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Wacky World: On The Buses 4thegame.com takes another sideways glance at the strange goings-on in the world of football... ************************ ON THE BUSES This week, as a kind of tribute (ie, a completely coincidental one) to Reg Varney, star of TV's On The Buses, we have two contrasting tales of when the worlds of football and buses come together. Firstly, we have the tale of the most expensive player in British football history, who still needs to use public transport to get about, even though it would hardly dent his wages to get a diamond-encrusted limousine to drive him around town. Yes, it's Robinho, Manchester City's Brazilian superstar. He can't seem to afford a house either (the credit crunch is hitting us all very hard), so he and his girlfriend live at a five-star hotel in the centre of Manchester, and when they fancied nipping to the out-of-town Trafford Centre to do a spot of early Christmas shopping recently, instead of driving there himself in a barely-scaled-down monster truck like any other footballer, he and his missus hopped on the bus. That's £6 for the tickets and same again on the way home. Actually, he could have saved himself a few bob if he'd got a return ticket on the tram to Stretford and caught the free shuttle bus from there to the shops, but maybe he hasn't worked that out yet. To be fair, when he first arrived, it probably took him a few days of searching for the Underground before be remembered that he hadn't signed for Chelsea. One fellow traveller said: "He sat downstairs as if it was the most normal thing for a multi-millionaire footballer to do. Word quickly went round about who he was. Nobody quite believed it and some just stared open-mouthed. You'd think Robinho would have a fleet of luxury motors like so many other Premier League players. At the very least you'd expect him to be driven by a chauffeur or maybe, at a push, pay for a taxi. But a bus? Amazing!" Meanwhile, with a few Argentina fans likely to have travelled to Scotland for Diego Maradona's first match in charge on Wednesday night, bus drivers and passengers in Glasgow should probably watch out. Last week, a bunch of Chacarita Juniors fans hijacked two public buses in Buenos Aires, forced the passengers off and demanded that the drivers took them to their team's match against Talleres. Some of the fans were carrying knives and when both buses were stopped by suspicious police, 70 fans were detained, with two remanded in custody. It's not just the fans who get in trouble in Argentina though, with Boca Juniors striker Lucas Viatri heading to court over allegations that he robbed a hairdressers. Viatri, along with his brother and a friend, allegedly stole a pair of scissors and some hair spray and has been accused of robbery aggravated by the possession of weapons. He was held in custody for a month during preliminary investigations and now faces a trial, though his lawyer Artuo Olcese is confident that it will not lead to anything: "There's no case against him, there's no evidence which incriminates him," he said. Viatri's agent Cristian Traverso also insists that his client is innocent: "He was training at the time, that's the truth," he said. "He couldn't be in two places at once." ************************ Catch Wacky World every week in the 4thegame.com newsletter... |
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