Football
Chris Wright, Toe Poke writer 5y

Toe Poke Daily: Obama's message for Messi - 'Few people achieve great things on their own'

The Toe Poke Daily is here every day to bring you all the weirdest stories, quirkiest viral content and top trolling that the internet has to offer, all in one place.

Jump to: Liverpool bus gets stuck in Wanda garage | Man gets 54k Whatsapps after Carragher tweets his number | Arsenal fan's Baku hotel nightmare | Dream job alert! Football Manager game testers wanted | Decent odds on Mbappe to Newcastle?

There aren't many people who are in a position to offer advice to Lionel Messi, but the Barcelona superstar has now received a pointer from one of the few men who can.

Former United States President Barack Obama is currently in Bogota, Colombia to speak at the EXMA marketing and business conference. Ahead of that, he somewhat bizarrely broached the subject of Messi's shortcomings with Argentina.

- Messi misses out on Obama meeting in Argentina
- 'Baby face' filter: Premier League managers edition

While Messi may have won all there is to win at club level, he has always come up short at international level. In fact, the Albiceleste have failed to win a major honour since the Copa America in 1993 despite reaching several finals (including the World Cup in 2014) since then.

Heading into the 2019 Copa America, Obama laid it on the line for Messi and his national teammates as they seek to secure the country's first championship title in over 25 years.

"Even people that we consider geniuses work with other people in order to develop their style," said Obama.

"In Argentina, even though Messi is wonderful, they have problems winning the World Cup.

"My advice to young people is that we have to recognise very few people achieve great things on their own."

Liverpool 'park the bus' at Wanda Metropolitano

Liverpool fans will surely be hoping that an incident involving their team bus is not a harbinger of things to come for their Champions League final against Tottenham on Saturday.

As the team coach tried to exit the bowels of the Atletico Madrid's Wanda Metropolitano stadium -- the host venue for the final -- on Wednesday it ran into a bit of a "sticking point" as it were.

Of course, getting "stuck in" can be seen as a good thing in the sport -- it's the type of play you'd expect from Liverpool stalwarts like James Milner and Andrew Robertson -- but the team bus getting wedged on the exit ramp for an hour feels like a different and less desirable kind of stuck!

- Project Madrid: Were Liverpool or Spurs the true semifinal comeback kings?

One thing is for sure, this is not a tactical tip of the hand by Jurgen Klopp and company who are very unlikely to take a "park the bus" approach against Spurs.

Man gets 54k Whatsapps after Carragher tweets his number

A Twitter prank gone awry has seen a man inundated with thousands of messages after Jamie Carragher inadvertently shared his mobile phone number online.

It all began when Gary Neville spurned a good chance while playing for Manchester United in their 1999 Treble-winners' reunion match against Bayern Munich at the weekend.

- Beckham, Ole score in Man Utd legends match

On holiday in Turkey at the time, Carra, who maintains a friendly(ish) rivalry with his old nemesis and current punditry partner on Sky, asked fans to send him a clip of the miss in a tweet that also contained a fake phone number plucked from the ether.

However, it soon became apparent that the number included in the Tweet wasn't quite as random as first thought after the actual owner -- Newcastle fan Scott Forsyth -- was hit with an avalanche of messages all intended for Carragher.

Sure enough, Forsyth's poor phone was bombarded with over 54,000 messages in the space of a few days at a rate of roughly 50 calls and alerts per hour.

"At 5.18pm he tweeted it - since 5.19pm my phone hasn't stopped once," he told ChronicleLive. "My phone battery usually lasts me a day and a half - yesterday, I had to charge it three times!"

Forsyth also revealed that he has received countless pleas from Liverpool supporters asking him to get them tickets to the Champions League final as well as offers to join various Sunday League football teams.

Arsenal fan's Baku hotel nightmare

With the Europa League final almost upon us, fans of both Arsenal and Chelsea have spent the past few days making the long and regretfully arduous journey to Baku for the occasion.

Thanks to UEFA, travelling supporters have had to contend with massive expense and long journeys using whatever transport they were able to scrabble together.

Indeed, some have trekked thousands of kilometres to the Azerbaijani capital only to be confronted by accommodation that was, shall we say, slightly less than accommodating.

Other than the general filth, dubious plumbing and the sink (which should have been in the shower?) being missing entirely, we really can't see much of an issue.

Thankfully, it would appear the rest of the city more than made up for the squalor of the hotel with the plazas and architecture of Baku presenting an altogether more pleasing temporary domain.

At least they are already in Baku to soak up some sights and prematch atmosphere -- at least one group of Chelsea fans faced flight delays this morning when their chartered plane had problems at London Luton Airport. 

Dream job alert! Football Manager game testers wanted

Most football fans know and understand the retina-straining, life-draining pleasure of sinking countless hours/days/weeks into a game of Football Manager.

However, most FM addicts don't have the added benefit of actually getting paid for guiding your gang of non-league misfits up through the divisions to Champions League glory.

The game's makers, Sports Interactive, have listed what might just be the greatest job opportunity in the history of job opportunities -- the chance to actually join their team as an official Football Manager tester.

According to the listing, the role would entail helping to identify defects in the game (by playing it!) while also testing new features, design tweaks and updates, among various other things.

The likelihood is that SI will be inundated with applications, so if you're a lifelong FM devotee and fancy bagging yourself a dream job then we suggest you log off (only momentarily) and hop to it.

Mbappe to Madrid, City or...Newcastle?

Here's one you wouldn't have seen coming as the transfer pages swirl with gossip over the likely destination of Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappe.

First on the list of clubs the Ligue 1 Player of the Year might join based on UK oddsmaker predictions is Real Madrid, followed by Premier League champions Manchester City. No surprise there, right? Now for third on the list, ahead of both Barcelona and Bayern Munich is Newcastle!

Ownership questions aside, we've read that Rafa Benitez would get some needed support in the transfer window from whoever controls the purse strings, but luring the World Cup winner from France to Tyneside would have to register as a massive transfer coup by even the loftiest of standards.

^ Back to Top ^