FOOTBALL

🥳 Loa blow

José Mourinho was partying like it was 2004 on Wednesday night, as Benfica sealed a heroic 4-2 win over Real Madrid with a 98th-minute goal from keeper Anatoliy Trubin.

But what inspired José to roll back the years? We’re pretty sure he was fuelled in equal parts by fear and professional jealousy.

Fear because 200 Benfica ultras stormed the club’s training ground last Saturday morning, demanding answers for recent poor results.

And jealousy because his old protégé Álvaro Arbeloa had been handed the reins at Madrid.

José has previously described Arbeloa as one of his “favourite players”, but he had this to say in a post-match press conference last week:

Last week, one Spanish paper was even reporting that Mourinho was deliberately trying to get sacked by Benfica so he could walk into the Real job in the summer.

Presumably that’ll be much harder now he’s produced one of the most famous nights in the club’s history.

🎭 And it’s live!

You’ve endured Hamilton, failed to get World Cup tickets and Darlington Panto is still 10 months away.

Luckily for you, a handful of tickets remain for The Upshot Live.

Join us as we crown the season’s biggest wrong’uns, look ahead to the World Cup and spill stories too spicy for the newsletter.

Will Quincy Promes bust out of jail to make an appearance? Will we make it to Birmingham without a superinjunction from the Beckhams?

Get your tickets to find out…

TENNIS

🕺 Rod Raver

When Nick Kyrgios first hit the scene, he was on a one-man mission to prove you could party till dawn, play basketball whenever you wanted, and still win Grand Slams.

It turns out you can’t, but it’s nice to see Nick is still plugging away anyway.

He was in Melbourne for the Australian Open this week, and was booted out of a nightclub at 7am on Sunday morning. After a day sleeping it off, he then hit the bars again till the early hours of Monday.

It’s impressive stamina for a 30-year-old, although spare a thought for Nick’s doubles partner Leylah Fernandez, who had to share a court with the sleep-starved Australian on Monday afternoon.

They were knocked out in straight sets after just 56 minutes…

FOOTBALL

🤖 That’s a really great question, Robert

When Spanish coach Robert Moreno rocked up at FC Sochi in 2023, his new squad couldn’t believe their luck. A young, dynamic coach who used to manage Spain’s national team!

But quite quickly, they began to feel like something was a little off with Robert. He was impersonal. Robotic, even. And he ended every team talk with the line: “Please let me know if you need further clarification.”

Then the penny dropped: he’d been using ChatGPT to plan everything from training sessions to transfer strategies.

That’s according to FC Sochi’s sporting director Andrei Orlov, who sacked Moreno back in September after a string of poor performances.

Orlov alleged that Moreno gave ChatGPT the final say on which striker to sign last summer, and that he used the chatbot to plan a 6,000 mile away trip to Khabarovsk on the Chinese border:

Moreno has denied all of the allegations, and he’s currently knocking up a really nasty picture of Orlov on Grok to teach him a lesson.

FOOTBALL

🍺 What’s the matter Liga boy, fraid we might stream something?

Your local boozer is struggling because of massive overheads, rising business rates and your tedious mate who won’t stop talking about Dry January.

Do you A) show your support by going down on a Tuesday night, taking part in the pub quiz and enjoying some scampi fries and a couple of pints of Worthington's Creamflow.

Or B) stay at home with a warm can and grass up the pub for streaming football matches without a proper licence.

Well, La Liga president Javier Tebas is hoping you’ll go with option B.

In his increasingly unhinged bid to tackle piracy, Tebas is now offering a €50 bounty to anyone who reports their local pub or bar for broadcasting La Liga games illegally.

Considering it costs around €100 a month to access all of the games legally in Spain, we can’t imagine he’ll get too many informants…

Have you heard of Britain’s OnlyFans Triangle? Curious about the secret world of Fantasy Football? Or Ireland’s underground ayahuasca retreats?

Dispatch is a quirky new online magazine committed to longform storytelling. Most articles are free to read — sign up here.

FOOTBALL

🤏 Alfred Titchcock

The modern footballer is expected to have it all: A squeaky-clean public image. Millions of Instagram followers. And a great wang, apparently.

That’s according to French filmmaker Sikou Niakate, who’s just released a feature-length documentary exploring how his football career was cut short because of his small penis.

Sikou grew up playing in Paris, and by the time he was 15 he was already a 6ft 2in box-to-box midfielder who, he claims, commanded midfield “a bit like Yaya Touré”.

There’s no actual evidence of his football ability, but Sikou says he would definitely have joined a “big club” if not for one reason:

The director’s insecurities stemmed from childhood teasing from his sister, and a post-match incident in a youth game:

After that, Sikou quit the beautiful game and took up filmmaking, and he’s now hoping to exorcise his demons with the new documentary.

Hopefully Cannes Film Festival has got plenty of private changing rooms.

💉 Quick hits

📉 Liverpool have lost seven of the last eight Premier League games that Mo Salah has started.

💰 Taylor Fritz’s girlfriend, Morgan Riddle, made more money from sponsored Instagram posts at the Australian Open than he did for reaching the round of 16.

🕵️ FBI director Kash Patel was in the UK last year attending a secret conference. According to the New York Times, he kept requesting to skip meetings so he could go to Premier League games. He also invited the director of MI5 to go jet skiing.

⚽ Chinese President Xi Jinping is a big Man United fan. Kier Starmer just gifted him the match ball from the United v Arsenal match last week.

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AND FINALLY…

🪠 Take the plunge

So it’s confirmed: Tyson Fury will return to the ring in April to fight terrifying Russian Arslanbek Makhmudov, who prepared for a bout last year by wrestling a bear.

Slightly different training programme for Tyson.