLUS GREASY CHINESE AND LOUNGING AROUND IN SHORTS, THAT I'M A BEER AWAY FROM BECOMING SOMETHING OUT OF THE KING OF QUEENS:

It is a fact widely circulated but little acknowledged among people of good taste that I have little desire to birth babies, unless by some genetic accident they turn out to share the DNA of Luca Toni, the well-formed, well-heeled Fiorentina striker who was last year’s top scorer in Serie A with a total of thirty-one goals. To put things in perspective, past top scorers have been such legends as Diego Maradona, who have netted no more than fifteen; no one has scored more than thirty goals in Serie A since World War II, or thereabouts. Last year’s EPL top scorer, the hypnotically graceful Thierry Henry, scored twenty-seven goals in a league (and a team) that is about an order of magnitude more susceptible to goal scoring.

It’s true: no one plays more frustrating football than the Italians. I considered rescinding the reservation of my wombliness for Luca because I do not wish for my children to inherit nervous disorders or, failing that, a propensity to just stand around and look mournful when another world-class striker would try their best to convert the impossible into the merely improbable. I mean, look at Hérnan Crespo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. On their day, they can tell the best of teams where to get off – get off, go home, and cry themselves to sleep in their thorny beds of defeat. Luca Toni can’t make people cry, that’s his problem. He’s simply gorgeous when he has the ball, but yesterday he just hung around waiting for it to make the first move. I can imagine being at Fiorentina is kinda hard, but, you know, you don’t see Adrian Mutu standing around looking sad and lovely. He goes out and makes trouble, although he is at least as closely guarded as L-Ton himself.



"Tell me some more how fabulous I am."

Mostly I feel sad that, for a paternity donor who scores a goal more than once every two games, I switch on the ones where he just pulls his alas-I-am-sinned-against act.

I had a stray beautiful moment of imagining what he would do if he were playing across Pippo Inzaghi, with Gattuso and Pirlo and Kaká behind him. Oh Luca, I doubt anything will make you happy.

Speaking of Kaká, that boy is under serious threat from commentators and camera crew the world over. The overwhelming impression I had from a Milan-Livorno match that was otherwise classic throttle-and-frustrate football was like: Wow, Kaká. Look, Kaká. Isn’t Kaká cute? Kaká is cute! He’s so good when he’s controlling the ball. He’s so good when he’s running around aat the other end of the field from the ball! Ooh, someone is hurt. Let’s talk about Kaká. Oooh, someone is substituted. Let’s rest our eyes on Kaká!

I get it now, I really do. I put down the fact that both my earlier posts on this blog referenced him to coincidence, but I should have known better. The fact is, Kaká is controlling the world’s attention with his mind. No one is safe. Really, it’s a good thing that he is as excellent a footballer as he is. Sometimes I wonder if having him play next to Pirlo and Gattuso is even real. I mentioned a while ago that the Inter side was a bloated pool of brilliance, but this used to be true of all the Big Three of Italy, and in spite of trials and tribs, I hear Juventus is still blinding people around Serie B with its relative star-studdedness, and although Milan have let Sheva go, they’re not exactly asking for a new coat of Superstar paint.

Still, I have to admit that I was talking through my hat before this weekend, since I hadn’t yet caught a Real Madrid game this season, which I did for the first time in the wee sma’s of Saturday. Since the Calciopoli scandals and the selling of Juve’s Fabio Cannavaro to Madrid I have asked myself, on and off, ‘Hm, I wonder what Canna’s up to in the Spanish league?’ I heard, of course, that he was up to squat, since for one reason or another he really didn’t have too much to flash his startling white teeth about. And then in Saturday’s match against Real Betis I discovered what he’s really been doing. He’s been trying to protect himself from the death glare of the biggest concatenation of shiny footballers since maybe ever. Who even NEEDS these many high-priced living legends in a single team? What happened to the law of averages? And what happened to the laws of logic which state that, given the amount of men in Real Madrid uniforms out on the field who wrest matches from opponents for breakfast, Madrid should absolutely be evil overlords of European football instead of desperate scramblers? Has any team been so way less than the sum of its parts?

Football, I tell you. It’s a mystery to me.


At the rag-and-bone shop of great central defenders, undisclosed genteelly impoverished Hyderabad locality. Picture courtesy of tourist and enabler Kate.

We at De Ludo Bloggi...

believe that we must not touch our idols; we never seem to be able to wash the gilt off our hands. Alas; we seem only too adept at sullying the very idols, sacred or profane, who ought to remain intangible, bepedestalled and otherwise unpedestrian.

And so it was that we came across a picture of a Bollywood starlet while skimming the daily news for Pujo-related shoppommodities. And lo!, said we, for the starlet, one Zayed Khan, bears a resemblance to one of our idols in a rather different, er, field. That is, Gigi Buffon, star keeper of Italy and Juventus. Without further delay we got to work, armed with Photoship and much snickering. And here we are, scrubbing the sparkle off our fingers!

My, my, he cleans up nicely, doesn't he? We allowed Gigi to keep the hairband - it is, a little birdy tells us, a gift from Luca Toni and of immeasurable sentimental value.

inter sizzle roma fizzle! sad but true.

Here's a good one: Channel 4's Football Italia gazes into its funky crystal ball. Serie A, 2006-07.

Have another gratuitous picture of Kaka. I'm not even all that fond of him, don't ask me why.




Also, why does everyone think Inter Milan with their bloated pool of talent is going to win this Scudetto? Out of curiosity. Has the most likely team EVER won a Serie A season?

AC what?

HAMLET POW: I like only Kaka in the Brazil team, hate me as you will for teh shallow.
roswitha: I like Ronaldinho
he makes footer look easy.
HAMLET POW: I like Andrea Pirlo. He makes you go 'why bother? why bother?'