Vieri Expecting

That's Italian Christian Vieri and that's a nice little paunch there.

We're actually going to defend Vieri. You make over 300 appearances in Serie A over 20 years (not to mention another 30 in France and Spain) you're allowed to let yourself go for a bit.

Still. Gravity works, huh?

And guess who is giving him a look.

Fat Big Sam. Vieri is getting a run out with Blackburn as Allardyce tries to scrape what little tread is left on the tires.

If the second NSFW-ish pic is any indication, Vieri's ability to score hasn't been hampered in the least by his newfound affinity for mass.

The Daily Mail piece that is the source of the above-pic is worth skimming just to see if you can come up with a food or size pun that they didn't work over.

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Blackburn Are Too Fat To Win

Pot. Kettle. Blackburn.

Sam Allardyce thinks his players could stand to lose a few. That's pounds. Not points. They're accomplishing the latter just fine. But for the Blackburn manager, the two are probably related.

So he's called out Benni McCarthy.

Says Fat Big Sam: "We need to get a little bit more body fat off him so he can be more mobile."

Allardyce goes on to say that all of the players need to control their diet. He then blames the demon sugar: ‘Most have been brought up on sugars they shouldn’t have been, and those are addictive. It is not easy to wean yourself off those sort of sweets.'

Allardyce should know, as a kid he ate several candy stores out of business by himself. Okay, he's not mammoth, but he's not exactly svelt. We're just slightly amused that of all the things Allardyce could be addressing to help his team avoid relegation he picked sugar.

Cheer up, Sam. At least they're not addicted to blow. Although, maybe a casual coke habit would help with the weight loss.

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UF Quick Throw: Fattie is free!

Fat Frank's red card has been stricken from the record, and rightly so. He'll be free to play on Saturday, unlike England's Blowhard John Terry, who picked up a yellow for yelling at Riley and now has enough to miss a game or two.

Still, the biggest injustice still remains: Jose Bosingwa's cleat dance on Yossi Benayoun will never be punished, although hopefully karma can still have a say.

[Guardian Sport]

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UR 2 FAT. KTHNXBYE.

Let's see. A guy is too fat to do his job. So, in response, he decides to sue. Yep, totally must be an American.

Oops.

Twenty-five year old Michael Keane was given the heave by St. Patrick's Athletic of Ireland's Eircom League because:

"...he had failed to adhere to an ultimatum set down earlier this year regarding his physical condition."

Translation: He was too fat. Oh, we already said, but look at the boy, he's got his own weather system.

The hefty lefty–I'm assuming from the pic—has responded by appealing the decision. And if he wins, he'll have the remaining €200,000 ($315,000) of his salary paid out in doughnuts. Sorry, but when Ireland moved from the Irish pound to the Euro, it pretty much deprived us of the best jokes here.

See what your Union has wrought? Bastards.

The club sent Keane a letter earlier in the year (similarly) urging him to drop the pounds, going so far as to include a target weight. Even though Keane has yet to miss a training session since that time, he apparently hasn't missed too many desserts either and failed to hit the number. Ergo, he got the boot.

Anyway, not sure which is a better line to go out on:

A) "Ricky Gervais, is being lined up to play title role in the film version of the story"
B) "Maybe Michael Keane is Irish for Jared Lorenzen" Or
C) "Ronaldinho has apparently ponied up to help cover Keane's legal expenses."

None of those is particularly great—eh, it's a Friday, so we mail a couple in every now and then (some of us already have our heads elsewhere)—but any help with Costanza'ing is much appreciated.

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Where in the world is Afonso Alves?

[Ed. Note: Thanks to Bigus Dickus again for the pic]

[Ed. Note...UPDATE: Alves will start tonight in the FA Cup game against Sheffield United. Let's see if he lights the bloody world on fire. My money's on "no".]

Now I don't know about you, nor can I speak for anyone else, but if I paid 12.7 million pounds for something, well, anything, I'd want my money's worth. If it was a yacht? I'd ride the bastard to work each morning and pray that I don't get a parking ticket. I'd never leave my mansion if it cost that much. If it was a plane? Fuck, even if I'm heading 30 blocks downtown, I'm taking the sky way so have a runway handy.

Unfortunately for Middlesbrough, they just spent that amount on a new plaything, Brazilian striker Afonso Alves, and he's still sitting in the corner gathering dust.

It's been a bloody month since you signed him! What's going on?

The Guardian blog brought this up this morning, and it's something I can't believe I missed. Not even Shevchenko gets that little playing time for his price tag!

There are a few details worth mentioning here: it's not entirely manager Gareth Southgate's fault as the wonderfully-relaxed [can't think why... too much time in the coffee bars?] British Embassy in Holland failed to issue Alves with a visa in time for him to immediately start playing. The long lay-off was apparent in training, as he showed up quite, ahem, larger around the stomach and way off his original game pace.

Southgate did give him three blink-and-you'll-miss-it substitute appearances, but in each one, he displayed the same I-can't-be-arsed attitude, doing little to nothing during his time on the pitch.

Sure, he did manage 34 goals for run-of-the-mill Heerenveen last year, but we've seen the Dutch Corollary [as I like to call it; expect a more nerdy, detailed post on that towards the end of the week] before; quite simply, goals against rubbish Dutch league teams like Venlo and AS Alkmaar don't exactly translate well to the EPL. [Dirk Kurt anyone?]

Alves, of course, is not going to take this criticism lying down [probably mostly sitting, I'd imagine]:

"I look like I'm lazy, like Romario, but it's not the truth. I'm just playing a game with defenders. It's a tactical thing. They are not looking at me and by the time they do look it's too late, I've suddenly scored. Defenders don't know how to defend against me."

[I can't wait to see what he does to Titus Bramble.]

The Dutch Eredivisie is notoriously slack on the defensive side, and I'm skeptical as to how well Alves can adjust to the English game. His innocuous, anonymous start to a career with The Boro is troubling, to say the least.

This is a team that hasn't seen a great striker in a decade, when the silver-haired Fabrizio "White Feather" Ravanelli lit up the Riverside time and time again [I'll never forget, he scored a hat-trick against us on the opening day of the season... ugh]. Since then, they've suffered through the pain of a past-it Alen Boksic and a seemingly-blind Massimo Maccarone.

Afonso Alves has been set up as the goose with the golden egg, but right now, he hasn't laid a bloody thing.

Do we blame Farmer Southgate or the goose himself?

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Chelsea: still a dilletante club

The "braintrust"

You know that uncool guy at the club/bar/underground S&M dungeon who is there solely due to the size of his wallet, but pretends to be a regular? That’s sort of like how Chelsea are currently pretending to be a properly run football club and not the toy of an egomaniac Russian billionaire.

Peter Kenyon was quoted in a Bloomberg (no link, sorry) article to the effect that Chelsea are trying to be an actual business and reign in their wage bill.

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Chelsea has shaved 6 percentage
points from its salary costs since July and will meet a target
to reduce payrolls at the London soccer club to 55 percent of
sales, Chief Executive Officer Peter Kenyon said.

Team payments to players have shrunk to ``about 70
percent'' of revenue, from 76 percent in fiscal 2006, Kenyon
said in an interview at Claridge's Hotel in London last night.
Wages at the club rose to 114 million pounds ($222 million) from
108.9 million pounds in the year through June 2006.

``We've got strict objectives in terms of where we want to
get to and they are 55 percent of our turnover represented in
wages,'' Kenyon said at a London Chamber of Commerce and
Industry dinner. ``That's our target, which we're comfortable
we'll get to.''

Later on in the piece, Kenyon also mentions how Chelsea have more or less balanced the books in terms of transfer spending over the past year. But it’s hard to square the logical business talk above with persistent rumors floating around that Roman and Avram want to buy Ronaldinho for 60 million pounds. Ronaldinho could join some of Chelsea's other shrewd transfer bargains, like Sheva and Ballack. Don’t they realize that Brazilians age in dog years? Exhibits: Adriano, Ronaldo. Letting Ronaldinho run wild with notorious boozers like Joe Cole is not going to help with that spare tire.

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If Maradona Could Turn Back Time

From the Department of Apologies That Are a Day Late and a Dollar Short comes Diego Armando Maradona. In an interview with The Sun, which I am told is the British equivalent of The New Republic, Maradona apologized for his infamous Hand of God goal, more than 20 years after his illegal use of hand helped Argentina defeat England in the 1986 World Cup,

But wait, he didn't apologize! Maradona said,

"If I could apologise and go back and change history I would."

Operative words being "if I could". That's almost as bad as the Andy Pettite non-apology! Maradona continued with a heavy sigh and his best attempt at "wistful",

"I cannot change history. All I can do now is move on."

Maradona also expressed regrets over his cocaine use, claiming,

"If I had never touched cocaine I would have been three times as good a player. There would be no debate about who was the best footballer the world had ever seen — me or Pele. Everyone would say me."

A cynic would suggest that it's all too easy for Maradona to say "sorry" when he's been enjoying folk hero status all these years. And an armchair psychologist would suggest that the same personality traits that drove him to cocaine addiction probably also gave him the drive to become a great athlete. You know what? I am a cynic and an armchair psychologist.

For what it's worth, I dislike Maradona much, much less than I did in the past. As a media figure, I'll take Maradona's provocations (his interview on the History of Soccer DVD is an absolute gem) over Pele's polite stupidity any day.

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Frank Rijkaard Sure Knows How to Make a Girl Feel Good

Who ate all the Feijoadas? Ronaldo (left) or Ronaldinho (right)?

If you've known a girl for more than 10 seconds, you know the question's coming sooner or later - "Do I look fat?"

The answer is always, always, always, "No, you look great." Do not pause, not even for a second, lest she thinks you had to think about it. Don't qualify or embellish, opening yourself up to a follow-up question. And whatever you do, don't compare her to someone else - you're just digging yourself a hole there. She'll think either, (a) "Why did he bring her up? Does he think she's prettier than me?" or (b) "Why did he call her fat? What a dick!" Completely irrational, I know, but that's how girls think, and there's no way you can win. Of course, Frank Rijkaard never learned this lesson, and answers the question, "Is Ronaldinho too fat?" with "Oh no, but you know who's fat? Ronaldo!"

Good lord, that has to be the back-handiest compliment/defense ever. Also according to Rijkaard:

Adriano doesn't have a drinking problem. George Best, now there's an alcoholic!

Fulham isn't having a bad season. Derby, now there's a team staring relegation in the face!

Jamie Lynn Spears isn't trashy. Britney, now there's an unfit mother!

Right about now, at a restaurant in Barcelona, Rijkaard's frantically trying to explain that he didn't mean anything by it, while Ronaldinho refuses to take a bite out of his dinner. They can be so weird.

Ronaldinho image from Getty Images

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