International Action

With the World Cup in Germany on the horizon the race is on to make sure that you're there. After all, no footballer wants to be sitting at home watching the whole thing on the BBC and listening to John Motson and Mark Lawrenson attempt to seduce each other - hell, no-one on the planet wants to hear that, let alone footballers - and qualifying is starting to get serious. And, now that we're a Premier League side full of international flavour, we've got our own representatives doing the business around the globe. Superstars every one of them, starting with;

Chalky - An un-used substitute this evening as Greece lost 1-0 at home to Ukraine. He also warmed the bench at the weekend for a 0-0 draw in Turkey. Keeping him company were former loanee Stathis Tavlaridis and January transfer target Sotirious Krygiakos.
LuaLua - Played and captained DR Congo as they beat Uganda 4-0. Lua is also spending a lot of time in his home country involved with charity work, so good on him.
Cissé - Came on for the last twenty minutes of Senegal's 0-0 draw with the Congo. Alongside him was a man who could've been his partner in midfield in a different reality, Papa Diop, as well as public enemy number one El Hadj Diouf.
Lokvenc - Ok, so he doesn't play for us. But the man who we nearly signed but for a dodgy agent scored twice for the Czech Republic at the weekend as they tonked Andorra 8-1. They then followed this up with a disappointing 6-1 victory over Macedonia.
Yoshi - Once again, he doesn't play for us. But "props" (as I believe the kids are saying on the street) to the man as he led Japan to a 2-0 win over North Korea, thus securing their place as the first team to qualify for next year's World Cup.

And I bet you thought the season was over and all footballers were on beaches somewhere sunning themselves.