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So long Flo-Po

Liverpool striker Florent Sinama-Pongolle's loan spell at Recreativo Huelva has become a £2.7m permanent move.

Sinama-Pongolle, 22, has signed a contract until June 2011 with the Primera Liga club.

The France Under-21 international's loan, which began at the end of the season, contained an option to buy him.

He told Recreativo's website: "I'd like to thank the club and the fans for the affection they have shown me."

Sinama-Pongolle was bought by Liverpool from Le Havre in 2001 along with distant cousin Anthony Le Tallec, but both remained with the French club until 2003.

Neither were able to hold down a regular first-team place and Sinama-Pongolle spent the second half of last season out on loan at Blackburn.

Recreativo president Francisco Mendoza said: "Today is a very happy day for all those connected with Recreativo.

"We have waited for the moment of seeing Sinama as a member of the club.

"We have obtained him by putting in the most important financial push of this organisation in its 118-year history."

He's earning $5.5 million a year for playing football - considerably less than other American professional athletes

Good look to the Rossa tonight 

GILLETT: NOTHING COMPARES TO ANFIELD
Jimmy Rice 03 May 2007
George Gillett believes nothing in world sport compares to what he experienced at Anfield on Tuesday night.
And while the American knew he was buying something special when he arrived on Merseyside earlier this year, he admits it has only this week dawned on him what it means to be part of Liverpool Football Club.

"What can I say after Tuesday night? It was magical," said Gillett.
"It was like attending the greatest sports event you ever go to on steroids. Nothing can compare to it.

"I couldn't have imagined when we bought the club the kinds of experiences we've already had. David Moores told me I had to understand what it was like and I would nod and say, 'Yes, we understand'.

"Really, neither I, Foster or the Hicks family could say we did. This is so much bigger and so much more important to so many people than we could ever have imagined.

"We walked around town on Tuesday to see some of the sights. There was a lot of singing going on, and I know this may shock a few people, but there was quite a lot of beer drinking. And I'm sure there was a lot after the game, too!"

Gillett again spoke of his desire to one day sit on The Kop – whether in its current form or in its new incarnation as the centerpiece of the club's new stadium.

"I wish I had been on The Kop on Tuesday, but I was concerned it would be a distraction. We've acknowledged the importance of The Kop already since we arrived and it's clear why the new stadium must be designed around it.

"We'll try to have as many seats in there as there used to be when it was originally a standing area. That's our ambition.

"That was once 24,000. We may not be able to get that many, but we'll certainly go beyond the 12,000 we have now."

On the subject of The Kop and its inhabitants, Gillett also made public his concern about ticket allocations for Athens.

He said: "What's on our minds more than anything now is the fans. This is all about them. I'm really interested in the statistics for the tickets to the finals.

"UEFA has taken over 20,000 tickets already, so it's going to be very difficult for everyone to get tickets.

"We have huge support and I'm really sorry for those fans who follow the club everywhere and won't be able to get tickets. It's a huge challenge for the organisers but a very difficult situation.

"Our aim now is to go on and win the Champions League, but there's one thing we can be absolutely certain of: the players and the fans will never quit.

"They'll give their all to win. They have a spirit unique to the north west of England, which you see on the pitch in Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard.

"I saw the banner on The Kop before the game which read, 'Not English but Scouse'. It sums it up.

"When you have that heart in the team and combine this with the energy and ability of those around them, it's quite a combination.

"I could not believe the passion of Dirk Kuyt on the pitch. He never stopped running and it was amazing to see."

The more I hear from this guy - the more I like him

More fake Liverpool jersies

Any sign of Rafa's lovechild being back for the game?

He's a big-game player

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N155835070504-0954.htm

Liverpool to wear Red in the final

Facebook is better than Bebo

Sudan's famous goat 'wife' dies

The best-known goat in Sudan has died months after being "married" to a man in the South Sudan capital, Juba, the BBC has learned.

Local elders ordered a man found having sex with the goat, later called Rose, to "marry" her last February.

"The idea was to publicly embarrass the man," says Tom Rhodes, editor of the Juba Post, which first ran the story.

The BBC's story of the "wedding" caught the public imagination and became one of the best read internet stories.

Rose, black and white, is believed to have died after choking on a plastic bag she swallowed as she was eating scraps on the streets of Juba.

After the marriage, Rose had a male kid - but "not a human one" - Mr Rhodes said, hastily.

The "husband", Charles Tombe, said he was drunk at the time but has since refused to comment on the issue. The kid is owned by Mr Tombe.

More than a year after the BBC story was first published, it is still picked up by various web forums and being emailed across the world. Recently it got more than 100,000 page views for five successive days.

Over time, it has received several million hits - making it historically one of the biggest-hitting stories the BBC News website has published.

A Google search uncovers more than 1m different web pages, based on the same story.

Mr Rhodes, a Briton who helped found the Juba Post in 2004, was shocked when he learned how many people around the world had read the story his newspaper had originally published as a short, light-hearted account and not even bothered to publish on its website.

He said that he had seen that it occasionally returned in the BBC's "Most read stories" and was worried that he would have trouble with South Sudanese, accusing his paper of tarnishing the image of the region - now trying to rebuild after 21 years of war.

But he says he has not come across any such anger.

"It doesn't portray Sudan in a bad light - it shows the Sudanese have a sense of humour," he says, referring to the elders' original punishment.

He has, however, had people come up and say to him: "Oh, you're the goat man."

Mr Rhodes explains that South Sudan remains a conservative society.

If a man is caught sleeping with a girl, he is ordered to marry her immediately in order to save her honour and that of her family, he says.

This was the basis for Mr Tombe's punishment, after the goat's owner found him with his animal and complained to local elders.

They ordered him to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50, at the time) and also named the goat Rose.

Afterwards, he left with the goat, not quite hand-in-hand, more hand-in-hoof, to his home in the Hai Malakal suburb of Juba - and not in Upper Nile State as we originally reported.

I'm pulling for the Golden Boy

Where did I ever promise blondes?

I can't be looking at that kind of stuff at work 

Charles Barkley once said that Jordan is one of the tightest people around. Barkley said that once – they were stopped by a homeless guy and were asked for money and Jordan said to him "If you can speak English, what's to stop you from saying "you want fries with your Big Mac?" and walked on down the street

Minds out the gutters lads

Think of the tips you'd get 

Next seasons home kit apparently



Can't see Berbatov in it though

Teamtalk magazine just arrived in my inbox just now