35 CRAZY THINGS YOU MISSED THIS YEAR
NANCY SENT SUPPORTERS A CARD FEATURING A MAP NOT TO THEIR GROUND, BUT A GRAVEYARD WITH THE CAPTION: ‘MY PLACE IS HERE’
NANCY’S LATE KICK-OFF
January 1, 2020 brought an unfortunate portent, as Ligue 2 outfit Nancy wished fans a happy new year by, er, directing them to a cemetery. An e-card featured a map with coordinates not to the Stade Marcel Picot, but to a graveyard some 45 minutes’ walk away. The chilling caption: ‘My place is here’. Nancy apologised for turning a reminder of where they play – because fans do forget sometimes – into a memento mori. Well, at least they now know their New Year’s resolution for 2021.
MES QUE UN STITCH-UP
Apparently wowed by Martin Braithwaite’s one-in-four career goalscoring record and Championship spell with Middlesbrough, Barcelona bought the Danish marksman from Leganes. As a kid, Braithwaite had spent a couple of years in a wheelchair, so this was a nice, heartwarming tale. Or was it? Leganes didn’t want to lose him. It was late February: the transfer window had long since shut. But Barça, ravaged by injuries to Ousmane Dembele (who’d been sidelined since November) and Luis Suarez (mid-January), invoked a loophole permitting ‘emergency’ signings – even though Lionel Messi, Antoine Griezmann, Ansu Fati and two international forwards in Barcelona’s B team were available for selection, and even though they had let three forwards leave when the two-man injury crisis had already struck. Barcelona coughed up €18 million, before slapping a €300m release clause on 28-year-old Braithwaite; Leganes were duly relegated on the final day of the season. Hooray for Barça! Mes que un club! And speaking of weird transfers...
(INEXPLICABLY) LOOKING FOR ERIC
Having left relegated Stoke for table-topping Paris Saint-Germain, cleared a team-mate’s shot off the line and been preferred to Mauro Icardi off the bench in the Champions League final, 31-year-old Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting then joined PSG’s conquerors, Bayern Munich. We’re still processing this.
