FOOTBALL

️‍🍷 My main cost less than yours, and I only ate a couple of Padrón peppers

When you go on a date with Iker Casillas, you’re expecting him to whip out a Groupon voucher and to ask for the discretionary service charge to be wiped from the bill.

After all, the former Real Madrid keeper was nicknamed “Tacaño” - “the stingy one” - by his teammates, who joked he had “crocodiles in his pockets.”

But even by those standards, Iker outdid himself on a recent date with former porn star Claudia Bavel.

Claudia appeared on a Spanish TV show this week, and recounted a time she suggested they get a glass of wine at a restaurant, only for Iker to point her in the direction of a supermarket.

After calling him “stingy and not at all generous,” Claudia went on to review his efforts between the sheets:

Apparently Claudia decided to give the “tell-all” interview when Iker stopped texting her back. To be fair, texts cost 30p on his pay as you go sim.

DARTS

🚢 Running a Little late

Getting an 18-year-old out of bed to visit a maritime museum with a bunch of middle-aged men sounds like a tricky task.

So as darts’ biggest stars stood in the biting Belfast wind outside the Titanic Experience for an early morning photo shoot, it’s not surprising Luke Littler was nowhere to be seen.

Seven players, including Luke Humphries and Stephen Bunting, were left “frozen” on the slipway for 45 minutes, before The Nuke eventually rocked up.

And it’s not the first time Luke’s pissed off his fellow stars. After he failed to respond to a text from Raymond van Barneveld, the Dutchman raged:

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FOOTBALL

🐊 Tightening the Perse strings

Deadline day may have passed, but the world’s top sides are still scrapping over ex-Rangers man and free agent Ryan Kent.

Fortunately for Iranian side Persepolis, they have an ace up their sleeve: the country’s liberal rules on exotic pets.

According to the Tehran Times, Ryan is on the cusp of signing for the club and “the fact that it is legal to keep crocodiles at home in Iran,” has been a deciding factor.

Regular readers might recall that Ryan brought two pet crocodiles with him to his last club Fenerbahce, and posted a job ad for a pet sitter when he signed.

In case you’re wondering, the position came with health insurance.

TENNIS

💎 Crank it up

Earlier this week, Emma Raducanu was lamenting her anodyne life on the pro tennis tour, where she passes the time with Jane Austen novels and solo coffee dates.

But how do stars occupy themselves if they don’t care for Regency era romantic fiction and grande Frappuccinos?

World no. 245 Gonçalo Oliveira provided an answer this week, as he tested positive for crystal meth.

Gonçalo is protesting his innocence, but if he’s looking for a foolproof excuse, he should speak to Andre Agassi.

The American star avoided a ban when he tested positive for crank, by telling the ATP his assistant spiked his Sprite.

BOXING

🎰 You are familiar with command-line interface?

In recent years, we’ve had to endure smug computer nerds telling us tech is “the new rock and roll” and bragging about their AI-enabled “six hour work week”.

So it was refreshing to see former middleweight champ Avtandil Khurtsidze strike a blow for mouth-breathing thugs everywhere, when he circumvented 20 years of Javascript training by kidnapping a hapless coder and forcing him to do his bidding.

Back in 2014, the Georgian boxer was moonlighting as a gangland enforcer for one of Russia’s most powerful crime lords.

The gang trafficked guns, took hostages with chloroform, and - in an impressively long-winded scheme - kidnapped a Las Vegas casino software engineer to learn about slot machine algorithms.

Their bid to “turn fruit machines into ATMs” failed, and the gang were rumbled when they nicked a shipping container filled with four tonnes of peanut butter cups, and tried to flog it to an undercover FBI agent.

Avtandil was banged up for four years, but he’s now out and plotting a comeback…

AND FINALLY…

🕵️ Alvaro no matter

Not all new signings arrive with fanfare and a menagerie of exotic pets.

After signing for Galatasaray this week, Alvaro Morata walked past the fans like he was George Smiley or the invisible man.