China's Joey Barton

Say ni hao to the Asian Joey Barton. I know, you all have been diligently searching, praying and hoping for this discovery. His name, Mao Jianqing of course. I guess he's known as the badboy of Chinese soccer. Not sure if that means he's terrible at soccer or just a Joey Barton wannabe, but that is beside the point. Dude's stone cold without remorse.

Mao's team, Shanghai Shenhua, recently just lost its Chinese Super League Title bid on Sunday, and early Monday morning Mao took out his frustration. Very early. Like 4:50 a.m. It is alleged that Mao and a friend beat up some young guy named Xu greeted one of Mao's female friends who was Xu's former colleague. Mao didn't take kindly to this and told him to step off or something like that and then was attacked in a manly manner. Mao and his accomplices, a teammate and former pro basketball player, proceeded to throw dishes and an ashtray at Xu. Awesome! (That's Mao in the photo heading to jail and Xu's injuries in the inset).

This isn't Mao's first rodeo either. According to the report, Mao kicked a fan at the U-17 World Championships and struck a referee at the U-19 World Championships. So he's a bit of Eric Cantona too. Nice.

Realizing that they may have made a mistake, Mao tried to pay off Xu to not go to the cops. Xu said eff you, but then tried unsuccessfully to extort even more money out of Mao later.

Mao and friends have been arrested, fined and will spend 7 days in a Chinese jail. As Jack Bauer knows, that ain't no country club.

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Beware of the black mirrors

Here's a nice job, if you can get it. Be the guy assigned to spy on the Danish women's football team. By running a camera through a two-way mirror in their hotel room. The pay may or may not be great, but you will never be prosecuted, even when caught and detained by Danish officials until the police arrive. FIFA and the IOC will have your back, too.

Before you lot go and get visions of Revenge of the Nerds, and start screaming "Bush! Bush!" at the monitor, it's not like that. No, this wasn't filming hot lady on lady action in the showers, this was filming a tactical meeting between the coaches.

When said meeting was going on, one of the Danish officials noticed movement behind a black glass mirror. They called the hotel and demanded the adjoining door be unlocked and found two Chinese men with cameras taking notes. The Danes did the sensible thing and held the men until the police arrived.

The police, however, were no help. Instead of frog marching these two down to the station house, they seem to have let them go on their own recognizance. When the Danish federation complained to FIFA, FIFA said, "Hey, there's no problem of ours here". Sepp Blatter, who is used to talking out of his ass, opined on the incident as well. He says there was a clear security failure, but as a member of the IOC himself, he has no reason to believe anything like this will happen next month as well.

Well, sure, maybe not. But if Dara Torres is placed in a room with black mirrors, she had better question if that's where she wants to inject her horse steroids or not.*

*Not really my belief. Innocent until proven guilty, anyway.

[Update: There is a very thorough account of the whole incident in this Sports Illustrated piece. Definitely worth a read.]

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In Hot Water Over Hotpot Dinner

(Photo by Celie on Flickr)

Yesterday, I made a startling discovery that I, as a Japanese ex-pat, was the only non-whitey in the Unprofessional Foul stable of writers. Well, as my first act in the role of the representative of my people, I will give my co-bloggers a word of advice - never get between an Asian and his hotpot dinner. When the temperature drops, we don't just crave hotpot; we depend on it for survival (sadly, the go-to place in my old neighborhood, Happy Shabu Shabu closed last year - anyone know any decent hotpot/shabu shabu joint in New York?).

I bring this up, because Chinese national women's team coach Elisabeth Loisel is this close to being sacked for ordering her players not to attend a hotpot dinner arranged by Chinese federation officials out of dietary concerns.

According to the Beijing Morning Post, Loisel ordered players not to attend the dinner arranged by Chinese officials because of dietary concerns.

But Chinese officials hit back, over-ruling the hotpot ban and issuing a public rebuke against the Frenchwoman.

"The team's welfare is in the hands of management and not the coach," said Zhang Jianqiang, the manager of the team. "She has no right to interfere."

Damn right. Okay, so she has issues with punctuality and her team has underperformed, but denying her players hotpot? That's cultural oppression of the worst kind. China should seriously consider sending her to a Cultural Revolution-style reeducation camp and set the bitch straight.

Though I have to ask - with players like these, do they really need a coach?

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