sevilla midfielder, 22, passes away

Antonio Puerta is dead.

cue the vomit in the mouth

Moggi FC is at the top of the table, and David 'Too Good For Serie B and 5 Million Euro A Year' Trezeguet is topscorer.

Sometimes you have to hate Serie A with every ounce of strength you possess.

pause for laughter

Q: What's the difference between a triangle and Manchester United?
A: A triangle has three points.

[Hat-tip: Anissa.]

this just in, keano an ass

Alright then, Roy Keane, the ladies of DLG will keep this particular pronouncement of yours in mind the minute you decide to leave the club you currently manage because you get a call from a club in a city where the shopping's better. Not that you would ever do that, because we scheming, materialist hags have no power over your truly righteous manliness, do we? As penitence, though, let us offer you a solution to all the ills assailing your browbeaten innocent ship of football fools who are apparently incapable of thinking for themselves: breed them in pods and bring them up in seclusion, away from the faulty moral compasses of the female persuasion.

You're a prick, and we're decking you one for your sexism. Don't mind us.

ft: arsenal 2-1 fulham

So let's take stock of the rather woeful situation. Arsenal still can't finish, still struggle on the wings, still are guilty of allowing themselves to go a goal down far too easily. To add insult to injury they seem to have forgotten how to pass amongst themselves. Robin van Persie is still a diving little schmuck, Jens is still mad, and Flamini, somehow, ends up in central midfield.

But they still pwn.

Don't say we didn't warn you when they walk away with the Treble this year.

guest blogger: g. savonarola

Do you realise how disgustingly large the amounts of money football clubs in Europe have spent this season on human trafficking has been? Have not the individual efforts of Barcelona, Man United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Inter been so audaciously, suffocatingly, global-hunger-inducingly wasteful that you sink back in horror, completely certain that you will not be able to bear to directly look at the larger picture, in which the combined efforts of these monstrous regiments is supplemented by the lesser but by no means absent wickednesses of Madrid and Milan, who by dint of an unholy mix of guile and incompetence have incandesced the conflagrations around the slave trade of the noble if unlettered and savage spirit embodied by the modern footballer?

Fuck that shit, I say!

Stop averting your innocent eyes! Stop mumbling about boycotts! It will all burn in the eyes of the righteous! In the name of the now-despoiled young Alexandre Pato, SAVE THE SOUL OF FOOTBALL! Hope that they are all kicked out in the group stages of the Champions' League! I look forward to it, yes, look forward with thirsting spirit to the time when in the space of a single fortnight, United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and Inter are all ejected ignominously from the Big Cup's preliminary rounds! [And Lyon, who can go to join their fallen sisters in sin, Bayern Munich, in the UEFA Cup.] SKY Sports has to fire all its commentators because they know nothing about the truly worthy remaining competitors! Let the final be a beauteous pyrotechnic display of open, flowing football between Roma and Sevilla, so divinely inspired by the Hand of God celestial music of the spheres that their own supporters, among Europe's least civilised, sit quiet as savage beasts soothed by the pipes in a freezing stadium in Moscow one year from now! May there be a ten-goal thriller that ties the match at 5-5!

And somewhere, somehow, may Arsenal still end up winning the Cup!

Take that, you unrighteous sons of. MAMMON.

[And while we're at it, please let's relegate Juventus Ju-Know-Who again. I'm already tired of them.]

Project Objectify: The Coaches

The wanton (but oh so necessary) objectification of persons connected with sport has been going on for a while now, here, here and occasionally here. Till now, however, the focus has been on the players. This time, we felt the coaches (specifically the football coaches) deserved a chance.

So here they are.

+ José Mourinho (Chelsea FC)



If you don’t think so, you’re not a real football fan.


+ Didier Deschamps (ex-Juventus)




Also known as Le Stone Fox. Obviously the 2004 Champions’ League final had the hottest coach-off in remembered history. Keep in mind that this was a game in which no less an objectifiable personage than Fernando Morientes was on the pitch (and actually playing football, for a change).


+ Marcello Lippi (in between jobs)



He’s old and rich, and possesses a yacht and a son (or maybe two) who runs a rotten empire of corruption in Serie A. He symbolizes everything that is disgusting about patriarchal Southern Europe. He has won everything with everyone, though, which means he doesn’t give a flying frick about what you think of him. Once, Marcello Lippi was called the Paul Newman of football. At sixty-five, Lippi is hotter than Paul Newman ever was, is, or will be. Put that in your illegally acquired yacht and sail it all around the Amalfi coast, haters.


+ Arsène Wenger (Arsenal FC)



Because the women of DLG have an inexplicable fetish for the accountant look.

[Although, when contacted, Wenger responded with a dignified, “I do not know zis. I did not see zis accountant you speak of. But I think maybe it is a penalty for us.”]


+ Gareth Southgate (Middlesborough FC)



He is young. He is strong. His nose is pretty!

…that’s about it, really. Gareth Southgate is very quintessentially English, and therefore there seems to be little else that we can expect of him.


+ Mark Hughes (Blackburn Rovers)




Ex-Barcelona (player), so he has that sexy Continent-returned vibe going for him. The salt and pepper hair makes it cooler and even more outrageous that he gets into fights with the teenaged Francesc Fabregas.



+ Alan Pardew (Charlton Athletic)



White hair and blue eyes in a careworn face. Perhaps we have a Gandalf thing, too. This is really bad for us.



+ Frank Rijkaard (Barcelona)



Oh COME ON. He’s youngish, has the most luscious curls in Christendom, and looks like he couldn’t give a damn about the fact that he manages the most difficult prima donnas in Europe’s best team. (Sry, Milan. They own ur ass.) Meet Frank Rijkaard, rockstar manqué. It is unfortunate that his swell suits all have sponsor names printed on their backs. We are certain this gives him great grief; possibly more than Eto’o’s perpetual fit of the sulks.



+ Fabio Capello (Real Madrid)




How does the really bad manager of a really bad team make it on to the list of the most successful managers of all time? Well, about as inexplicably as he makes this list and La Liga capitulates to la Real. Papa Capz is bad-tempered, wrinkly, and uses bad hair dye, but his sartorial sense is sharper than David Beckham (… oh. Never mind.) and his glasses and general air of old-world pig-headedness make him by far the most desirable 34850384500 year old in football, in a slightly disturbing way.


+ Roberto Donadoni (ex-Livorno; Italy)




Hoo, boy. This ex-New York Metrostars superstud managed Livorno for something like six games before they decided that he was a bad manager who did not help them win any games (NB: Livorno never win any games under any manager) and the man, whom you may also know from his days in AC Milan and the Nazionale, is now strutting his stuff as the manager of the Italian men’s football team. We don’t know how the World Cup winners feel about his coaching skills, but as someone who heads a pack of professionally contracted Dolce and Gabbana models, we must say that Donadoni more than passes muster.



+ Quique Sanchez Flores (Valencia)



EYELINER.

We feel this says enough.



+ Martin O’Neill (Aston Villa)

(seen here embracing the lost art of folk dancing?)



1. He has glasses and a Scottish accent. 2. He is not Alex Ferguson. 3. He is necessary for the survival of English football, given (1) and (2).

fin