Each week, The Times takes a wry look at the events that may have passed you by and suggests what to look out for in the next seven days
YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED . . .
Ashley Cole: your move to Major League Soccer awaits. The United States is a more sympathetic environment for gun-toting athletes. It was revealed last week that thieves broke into the rented Florida home of Evan Longoria, the Tampa Bay Rays baseball star, and stole his AK-47 assault rifle.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily that unusual,” Joe Maddon, the Tampa Bay manager, said. And he would be right. Many American sportsmen bear arms, claiming they are needed as protection from criminals. “If someone comes up in a threatening manner, you can say it with words,” Luke Scott, the pistol-packing Baltimore Orioles hitter, said in 2006. “After that, action.”
Gun ownership among American football players has been estimated at 50-90 per cent. On Christmas Eve last year, two team-mates with the Washington Wizards basketball club reportedly drew guns on each other in the changing rooms in a dispute over a gambling debt.
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LOOK OUT FOR . . .
A Manchester United striker issues a statement saying sorry for his controversial celebration after scoring against West Ham United. “I want to apologise for any offence that may have been caused,” Javier Hernández says. “Emotions were running high and on reflection it was inappropriate to kiss the badge straight after my tap-in given that I have been at Old Trafford for less than a season and will probably be playing for Real Madrid by 2013.”
• After causing a stir by revealing that he was within “hours” of taking the England manager position, José Mourinho stuns reporters in today’s Real Madrid press conference by announcing that he was “nanoseconds” from accepting the Tottenham Hotspur job. “And Manchester City also,” the Portuguese claims. “I was going to do Real, Tottenham and City at the same time — Real in person, City from my BlackBerry, Tottenham via Skype.”