Liverpool to offload Charles Itandje after his Hillsborough service antics

[asteroidblitz 12]

Liverpool will intensify their efforts to off-load Charles Itandje this summer after the reserve goalkeeper behaved offensively during the Hillsborough memorial service at Anfield on Wednesday.

 

The French goalkeeper was spotted laughing and acting the fool by TV cameras at the service to mark the 20th anniversary of the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters at Hillsborough. Members of the congregation afterwards complained about Itandje's behaviour, which was in stark contrast to the solemn occasion and that of the rest of the Liverpool squad. Rafael Benítez, the team manager, is understood to be livid with the 26-year-old having studied the complaints and the footage.

 

Anfield officials have described Itandje's behaviour as "wholly unacceptable" and are exploring the maximum punishment they can impose on the player with their legal advisers. He is unlikely to play for the club again.

 

Itandje has made seven first-team appearances since joining Liverpool on a free transfer from Lens in 2007, but has not started a senior game since the FA Cup defeat by Barnsley last season. He does, however, remain a registered member of the first-team squad and still has over two years to run on his Liverpool contract.

 

Attempts to sell Itandje to several clubs last summer, including Galatasaray, were thwarted by the goalkeeper's personal demands, but Benítez will renew efforts to part with Itandje at the next available opportunity.

 

[snakehips 0]

I'm guessing this was the sombre occasion where Kenny Dalglish was CLEARLY seen walking in front of Moores (I think it was David Moores) and having a good laugh.

 

I'm sure that at every funeral/memorial service there are people who have a laugh and a joke. There is NO NEED to act all morbid and upset the whole time. More newspaper rubbish trying to create mischief.

[Tom 13915]

Good point Snakey.

[paddy 9]

very good point, which chipwrapper was this in?

[MattM4 0]

I'm guessing this was the sombre occasion where Kenny Dalglish was CLEARLY seen walking in front of Moores (I think it was David Moores) and having a good laugh.

 

I'm sure that at every funeral/memorial service there are people who have a laugh and a joke. There is NO NEED to act all morbid and upset the whole time. More newspaper rubbish trying to create mischief.

Exactly. Always the same with the reds. They, as an organisation come up with so much bullshit.

[ohhh_yeah 2795]

It is January 9, 2008, and in an upstairs room at Manchester United's training ground five elderly men in smart blazers are struggling with their emotions in front of a hushed audience. It is the club's media day building up to the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster and Sir Bobby Charlton's polite smile does not hide the fact he is trembling as he takes his seat. Bill Foulkes is straight-backed and dignified but only a couple of questions have been asked before the tears appear in his eyes and he reaches for a glass of water.

 

In an adjacent room Wayne Rooney has agreed to offer a modern-day perspective of that seminal day when 23 people, including eight members of Sir Matt Busby's team, were killed in the wreckage of the burnt-out BEA Elizabethan. It is not his specialist subject but he handles the occasion with dignity and more eloquence than some people might imagine. But then Cristiano Ronaldo comes through the double doors and the mood is broken.

 

He is wearing a white suit jacket and ripped jeans, looking every bit the boy-band hunk, but it is very obvious he is in a bad mood. He begins by berating Karen Shotbolt, the club's press officer, because he is waiting for Rooney and the event has over-run. He is banging his watch with his hand, flapping his arms and gesturing in the way that Portuguese footballers usually reserve for fussy referees and, at first, he is so animated it appears as if it might be a wind-up.

 

When he flounces back through the doors, cursing loudly, it is very obvious he is being deadly serious. Rooney is professional enough to carry on with his tribute but the attention is no longer exclusively on him. Thirty seconds later Ronaldo appears again, first rapping his forefinger against the glass in the door, then opening it by a fraction and starting to whistle at Rooney in the way that a farmer beckons his sheepdog.

 

It was such an unpleasant scene the journalists decided not to write about it because we had been invited to the training ground to cover a far more important subject and, when you have sat with men as noble as Charlton, Foulkes, Albert Scanlon, Harry Gregg and Kenny Morgans and seen the hurt in their eyes, it felt incongruous to veer off-track. But coming away from Carrington that day it was difficult not to wonder what had become of the pimply teenager with the braces on his teeth who had been photographed, in his first few weeks as a United player, holding hands with his mother, Dolores, as they crossed a busy Manchester street.

[luckyluke 1]

Given the attention the occasion had drawn by the fans, the club itself and the media what he did was pretty thick, not to mention insensitive. Still, he's a professional footballer. Not that it excuses such behaviour in a man 2 years older than me, but you know what I mean.

 

Ronaldo is just a grade A cunt.

[Ugly Mackems 133]

Cheeky cunt having the audacity to interfere in the scousers grieving.

[luckyluke 1]

Cheeky cunt having the audacity to interfere in the scousers grieving.

 

Exactly, knowing what the scousers are like makes it all the more daft. It's a bit of a nothing article as they were trying to sell him anyway.

[acrossthepond 711]

Cheeky cunt having the audacity to interfere in the scousers grieving.

 

Exactly, knowing what the scousers are like makes it all the more daft. It's a bit of a nothing article as they were trying to sell him anyway.

 

Kind of the reverse of our episode with N'Zogbia.