Author: Brooks Peck

Man United give Wayne Rooney a testimonial and a nudge towards retirement

Manchester United have heeded the calls of supporters and granted Wayne Rooney a testimonial, which has been scheduled for August 3 of next year. The club award testimonials to players who have served for at least a decade, so Rooney’s 11 years puts him in that category, but they usually come before a player leaves the club or retires. Given Rooney’s much discussed poor form of late, that makes the timing of this announcement a bit interesting.

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Claudio Ranieri fulfills clean sheet pizza promise to his players

Leicester finally recorded their first clean sheet of the season and all it took was the supreme motivational power of pizza. Last month, Claudio Ranieri promised to buy pizza for all of his players if they achieved the feat and in their 10th match of the season, they finally did it, beating Crystal Palace 1-0 to put them three points behind first-place Man City.

Being a man of his word, Ranieri announced that he will fulfill his promise and even throw in some champagne for good measure. And for scorer Jamie Vardy, who now has goals in seven consecutive Premier League matches (giving him a league leading 10 for the season), there will be an added bonus.

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Everything goes wrong for Chelsea in first half against West Ham

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Look at that! That’s how close Chelsea were to an equalizer after West Ham opened the scoring in the 17th minute. Amazingly, things only got much, much worse for the struggling Premier League champions after this.

Cesc Fabregas then had a goal disallowed for being offside and Nemanja Matic was sent off after his second yellow just before halftime. In the frustration of all of this, Diego Costa and Fabregas were also shown yellows for dissent, while Jose Mourinho (who was already on a suspended one-match ban for his comments about the referee after Chelsea’s loss to Southampton  and assistant coach Silvino Louro were sent off.

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DTotD: Carlos Tevez gets launched into space

Carlos Tevez took a heavy challenge from Gustavo Gomez late in Boca Juniors’ Copa Argentina match at Lanus. Tevez scored Boca’s first goal in what would be a 2-0 win and in the 80th minute, Gomez made him pay for it with this tackle from behind, earning himself a red card and giving Tevez a free trip to the moon.

Though his leg generated enough wind power to fuel all of Buenos Aires for the rest of the night, Tevez was able to finish out the match.

This has been the Dirty Tackle of the Day: a chronicling of unfortunate events.