BEFORE WE BEGIN

🛍️ Summer sale: 50% off Upshot Gold

From the Euros to the Olympics, this summer promises a rich seam of sporting scandal for the lowlife hacks at Upshot Towers to sink their grubby paws into.

And you can enjoy their prized scoops with a massive discount on Upshot Gold. For this week only we’re slashing the price to just £1.99 per month - our lowest ever.

Upshot Gold gets you three editions of The Upshot per week, and those emails are where we spill our best stories.

Like these gems:

• The Prem manager who lost his job over a secret sex dungeon.

• Frank Lampard's "utterly disgusting" 12-hour bender.

• The full dossier of Christian Horner’s horny messages to a Red Bull employee.

FOOTBALL

🪁 Kite Gunner

As the Premier League title race goes to the wire, Arsenal are praying for a favour from London rivals Fulham, who could play kingmakers as they host a seemingly unstoppable Man City tomorrow.

But if Mikel Arteta is hoping the Cottagers spent this week locked in cryotherapy chambers studying how to stop Pep’s inverted wing backs, he might be disappointed.

On Wednesday, striker Raúl Jiménez shared a video of his teammates flying kites during training…

FOOTBALL

🦋 To the manor Born

Meanwhile, all eyes are on Saturday’s derby between plucky Glaswegian underdogs Celtic and Rangers, one of whom will finally break the stifling hegemony of St Mirren and Kilmarnock and lift the league title.

And the tension of the title race is starting to get to the Rangers players - keeper Jack Butland was filmed squabbling with autograph hunters outside Ibrox and left back Borna Barisic squared up to a bloke in the car park.

The Croatian held up his fist and lunged at the fan before security spirited him away, which was probably for the best considering Borna’s “connections”.

The defender’s dad is the terrifying gangster Stipe Barisic, aka "the Moth", a member of the notorious Cepin mafia clan.

Back in 2017, Ukranian giants Dynamo Kyiv agreed to sign Barisic, but backed out at the last minute, choosing to buy Dinamo Zagreb left-back Josip Pivaric instead.

A seething Barisic publicly accused Dinamo Zagreb of sabotaging the transfer, and 10 days later, some masked men pulled up outside the home of Dinamo executive Zdravko Mamić and shot him, but fortunately failed to kill him.

FOOTBALL

🪙 Golden loot

Speaking of crooked Croatians, you’re no doubt wondering what happened to Davor Suker, the lethal striker who won the Golden Boot at the ‘98 World Cup.

After opening a Croatian diner in Las Vegas last month, the former Arsenal man was given a ringing endorsement by his co-owner, who explained Davor “knows nothing about the restaurant business”.

But fingers crossed that flogging boškarin and pljukanci to daylight starved gamblers goes better than Davor’s last business venture.

Back in 2011, Suker handed a pal a sack of ancient gold coins, and sent him off to the local antique dealer to get them valued.

Assuming Davor had spent his weekend dredging the Doggerland or digging up Roman hoards in East Anglia, Suker’s friend was a little surprised when the dealer wound down the shop shutters and a police van pulled up.

It turned out Davor had nicked the €25,000 stash after finding it in the seat pocket of a BA flight to London.

Davor slipped off with the coins in his hand luggage, but police tipped off local antique dealers about the theft, and he was eventually tracked down and slapped with an €8,000 fine.

BASKETBALL

🏫 High school ruseical

When burly 13-year-old ‘Ellie Blake’ turned up for her first day at Jeremiah Burke High in Boston, the school basketball coach made a beeline for her.

But while Ellie ran rings round her classmates on the court, they grew suspicious after seeing her park up a 1994 Ford Cortina, and head into Geography with a packet of Camel Blues and a tax return poking out of her back pocket.

It turned out ‘Ellie’ was in fact Shelby Hewitt, a 32-year-old social worker who’d conned her way in to the school by posing as a troubled teen.

Shelby had contacted schools via fake social workers, convinced them to let her enrol, and then rocked up in braces and a pony tail to gossip about boys and copy her new friends’ math homework.

She even convinced a therapist and her husband to foster her, and her new ‘dad’ regularly turned up to support her in high school basketball matches.

Hewitt was eventually rumbled after firing off an email from her fake social worker, claiming that ‘Ellie’ was being bullied by other kids for looking old.

She’s now on trial for fraud…

FOOTBALL

💰 Welcome to wreck ‘em

It’s every lower league side’s dream: an American billionaire rides to the rescue and pulls off a Wrexham-style miracle.

So when Paris Hilton’s financier brother-in-law Courtney Reum poured his cash into Portuguese second tier side Vilaverdense, fans were licking their lips.

Unfortunately it hasn’t quite gone to plan.

With his side trailing 1-0 in a must-win relegation decider, the 45-year-old decided it was the opportune moment to substitute himself on for his professional football debut.

It led to much whoopin’ and hollerin’ from Courtney’s private equity pals in the executive box, but fans were bemused as they watched their side relegated.

⭐ Don’t forget, for this week only, we’re offering Upshot Gold for just £1.99 a month. Upgrade here.

AND FINALLY

🎮 Eur having me on

Jamie Redknapp was always known as the prettyboy of 90s football.

But his boyish charms were beyond the abilities of coders at EA Sports, who depicted the England star as a blockheaded caveman in the Euro 2000 video game.

Still, at least that was 24 years ago. As recently as 2022, Pro Evo Soccer was recreating Messi and Ronaldo with the sunken face of a Vietnam vet who returned home to find his son was a commie and his wife was knobbing the mailman.

That's it for today.