Omission, injury and insult

So there's to be no South African bench-warming for Fabricio Coloccini after all. After getting our man's hopes up, Diego Maradona has now cruelly dashed them by omitting him from Argentina's final 23-man World Cup squad. Still, Fab's not the only person to have been caused pain by the loosest cannon in the world of international football management - not only did six other players suffer the same fate, but when leaving the press conference where the cuts were announced Maradona knocked down a journalist with his car and then branded the injured man "an asshole"...

In other news, old boy James Milner has been the subject of a whopping £20m bid from Man City, which his club Villa has rejected. It's been rather galling seeing Milner blossom into the player he showed the potential to be on Tyneside - not least because his departure early in the 2008/9 season precipitated King Kev's abdication and our horrible Premier League demise.

Elsewhere, another former Toon winger, Nobby Solano, has agreed a new short-term deal with play-off flops Leicester. Not much more than that to report, really - though it does give me the opportunity to go off-topic and post a link to this Foxes fan's genius response to Yann Kermogant and the penalty miss that cost them their place in Saturday's Wembley showdown...

And finally, Ron Reed at Australian newspaper the Herald Sun clearly enjoyed noting that "Viduka has always been a Pies supporter". But it's Captain Pasty himself who talks about skippering his country as being "the icing on the cake"...