PlanetFootball

Today's other stories

Phone of contention

Christina Tambaros, a 17-year-old student from Hull, was somewhat bemused recently when she received a good-luck text from Gordon Taylor, head of the English players' union, and another from Les Reed, assistant manager at Fulham.

Her puzzlement reached even greater depths when she got yet another text offering her Inter Milan's Brazilian midfielder Aparecido Rodrigues Cesar - for free. "I am Cesar's agent," it read. "He can play in all the left side. You don't have to pay for the transfer. Call me if you are interested. Fabio Ludica."

Christina, who already has a boyfriend, decided against calling Fabio to take him up on his offer, instead contacting the Sun, who got to the bottom of the mystery: she had been assigned the old mobile number used by Sven-Goran Eriksson when he was England manager.

Need it be said, the Sun was particularly interested in any personal text messages that might have been sent to Christina's phone but, much to their disappointment, "she insisted there were no calls from women chasing the randy coach". You gotta love them.

Quotes of the week

"Lee (Wallace) was asked by the BBC if the yellow card was rescinded. 'Naw,' he replied, 'it's been taken away.'"

- Presumably poor oul Wallace doesn't know why his Hearts coach Stevie Frail is still chuckling.

" A good start is good."

- Sven-Goran Eriksson, frenzied with excitement over Manchester City's start to the season.

"I am not aware of the wine. If he gives me a present I will accept it, but I will not be sharing it with him. I will take it home instead."

- Alex Ferguson on being told Eriksson was going to present him with a €600 bottle of wine after the Manchester derby. Sven, one assumes, opted for champagne instead.

"Don't turn your back on the wall. Get hit in the ********, get hit in the nose, get hit in the gob, knock your ******* crowns out. I'm not bothered what you do but do not take it on the arse and let it spin into the top corner of the goal, which is what happened."

- Mick McCarthy, just a touch unimpressed with Wolves' defending of a free-kick that led to a Watford goal.

"I decided to come here because I like the shopping."

- Mido, with a wink in Roy Keane's direction, explains why he joined Middlesbrough.

Wan genuine lookalike

More often than not we struggle to see much of a resemblance between supposed lookalikes, but we were well impressed with this effort from the folk who run the Who Ate All The Pies website. The man on the right (above, far left) is the Fulham manager, Lawrie Sanchez, and the chap alongside him is Gok Wan, presenter of How To Look Good Naked. Or is it the other way round? See? Uncanny.

Roy's week

"I WAS excited, and it takes a lot to get me excited - ask my wife."

- Keane insisting, despite an expression that said otherwise, that he WAS passionately thrilled by Sunderland's winner against Spurs.

"I'm very happy inside - what do you want me to do? Jump on the table? Strip?"

- Still talking about that goal, or else he's describing what he does to try and get his wife excited.

"Priorities have changed for footballers and they are being dictated to by their wives and girlfriends. I find it surprising that . . . players let their wives decide. I think it's weak. You see it with a couple of big players now. Clearly their wives and girlfriends are running their lives and that's a bad sign."

- An extract from Roy's "That's Wimmen For Ya" speech.

"We never got going. Our passing wasn't great, our tackling wasn't great, and our defending wasn't great. Even after defeat you look for some pluses - I don't know if you've found one, but I haven't yet."

- His analysis of Saturday's hammering at Wigan: not great.

"Some of the lads have been here before and clearly they still haven't learned . . . I have said before there is a fine line between loyalty and stupidity and there's no doubt I have been stupid, but it won't happen again."

- We can't be sure who he was talking about after the Wigan game but, eh, we noticed Dwight Yorke was taken off at half-time.

Mind-bending stuff

When we saw David Beckham's goal from a free-kick for Los Angeles against DC United we doffed our cap; 'twas a lovely effort. But others thought it was much, much more than that.

"We've all watched him on television and think he can't be that good," said his LA team-mate Landon Donovan of the goal, "but when I turned round, I thought: 'Holy Jesus, are you kidding me?' It was unbelievable." See?

As for Brant Parsons, writing in the Orlando Sentinel . . . "Beckham's free-kick goal was more than just an exquisite thing of beauty - it was the stuff that fills history books." Eh?

"The ones who got off their backsides to head to Carson City got to see history being made. This was the kind of moment for those of us that dream of the world's greatest sport becoming bigger in our own country will never forget," he continued, adding that it was "the night when soccer changed in the United States".

All we can say is: Cripes.

Hostage to fortune

When Aston Villa and West Ham Utd meet up this season Nigel Reo-Coker, who left the not-so-happy Hammers for Villa during the summer, might just opt to do a particularly tight man-to-man marking job on Craig Bellamy.

Bellamy was signing autographs for West Ham fans when he was asked what he thought about Kieron Dyer, his former Newcastle team-mate who has signed for the London club. His reply: "He's like Reo-Coker, except he can play."

All of which was captured by a mobile phone and is now viewable on YouTube.