Quelle surprise!

It seems that the French authorities are going to prosecute the members of their national soccer team who were shagging underage prostitutes after all.

Three of their top players admitted to paying tens of thousands of euro to bang teen hookers, which is a child abuse offence in France.

Yet somehow, they were not only not prosecuted on the spot, but two of them even made it onto the plane to South Africa and ended up shaming their nation all over again with dismal performances and that hilarious Gallic strop where they refused to train.

We're well used, via exposure to the England wags, to the ignominious sight of an overly made-up professional shopper standing by her man after he's been caught knocking off pay-to-play pussy.

But it's a bit of a new experience for the French. I wonder whether this case would ever have reached court if Ribery and Govou had helped their team to the title, or at least made the semi-finals? Perhaps it is not their disgraceful sexual shenanigans which are being punished so much as their failure at football.

As a coda to all of that, the cheat Henry has gone to the graveyard of ageing footballers, America, for one last payday. Unfortunately, he chose to play for New York Red Bulls - one of the two franchises in the MLS with as many Irish-American fans as Hispanic ones. There already have been calls for a boycott.

Much as I loathe what Henry did, and galling as it was to think of how much better Ireland's hungry young Turks under Trap might have done in place of the French in South Africa, I think it is appalling that it is Thierry who faces the shame and the boycott and not those who thought it legitimate to hire children for sex.

Cliftonville FC 3 Glasgow Celtic 0

No, that's not a typo. It really happened.

North Belfast part-timers Cliftonville wallopped mighty Glasgow Celtic 3-0 last night and it could actually have been easily 6.

Few things on Earth are likely to unite the loyalist denizens of Ibrox and the Irish republicans of Ardoyne. But this astonishing victory by Ireland's oldest club over the famous Glasgow Celtic just might.

Fair enough, it wasn't quite Celtic's first XI. But there were numerous players on display for the Scots whose individual alleged values far exceeds that of Cliftonville's entire team, and Solitude stadium too.

My suggestion? Celtic should ditch the lot of them, because they were terrible, and buy Cliftonville's entire squad instead.

Incidentally, Cliftonville made about six substitutions, including their keeper, and Celtic still couldn't score.

It's fair to say that by the end of the game, when Cliftonville were utterly embarrassing their guests by playing Barcelona-style one-touch possession passing around them, it was actually Cliftonville's reserves outplaying Celtic's second string.

It's a far cry from the last time Celtic came to Solitude, when the friendly was interrupted by the RUC who decided for no good reason to shoot plastic bullets into the crowd in an appalling sectarian attack by the security forces, and thankfully so.

How times have changed in the intervening quarter century. Solitude has a gleaming new stand, the team hammered their prestigious guests and no one was hospitalised by police brutality.

For those who missed out on a night when Ireland's oldest club (don't listen to the LIES of Bohemians) made yet more history, here's some highlights:



And some more!

Radio Telefis England

RTE are a joke. Let us count the ways...

They hoover up the licence fee yet ram the airwaves full of ads too

They spunk the proceeds on preposterous wages for eejits like Gerry Ryan

They settled actions for millions with people like Beverly Cooper Flynn and Monica Leech when they could and should have insisted on getting every penny back for their coffers

They can't do comedy at all

They're riven with internal politics, with half the organisation seeming to be plotting against the other half at any given time

But for me the main reason RTE are a joke is because of their slavish forelock tugging to all things English all the time. The newsroom acts like independence never happened, banging on about the royals and British 'celebs' all the time.

But the greatest disgrace is their sports department. Not for nothing is RTE known among League of Ireland fans as Radio Telefis England.

In recent weeks, we've seen stunning performances from local clubs in the qualifying rounds of European football. Bohemians narrowly robbed of victory against Trappatoni's former club, Red Bull Salzburg.

Derry City's mighty giant-killing run. Or best of all, St Pats Athletic's stunning performances that has brought them to the very brink of the group stages of the Europa Cup, formerly known as the UEFA Cup.

Pats' performance in Russia was so remote that only 3 fans were able to travel to witness it. Thank God, then, for RTE, the national broadcaster, who picked up the live rights from the Russians and broadcast the game to the fans back home.

Did they fuck. They didn't even cover it on radio.

The national team played its first ever game in Limerick yesterday. The national football team in an international friendly against Australia. You'd think people who couldn't get down to Limerick might want to watch that on TV. Well, they did. And they had to watch it on Setanta, because once again RTE couldn't give a shite for broadcasting Irish football.

Wait another few days though. Wait till the showpony parade of the English Premiership begins again, with all the hype and all the money. Wait for RTE to start tugging its forelock and giving a foreign football league more coverage than it gets from the national broadcaster in that foreign country.

Throw in their Celtic fixation and blanket coverage of British clubs in European competition, and you'd think that you were watching a British broadcaster, such is their sports coverage.

They've even been covering English test cricket on their news bulletins recently! I've no problem with cricket being covered - Ireland is a new test nation after all. So why don't they cover OUR IRISH team instead of a foreign one?

RTE - Radio Telefis England. They're probably already orgasming at the thought of covering our 'home' Olympics in 2012. In London, of course.

How corrupt is UEFA?

I'm now officially suspicious about UEFA.

Normally, when people refer to corruption in football, they mean attempts to fix matches by dodgy Far Eastern gangs. The discussions focus on whether players 'threw' games, whether they might have taken a 'bung', whether the betting patterns reveal a coup.

But I'm beginning to wonder about UEFA's role in a couple of very odd incidents.

