With the departure of Mario Ballotelli to AC Milan, English football is experiencing “a severe buffoon shortfall”, according to Carl Faber, Interim Diversity Officer at the Football Association. “Paul Gascoigne is no longer lighting up the scene with his daft footballing antics, and watching a man commit slow, drink-fuelled suicide has rather lost its novelty value since George Best all but patented the self-destructive cycle of despair”
“Peter Odemwingie has made a late bid to assume Mario’s mantle. However, we fear that the beautiful game is now almost bereft of real characters... guys like Mario who aren’t just cultivating one media-friendly eccentricity, but who genuinely seem as mad as a box of frogs.
“Our last hope, in the harmless buffoonery stakes, may be Craig Bellamy, a man who couldn’t pour piss out of a football boot even if the instructions were written on the heel”...