FOOTBALL

🧑‍🏫 And you can forget about Emerson’s sleepover next week

At 36 years old, Pierre-Emerick Aubemayang should be settling into the warm embrace of back pain, interest rate panics and quarterly missionary sex.

So it was a nasty shock when Marseille’s sporting director grounded the veteran striker and his teammates, ordering them to sleep at the training ground for a week as punishment for a 3-0 defeat.

Aubemayang did find a way to enjoy himself: staging an “impromptu party” with ten other players in their dorm room.

But just as they were passing round a bottle of Ricard pilfered from Benjamin Pavard’s mum, in burst club exec Bob Tahri to send them to bed.

The curfew didn’t last long. Aubemayang crept into Bob’s room with a fire extinguisher and soaked him, his bed and all his belongings.

The club suspended him for the next match, and his attendance on the team’s bodyboarding trip to Devon is now in doubt.

And he’s not the only striker in trouble with Marseille’s top brass…

FOOTBALL

🇫🇷 Je voudrais un transfer request

Like most people, we made up our mind about Mason Greenwood when that heinous video emerged four years ago.

But while Marseille were willing to overlook that minor foible, the 24-year-old striker has finally pushed his club too far.

According to insiders, the French side plan to sell Greenwood because they’re sick of his “lack of effort or basic gratitude” off the pitch.

In particular, Marseille’s sporting director is angry at Mason’s repeated failure to show up for his French lessons.

The domestic abuse allegations he can handle, but how hard is it to learn the imperfect tense?

FOOTBALL

🎈Big bang Theo-ry

It’s been a tough six weeks of soul searching for Italian football as they try to make sense of their decline on the world stage.

And now there’s a new theory: Serie A’s finest talents have been spending their nights honking on laughing gas balloons with escorts.

In the wake of a prostitution scandal sweeping Italy, videos have appeared that allegedly show “escort parties” organised by ex-Milan defender Theo Hernandez.

The parties - which appear to have taken place in the staff room of a regional call centre - were reportedly attended by top players including Man City keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, Sandro Tonali and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Admittedly, there’s zero evidence the women are actually escorts, and the source for the videos is “media personality” and former paparazzo Fabrizio Corona, who has been jailed twice for blackmail and extortion…

FOOTBALL

🪖 Special branch

After Southampton were caught spying on Middlesbrough’s training sessions ahead of their play-off semi final victory, Boro fans slipped on the camouflage.

Although it turns out the intern sent to spy on Middlesborough was a little less stealthy…

FOOTBALL

🏴‍☠️ Gould digger

Pirate TV mogul Mark Gould has already suffered a lot for his illegal streaming empire.

Not only was he thrown behind bars for 11 years, but he was also unmasked as a vitamin-deficient sofa masturbator when police released this photo of his arrest.

It showed him sulking in his pyjamas, surrounded by piss-filled bottles of Pepsi Max, inflatable sofas and discarded boxes of special fried rice.

And things got even worse for poor Mark last week, when a court ordered him to pay back £2.35m within three months or face a further prison sentence of 10 years.

Maybe those pots of Domino’s garlic dip are worth something…

💉 Quick hits

🚌 In Fabrizio Corona’s expose on Italian football, he also interviewed a bus driver who claimed to have “banged Theo Hernandez’s mum”.

💰 Among Fabrizio’s previous blackmail victims were David Trezeguet and Adriano, who was asked for €40,000 in exchange for photos of him “entertaining several female guests” at a private party.

👕 Trent Alexander-Arnold just has “Trent” on the back of his Real Madrid shirt because when he arrived at the club the fans chanted “Arnold”.

📈 Mason Greenwood has 48 goals in 80 games for Marseille.

🤑 FIFA are charging countries $2k per World Cup ticket for players’ friends and families.

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AND FINALLY…

🏳️ Final whistle