Talking Balls: Lucky Bhoys, Dodgy Buys and a Foul-mouthed Tirade

Good news for fans of “ZZ Watch” this week. After giving up all hope (us and not him that is) Zheng Zhi actually played. