The Chelsea defender has always been full of surprises
David Luiz is revealing one hidden talent after another this season. First by proving he can defend and now by doing card tricks in the dressing room.
With the cameras rolling and his teammates gathered around, the Brazilian defender successfully pulled off a post-match card trick that would make David Blaine jealous (assuming he gets jealous very easily).
This is what it’s come to for Chelsea under Antonio Conte. Atop the table with a six-point cushion, a club record 11 straight wins with 25 goals scored and just two conceded in that span. After a while you need David Luiz to do some card tricks just to stave off the boredom of domination.
Anyway, Luiz now joins Mario Balotelli and Rafa Benitez as football’s top off-the-pitch magicians.
Holiday themed self-promotion can produce some very odd results
Antonio Conte: Overcome with holiday joy
Christmastime: One last frenzy of saccharine enriched consumerism to close out the calendar year. Many baffling sales pitches have been made under the guise of festive celebration, but football clubs seem to have a special knack for producing content of this type. And the holiday season is better for it.
Here are some of the latest examples.
Celtic FC
You know this is going to be unsettling the second Leigh Griffith appears as a tiny elf on a shelf, but when the kid opens the front door to find Brendan Rodgers looking at him like this…
…and doesn’t immediately slam it shut and run away screaming, you know you have entered a universe that has nothing to do with reality. Also, why are they giving this kid an entire shop’s worth of Celtic merchandise to hoard under the stairs? Aren’t there other young fans who would appreciate some of this stuff? Maybe even say “thank you” when a professional footballer magically appears to give him a free gift? Ungrateful little git.
Chelsea FC
Antonio Conte staring into the camera like he wants to murder your ancestors kind of distracts from the misdirect they’re trying to achieve, because by the time they get to everyone playing games and having fun, you’ve already wet yourself, turning your pants the same color as that godawful yellow shirt all the players are wearing.
Barcelona FC
There was a meeting where the following exchange took place:
“OK, our theme is ‘sharing happiness’…what’s the best way to convey that in one minute and 36 seconds?”
“Well what if we have Santa Claus, dressed as a history professor, in a psychiatrist’s office…”
“SAY NO MORE, MIGUEL. THIS IDEA IS ‘SHARING HAPPINESS’ BOILED DOWN TO ITS UNIVERSAL ESSENCE AND WE ARE DOING IT NOW.”
And whoever said, “Wait, isn’t that completely weird?” was overruled and probably fired, leaving them unable to buy gifts for their family this year. The end.
Arsenal FC
This is 100% batshit insane. The accents that sound like something out of an abandoned Pixar film. The continued degradation of Santi Cazorla. The attempt to appeal to Australians with tired caricatures of their own existence. The tacked-on “Merry Christmas” that has nothing to do with anything that just happened. Per Mertesacker trying to start a fire using his own body. The inclusion of a long forgotten Carl Jenkinson.
The fact that this video exists proves that we will never fully understand the universe or the human mind.
Juventus FC
After taking in all of the insanity we have to this point, it’s nice to end with a video that’s actually quite good. Juventus’ pizza loving zebra mascot Jay (OK, but this one is a little insane, too) fulfills a Christmas wish carelessly lost by an elf who may or may not be hopped up on methamphetamine.
To recap, more animated mascots and less creepy managers, please.
Chelsea defender Gary Cahill proved to be Man City’s best finisher, helping the London side to a 3–1 comeback win that caused City to come unhinged as the match progressed.
Frustrated that calls weren’t going his way as the flubbed opportunities on goal piled up, the strain of not being able to stroll through the Premier League as he did the Bundesliga began to show in Pep Guardiola when he sarcastically applauded the ref like a loon in the second half.
Goals from Diego Costa, Willian, and Eden Hazard made up for Cahill’s own goal just before halftime and led City to adopt an “if you can’t beat ’em, injure ‘em” approach in the final minutes.
Sergio Aguero resumed his attempts to maim David Luiz and was shown a red card, as a result.
In his post-match press conference, Guardiola claimed that Aguero’s flying knee kick on Luiz wasn’t intentional, but he did apologize for his team’s behavior.
PEP: "It’s a pity it finished like this (full time incidents), I don’t like that. I apologise for what happened." #cityvcfc
For all the pre-season talk about Guardiola and Jose Mourinho in Manchester, Antonio Conte is not so quietly turning Chelsea into the most formidable side in the Premier League. Even with Gary Cahill scoring against his own team.
Never let David Luiz lurk behind you. This is something everyone should know by now, but one Chelsea TV presenter didn’t learn until he got a surprise from a stone-faced Luiz while going about his business at the club’s Cobham training complex.
Be sure you have the sound on when you watch, because the noise that escapes his body as it happens is the best part.
Second-half goals from Willian and Diego Costa gave Chelsea a 2-0 win over mighty Hull City and left the Blues feeling good after the match. As a result, Eden Hazard did a little work for Chelsea TV, first interviewing Willian, who dedicated his goal to his mother.
After that heartwarming moment, Diego Costa emerged from the dressing room and tried to evade his mic-wielding teammate before demonstrating that he knows the word “beautiful” and can speak in tongues as if possessed by a demon. Which would explain so much.
Frustrated by Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s reluctance to fund a much needed squad overhaul, manager Antonio Conte has murdered all of his players in order to force Abramovich to bring in new ones.
“Mr. Abramovich and the board were unwilling to make the changes that both I and the previous manager told them were necessary, so now they have to,” Conte told reporters as he removed a blood soaked raincoat. “Simple as that.”
Each of the last two summer windows have had transfer business deemed insufficient to keep pace with the rest of the league by Chelsea’s manager at the time. For Mourinho in 2015, the lack of investment cost him his job despite winning the Premier League title the season before and now Antonio Conte has suffered two losses in his last three Premier League matches, with the latest being an embarrassing 3-0 defeat at Arsenal.
“It was rather easy to eliminate all of the players,” Conte said. “Branislav Ivanovic had the mobility of a cactus, so he was the first to get it. And as soon as I started chopping, Diego Costa pulled out an axe of his own and helped me do it. I didn’t even ask him to. I said, ‘Diego, why do you have an axe in the dressing room?’ and he said, ‘Boss, why do you have an axe in the dressing room?’ We laughed and then we chopped everyone. Actually, Gary Cahill just fell on the axes without us having to do anything. What a mess he is. Now more than ever.”
Conte added that the only player he and Costa spared was captain John Terry because “he is Chelsea’s only reliable defender even though the club didn’t want to renew his contract.”
Abramovich was not immediately available for comment, but it is believed that he will not be pleased with the prospect of having to pay for an entire squad of new, world-class players and to have the away dressing room at Emirates Stadium cleaned.
When asked what he will do between now and the opening of the January transfer window, Conte said, “John Terry and two men with axes will get Chelsea more wins in that time than the other players would have.”
Didier Drogba had a pretty miserable Saturday. First, he had to watch Arsenal embarrass Chelsea 3-0. This alone was enough to share a catty tweet aimed at Theo Walcott implying that if he was still at Chelsea, the result would have been different.
A pair of goals from Shinji Okazaki gave Leicester an early 2-0 lead against Chelsea in the EFL Cup, but defenders Gary Cahill and Cesar Azpilicueta scored on either side of halftime to equalize for the visitors. In the second half, with survival in the competition on the line, Chelsea brought in destroyer of worlds Diego Costa and in the 89th minute, Leicester defender Marcin Wasilewski was sent off for delivering a blatant forearm to Costa’s face, seemingly for no reason other than the fact that he is Diego Costa.
Anytime you get Antonio Conte and Jurgen Klopp in the same building, you know there’s going to be a lot of facial contortions. Add in the fact that Liverpool dealt Chelsea their first loss under their new manager and you’ve got a recipe for some over the top face drama.
Antonio Conte proved during Chelsea’s Premier League opener against West Ham that he has not calmed down at all since Euro 2016. If anything, he might have increased the amount of crystal meth in his Red Bull espresso.
