Italian football is no stranger to match fixing scandals, so it was no surprise this week when police arrested fourteen players in dawn raids in relation to soccer fraud, bringing the arrest tally to over fifty in the past year. Lazio captain Stefano Mauri was among the latest arrests, and although there is no immediate assumption of guilt, Zenit St.

That was as surreal as it was exceptional. A match of such class, such splendor, that many of us, including one Fernando Torres, were likely wondering who this team was that we were watching. As I asked via Twitter after 20 sensational first-half minutes had resulted in a trio of fine goals:

Is this real life?

Hong Kong youth side ESF Lions had a grudge to settle going into their match with rivals Kitchee Escola, having lost the previous encounter 16-0. The bad blood wasn't helped when one of the Lions earned himself a trip to the police station — and the starring role in a race scandal — by delivering a fairly unsubtle kick to the head of an opponent who had suffered a bad tackle.

Fishtown Hipsters, kicking in the balls. I have to give it to the Russians, they know how to make surprise moves, even Bobby Fischer wouldn't have seen this one coming. We all were anticipating a team of skilled bullies in order to break us physically, to get at least one of us hurt. Instead they went the other way.

Get in! Great news (if true) that that vile racist in the my tram experience video has been arrested.
There are few things in life worse than a racist. Great to see that the masses have ganged up on that particular cretin.
I love it when the like of her and the EDL and the BNP get rejected.

Revealed: Proof that Rooney COULD play at the Euro 2012 and the Olympics and that Fergie knows it!

Wayne Rooney may be a naughty boy, but he's box office. The clamour for him and David Beckham to represent Team GB will not die down. Fergie claims it is impossible for Rooney to play in both the Euros and the Olympics.

Gunners win at last For years people have been telling Arsenal that they roll over too easily and need to start being bullies. So they have taken a Spanish shopkeeper to court over a trademark infringement. The Gunners have won their case against Alicia Simon, owner of Seville's Arsenale hat shop, although she is appealing [.

Accrington 0-1 Stevenage (Beardsley 89)
BBC Report | Westley Reaction

Stevenage will face Torquay United in the League 2 playoff final at Old Trafford next Saturday. A place in League 1 is up for grabs for the winners after they beat Accrington and Shrewsbury respectively over two legs.

Of all the Guardian's football writers, Barney Ronay is my favorite. His writing is raffish and superbly intimate. His is the voice of an older brother come home from college to tell you glib and exaggerated tales of the secret lives of girls, why Coldplay is insufferable, and why your parents are all too bourgeois.

Calum writes at his blog Good Feet For A Big Man and tweets @calumcm ... This is his favourite goal:

A goal's a goal, of course, and they all count the same. Except it isn't, and they don't. A winner is better than a consolation, a 20-yarder better than a tap-in and a goal in the last minute tops one in the first.