Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Fit of Pique

Wed Nov 19 08:55AM

There was mild surprise when Manchester United sold Gerard Pique back to his first club Barcelona in the summer.

Here was a young, strong and technically accomplished defender with the potential to develop into Rio Ferdinand's heir.

So why did United let him go? Because it turns out he spent most of his time at Old Trafford asking Sir Alex Ferguson for a number 35, egg fried rice and spring rolls.

And if Pique's view of China is anything like the Spanish basketball team's, a swift exit was assured.

"The gaffer, as Ferguson is known in Manchester, spoke in English with a Scottish accent and sounded Chinese to me," said Pique of his time at Old Trafford.

"But I was not the worst and there are players still there who do not understand him yet." Wayne Rooney, presumably.

It is not the first time Fergie's accent has cause problems. This summer, a Norwegian website thought he had said: "We're going to sign Dimitar Berbatov," when in fact he probably said: "Turn that f****** dictaphone off."

Pique continued: "I arrived without knowing any English, so the banter was lost on me."

Even Rio Ferdinand's Jeremy Beadle-esque 'merkings', despite the fact that, like Fawlty Towers or Mr Bean, they represent a pure form of comedy that breaks through linguistic and cultural barriers.

Pique was not finished mocking his former paymasters, and went on to explain exactly how Rooney maintains that enviable barrel-like physique.

"At United there were some incredible things happening. Everyone was allowed to eat what they wanted and one must remember that the English diet is just like people say," he said.

"Every two weeks we had to be checked out on a machine that measured the amount of fat we had in our bodies. It would be a surprise that none of the players broke the machine because of the amount of hamburgers and beer they had."

Ferdinand admitted that, after United's 2-1 defeat to Arsenal, he enjoyed Britain's favourite Saturday night meal - a skinful of lager and three packets of crisps.

Early Doors finds all this strangely reassuring. The stakes in football are higher than they have ever been, what with all the money and media attention, yet it remains the sport that science forgot.

Rugby players are put on special diets, trained to physical perfection and engineered to peak at the right time. It is the same with athletics, cycling, boxing - even Formula One drivers have had to cut out the cigarettes and playboy bunnies.

Somehow, football has dodged this obsession, and players are just as lazy, unfit and unprofessional as they have ever been.

When coaches try to make improvements, it invariably ends in disaster. Juande Ramos was horrified by the (mostly spherical) shape of Tottenham's players when he arrived, and promptly banned cakes and chips from the club canteen.

But Spurs were vastly better under Martin Jol when their diet consisted entirely of poisoned lasagne.

Conspiracy theorists have claimed there is far greater use of performance-enhancing drugs in football than we realise. But why bother shooting yourself full of EPO when a far easier way to enhance performance is to go for a week without KFC?

If Manchester United can win the Champions League with cholesterol clogging their arteries and booze impairing their judgement, then surely the modern obsession with nutrition is completely pointless.

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MORE DISPATCHES FROM SOUTH AMERICA: Boca Juniors striker Lucas Viatri is to face court proceedings over allegations that he robbed a hairdressers.

His lawyer Arturo Olcese said Viatri, who allegedly stole a pair of scissors and hair spray along with his brother and a friend, has been accused of robbery aggravated by the possession of weapons.

Olcese denied the charges against Viatri, who has scored six goals for Boca in the Apertura championship including the winner in the derby against arch-rivals River Plate.

"There's no case against him, there's no evidence which incriminates him," Olcese told Reuters.

"He was training at the time, that's the truth," said Viatri's agent Cristian Traverso. "He couldn't be in two places at once."

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DISTANCE OF THE DAY: 42cm. The approximate distance by which Geoff Hurst's second goal in the 1966 World Cup final failed to cross the line, according to Diego Maradona.

The tabloids take predictable umbrage at El Diego's sacreligious claim. The Mirror rather sternly calls him a "drug-taking cheat" and a "little conman", while The Sun takes it in rather a better spirit, telling Maradona: "Sir Geoff Hurst many not have been in your class as a striker. But at least he does not look like Carlos Tevez's auntie."

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Hans has to get inside his head." Harry Redknapp on Saturday on the job Spurs goalkeeping coach Hans Leigert faces getting Heurelho Gomes to cut out the blunders. Three days later, Leigert was sacked.

FOREIGN VIEW: "Schweini - Big Boss gegen England" - Bild backs Bastian Schweinsteiger to be Germany's star turn against England tonight.

Elsewhere in Germany, ex-Stuttgart player Michael Mazingu Dizney has admitted he used to drink a bottle of vodka every day, plus seven beers to quench his thirst after training.

COMING UP: Full coverage of all the international friendlies - click the links below for predicted line-ups and live comments.

Denmark v Wales 19:15
Germany v England 19:45
Northern Ireland v Hungary 19:45
Scotland v Argentina 20:00
Republic of Ireland v Poland 20:00

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