The first relates to whether they have been rigging the draw for the Champions' League in order to manipulate the big box-office matches that they want. Last year, the quarter final draw was revealed to a Liverpool fans website two hours before it was made.

Now, that's either a 104-1 lucky guess, or else it is overt corruption. According to UEFA, it was just a lucky guess. They then refused to say anything further on the matter.

However, the original post which revealed the draw suggested that not only was the draw a pre-decided issue, but that the details had come from a disgusted UEFA employee and that bookies had ceased to take bets on the matter, which they indeed had.

But things got even stranger on Wednesday night. My sympathies go out to Chelsea, who were effectively robbed of a second successive Champions' League final appearance by the extremely erratic, if not downright bogus, behaviour of the referee, who is now in hiding after he denied Chelsea at least two legitimate penalties.

Feeling hard done by, one Chelsea player chased the ref about the pitch yelling in his face, while another roared his disgust at the TV cameras, and a third has since come out stating that he believes the ref was 'under orders.'

Sour grapes? Perhaps. Until, that is, you hear that the UEFA website posted the result of the game HOURS before it even kicked off!

The 'test' post was supposedly a dummy run. But it had the correct score and even named the players who were booked!

Chelsea's manager, one of the most respected and experienced names in football, has openly speculated that the referee was under orders not to allow Chelsea to proceed to a second final against Manchester United, because UEFA thought a second all-English final looked bad.

Of course, UEFA have dismissed suggestions of a fix. But they also ordered the match referee to go into hiding and not to talk to the press.

Books such as the excellent 'The Ball is Round' have examined the corporate corruption of UEFA, and its parent body FIFA, and revealed how football administration at the very top is run by some extremely dodgy people.

I'm now wondering just how dodgy they are. Dodgy enough to rig a draw? Dodgy enough to rig a game? Dodgy enough to pick and choose who should play in the world's biggest club football game - the Champions' League final?

Perhaps they are.

And I think to myself ...

Some news today just seems to jar and shock me into a little perspective, especially when seen side by side.

Firstly, it appears that Irish and Spurs soccer captain Robbie Keane has fulfilled his lifelong dream of playing for Liverpool FC. This dream comes with a four year contract on just over 100,000 euro PER WEEK.

My lifelong dream is to have a job doing anything that pays 100 large ones weekly for ninety minutes work. Seems like Robbie got my lifelong dream as well as his own.

"Feel the size of me walleh, Claudine?'

Meanwhile, back in the reality that is existence for the vast majority of people on the planet, soaring global food prices have now become so high that not only is there another famine in Ethiopia, but in Haiti people have resorted to eating MUD.

Yes, mud. Baked earth. Because they have no food.

Breakfast, Haitian style. Same menu for lunch and dinner.

And finally, the billionaires behind online mong-magnet Bebo have decided to beam some of the social networking inanity into space so that, on the off-chance there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, they too can ROFL @ de kewl LOLs uv da Bebo thang.

OMG!!!! Alienz r kewlllll!!!!111!!!

My jury remains out on who has my pity the most this morning, the poor Haitians, the aliens or the long-suffering fans of Liverpool.

Like I said, perspective is proving elusive.

What a wonderful world.

Chat Soccer

A big shout out to the lads behind www.chatsoccer.eu, a new online news service and chat forum for everyone with an interest in Irish soccer, from the Eircom league to Keano's Sund-Ireland, from the FAI's shenanigans to the grass roots junior game.

If footie's your thing, then this site is going to be of interest, I reckon.

Already chatsoccer has shown its credentials by beating the mainstream media pack to the developments on the international manager story, so clearly 'going forward' (as some might say!) it's the site to check out for the insider knowledge on all things Irish football related.

Now, if only they can organise a sub-section on the Irish League, my life will be complete!

Bore-trait of Zizou

Don't bother going to see 'Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait'. Don't bother waiting for it to come out on DVD either. Don't buy it at Christmas for your Dad or brother, with the sly intention of watching it yourself.

Don't wait for cable TV to show it next year. Forget it even exists. It is crap. I know, I went to see it last night. I want my 90 minutes back.

If anyone ever missed a sitter in front of a gaping empty net, it is the makers of this nonsense. What better subject for a fascinating footie documentary than the best player of this generation, Zizou?

In addition to his supreme talent, he is also that supreme rarity in the modern world - a Muslim role model loved by all. Even the armed guards at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem once conceded to me that no player was more gifted, no player more capable of uniting entire audiences in captive appreciation of his abilities.

Zinedine Zidane's history - the Algerian heritage, the upbringing in the tense, dangerous streets of Marseilles, the rise through French teams to Juventus, then to Real Madrid as the best of the famous Galacticos - is only part of what is missing from the nonsense I watched last night.

Let me explain what the filmmakers have done. If you've ever watched a Premiership game on Sky, you're probably familiar with their 'playercam', which trains a camera on one player for 15 minutes. Make that seventeen cameras on Zizou for 90 minutes, and you've got this boreathon of a movie.

Despite what some gullible people might say, this is not some oblique masterpiece, or an art moment to savour. It is 90 minutes of a sweaty man, trudging around the Bernabeu, waiting for his teammates to pass him the ball.

This film, much more than his headbutting Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final, will diminish memories of Zizou's genius. If Zinedine Zidane's magic can be boiled down to pixillated phone camera footage of his boots to the sound of a turgid drone by Mogwai, then there is no magic in football.

This artwank should have been left in whatever pretentious Parisian gallery it emanated from. I hope, now that Zidane has retired, that someone will make a proper documentary and portrait of him.

But this isn't it.