Extra Time!

Maradona’s back! Bored with cheating in quarter-finals, licking up to Castro, shooting journalists and having his stomach stapled he’s decided he wants to have another crack at management and has took over the Argentinian national team. It makes Steve McClaren look like a sane appointment. Not.

In other Argentinian-football-genius-news, Lionel Messi is up for the Ballon d’Or along with a whole host of Premier League players and England internationals. Which gives a pretty tenuous link to this Maradona/Messi comparison. How amazingly similar are these goals? Maradona’s amazing slalom through England in ’86 and Messi’s identical dance through the entire Getafe defence for Barcelona.

As rumours circulate that Andy Cole is due to announce his retirement we think it’s only right and proper to pay tribute to the Premier League’s second-highest scorer. We could obviously link to a collection of his goals and finest performances, but where’s the fun it that? Check out his Outstanding foray into the music industry instead. And you thought John Barnes’ rapping was bad.

Being a supremely fit bunch we obviously don’t condone smoking but in the days of footballers being robotic in their athleticism (sorry) we had to laugh at William Gallas getting caught with a ciggie hanging out of his mouth. Still, it doesn’t compete with Zinedine Zindane having a sly one behind the bike shed before the 2006 World Cup Final.

Finally, if you’d just scored a 30 yard screamer wouldn’t you want to celebrate by donning a pirate’s hat? Brilliant, shame he got booked for it then.