MARADONA, TOTTI & A CHARITY GAME

I’m about to drop everything, catch a flight to Rome, and get my ass to the Stadio Olimpico…Diego Maradona has accepted an invitation from (gulp) my Francesco Totti, to play in a charity soccer match at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico on May 12.

The game will pit ‘celebrities’ against ‘singers,’ but due to his recent surgery, Totti wont be to play in the game, but is expected to act as a coach. On the celebrity athlebrity team, World Cup babes Gianluigi Buffon, Gennaro Gattuso and Marco Materazzi have already agreed to play…the singers (Gigi D’Alessio, Gianni Morandi, Claudio Baglioni, Biagio Antonacci and Eros Ramazzotti) I couldn’t care less about.

LIONEL MESSI MAKES IT SPECIAL

Today, Argentine soccer babe Lionel Messi and the Special Olympics received donations from the Spanish Catalan Sabadell Atlantico bank as part of a new global initiative to expand soccer opportunities for players with intellectual disabilities. The bank will donate 25 euros per ace marked during a tennis tournament Conde de Godo to the Special Olympics and the Lionel Messi Foundation. (At least what I think is going on…the release is in Spanish, so if I got it wrong, someone let me know!)

COLOMBIAN SOCCER TEAM BOSS IS AN IDIOT
Which leads me to ask the bank if also they help team bosses with intellectual disabilities? Because I got a nominee: Colombian national team boss, Jorge Luis Pinto.

Its just a shame that we don’t burn people at the stake anymore…racism and bigotry have no place in this world…and the only reason I’m printing his bullshit words is to make sure you all know who he is. Jorge Luis Pinto. Columbian national soccer team boss and raging homophobic.

Pinto should seriously check his own sexual orientation after saying homosexuals “shouldn’t” play soccer, because it is a sport for men, and should always be respected. “They don’t fit in. Because of their attitudes, the way they act, the effort involved, they just can’t cope with it. I think the concept of football being only for straight people, without being excessively masculine, should be respected,” he told El Heraldo on Friday. “It isn’t a simple thing, it is about the manners in which they act, there are some of them around [gay players], but not too many of them. Football has rejected these kinds of players.” Pinto needs to be rejected, red-carded and ejected from humanity. AND for the record, I’m not implying that any of the hotties in the above-photos are gay, it’s just my opinion that the furthest thing from their minds is whether or not one of their teammates might be gay.

THE JOHN DALY SHOW
Two versions of the John Daly show are currently running…In Daly’s version, Coach Butch Harmon apologized for talking smack about Daly for heavy drinking. Harmon parted company with the big guy after media reports of Daly slamming drinks in the hospitality tent at last month’s Tampa Bay Championship. “I called him (Harmon) the other day and he said he realized he didn’t get his facts right and he felt bad about it,” Daly told a news conference on the eve of the Spanish Open. “He has apologized to me…after what Butch said…my marketability went right down. I told him ‘you cost me quite a bit of money through the stuff that you said, I wish you would have called me then you could have got the facts straight.” Seems that Daly might be right about his marketability-they wont even spell his name correctly on his caddy’s bib…

BUT, Harmon’s version contradicts what John Daly slurred said. “That story is complete BS,” Harmon told Yahoo! Sports. “John Daly called me last Thursday and said, ‘Pro you killed me. I’ve lost all my contracts.’ I said to him, ‘John, I’m sorry you lost your contracts, but I haven’t done anything to you. You did it to yourself, and you continue to do it to yourself.’ He asked if I would go on the record with a retraction, and I said no…this is just another strange chapter in the John Daly saga,” Harmon said. “He takes no responsibility for anything.”

ABRAMOVICH NOT FEELING HOUSING CRUNCH
As we watch the economy crumble around us, we also are privy to watching some good peeps from the Forbes list of the “uber-rich” continue to spent money on things that seem a bit, uh, excessive? English Premier League club Chelsea Owner Roman Abramovich just paid $36.375M for a home on Wildcat Ridge above Snowmass Village in Aspen, Colorado. The cozy little 4,300 square-foot get-a-away has 11 bedrooms, 12 baths, 32 pieces of custom furniture and sits on more than 200 acres.

But the billionaire needs more…he’s just submitted plans to build what would be the most expensive private residence in Britain. The eight-bedroom “palatial” conversion in Knightsbridge, London, is expected to be worth about £150M when complete. Interior plans include a cinema, indoor swimming pool, steam room and entertainment room set across eight stories – three of them underground. Not enough spending from Abramovich? This crazy bastard is also reportedly buying the worlds largest drill in hopes of building a “sub sea tunnel between Russia and Alaska.”

As always, thanks for reading.
delinda@athlebrities.com