Welcome to Row Z, The Athletic’s weekly column that shines a light on the bonkers side of the game.
From clubs to managers, players to organisations, every Friday we’ll bring you the absurdities, the greed, the contradictions, the preposterousness and the oddities of the game we all love…
Manchester City versus Arsenal. If ever a rivalry epitomised football in 2025, this is it.
Arsenal: Your player threw the ball against the back of our player’s head which is naughty.
City: Your vice-chairman didn’t stay to see our player named as PFA Player of the Year, which is rude.
Arsenal: Your player’s dad says we don’t win things but that’s not true because we won the FA Cup in 2020.
City: You have differing views to us on the legitimacy of the Premier League’s financial controls.
Arsenal: You told our player that we should stay humble.
City: You played a song called Humble at full time, which was unkind.
Arsenal: You said we’ve mastered the dark arts but that’s not fair because we just copied from you. I’m telling the Premier League on you!
City: Your player looked at our player when he celebrated a goal. I’m telling the FA on you!
(Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Joao Felix and Chelsea Football Club, a timeline:
- January 2023 — Loaned from Atletico Madrid in January 2023 for the rest of that season in a bid to boost the team’s flagging Champions League hopes. Chelsea pay a loan fee of £9million.
- May 2023 — After Felix gets a red card on his debut and then scores four goals in 20 appearances in all competitions, Mauricio Pochettino decides he doesn’t want to sign the player permanently.
- August 2024 — Chelsea pay £44.5m to sign Felix from Atletico, with midfielder Conor Gallagher, a Chelsea-through-and-through product from the youth system who was one of their shining lights in the previous system, going the other way at the same time, presumably to help with PSR figures.
- February 2025 — Felix starts just three times in the Premier League and, 167 days after signing, is loaned to AC Milan for the rest of the season.
Still, it’s not like they tied him down to a long contract that he could just sit through while earning millions upon millions of pounds? No, wait, that’s right, they gave him seven years.
Felix is the second Chelsea 2024 summer signing to be discarded already, after Portuguese defender Renato Veiga was sent to Juventus. They also gave serious consideration to letting a third signing — Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall — leave as well, which makes for around £90m of unwanted summer signings six months later, while another, Omari Kellyman (£19m from Aston Villa) was said to be keen to go somewhere for some game time.
Tell you what though, absolutely no one could see this coming when Chelsea were buying an endless succession of players and giving them 25-year contracts.
Chelsea gonna Chelsea.
(Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Quiz time now. Here’s Cristiano Ronaldo during a discussion about who the greatest footballer of all time might be.
“I believe so, sincerely,” he says when naming who he thinks is the best player to ever kick a ball in the history of football.
“I’ve never seen anyone better…I say it from the heart,” he added, before calling the player “the most complete player that’s ever existed, in my opinion”.
Right, who do you think he was talking about? We’ll go multiple choice, you’ve got three options…
A) Pele
B) Lionel Messi
C) Diego Maradona
(Yasser Bakhsh / Getty Images)
And the correct answer is… mystery option D) Himself!
Come on folks, you know better than to doubt either Ronaldo’s greatness or his opinion of himself. If it didn’t hurt so much, the guy would literally eat himself.
Ronaldo gonna Ronaldo.
While Aston Villa host Ozzy Osbourne’s humungous farewell gig, or Birmingham City talk of plans for building a tunnel under the city to a new £3billion Wembley of the Midlands, it’s time for…
Things Wolves said they were going to do but haven’t
1) Raise Molineux’s capacity to 46,000 as part of a huge expansion of the stadium.
2) Build a stunning new ‘Molineux quarter’ for fans in conjunction with the local council.
3) Revamp the Steve Bull Stand, which dates back to 1979, is unfit for purpose and has some Victorian foundations.
4) Turn Molineux into an iconic, seven-day-a-week venue that people would travel to from around the country.
5) Oh, and become one of the top teams in world football.
Things Wolves are doing?
Tweet of the week this week goes to…
You mean the Rory delap emoji?! https://t.co/XzAPNS1ze8
— Tandem Felix (@FelixTandem) February 3, 2025
Although it was run close by this excellent transfer announcement video by Charlton Athletic.
You’ve just signed a player on loan with the surname Gilbert (first name Alex), so what do you do? Set a video to some Gilbert and Sullivan music? Do a skit on Gilbert Grape? Nope, much better than that…
What’s he doing here?! 👀#cafc pic.twitter.com/tEmOgelRqD
— Charlton Athletic FC (@CAFCofficial) February 3, 2025
And finally this week….
0’ – Jack Young receives a red card for ‘pissing’ on the side of the pitch 🟥#PFC | #LSL
— Palmerstown FC (@UnofficialParmo) February 2, 2025
Yes, Irish seventh-division outfit Palmerstown told it how it was when Jack Young was literally caught with his pants down at the start of their match against Whitehall Rangers.
Obviously, they saw the funny side…
Despite his red card at the weekend, midfielder Jack Young returned to training this evening.
(He even had time to empty his water bottle at the end…🫣) pic.twitter.com/tIbXqhE346
— Palmerstown FC (@UnofficialParmo) February 4, 2025
They even launched a GoFundMe page to help pay for Young’s €100 fine.
“Our player Jack Young at Palmerstown was sent off today for ‘pissing’ on the pitch,” the page stated. “Help pay his fine as a sign of justice for players that ‘need to go’.”
You know when those things really catch on and because it’s such a good cause they go viral and end up raising thousands and thousands of pounds/Euros? Yep, not this one, at the time of writing they’ve raised €110.
We can only assume the public thought that donating would be like pissing money up the wall.
