UnNews:Zizou gotta rattle them pots 'n' pans

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

29 July 2006

MELBOURNE, Australia GNN (GOANNA NEWS NETWORK) --Australian football supercoach Brent "Potato" Couchman has advised his former protege Zinedine Zidane to channel his aggression into cooking three weeks after the hotheaded Frenchman was sent off for headbutting Italian shit-stirrer Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final.

"Zizou is a dab hand in the kitchen," said Couchman, who appears little more than a sofa-bound PlayStation addict, but who was in fact Zidane's manager and mentor for 15 seasons during Cardiff City's unlikely transformation from English Third Division also-rans to overlords of European football.

"He makes a mean couscous. His secret is bulghur wheat, which has a delicious, nutty flavour. When I was running the show at Cardiff I often found that if Zidane was sent off on a Saturday, the best thing to do was go around to his place on the Sunday because the red card would focus his anger onto the stove.

"He is fantastic with pastry as well. And the things you've seen him do with a football aren't a patch on the things he can do with a bag of offal. If you ever see a sheep being gutted, hold a Tesco bag underneath it, then take it around to Zinedine's, whack it on the breakfast bar and half an hour later you won't be able to wipe the smile off your face."

Couchman said he understood Zidane's anger at Materazzi, who drew inspiration from the French wunderkind's Algerian heritage to reportedly call him "the son of a terrorist whore".

"After September 11 (2001), it was open season on the scarfies as far as those Eyetie rednecks were concerned," Couchman said. "If your dear old Mum enjoyed getting about in a hijab -- much less a burkha -- look out!

"I can understand Zizou laying a bit of a Glasgow kiss on the prick, but what I'm disappointed about is the fact that he only went for the chest. In all the drills we did at Cardiff I made sure that the players focused on the opponent's nose. If you're going to get sent off, you may as well make sure the other bloke's schnoz is spread all over his face like a half-cooked omelette and he's snorting back haemoglobin for a week.

"In any case, I've put the word about in Cardiff and Materazzi will be lucky to get a job washing dishes anywhere in Wales from here on in."

Couchman said his only regret from his time at Cardiff City - during which he took the one-time Welsh minnows to an unprecedented treble treble (scooping the English Premier League, FA Cup and European Champions' League three years running) - was the fact that he could never squeeze a fellow Australian into the side. And the fact that today's football manager video games are too complicated for him to get the hang of.

"I'd have loved to have Harry (Kewell) and Dooks (Mark Viduka) in the squad, but who was I going to drop? Didier Deschamps? Ronaldo? Ronaldinho? 'All-Night' Dwight (Yorke)? And I'd have loved to have got Mark Bosnich or Mark Schwarzer on board but we already had Peter Schmeichel and Fabien Barthez.

"Hell, I think at one stage Becks (David Beckham) only played three games for us in three years because Stefan Reuter and Steve McManaman had the right wing pinned down. But I'm glad he's kicked on at Real Madrid. Is he getting a game there?"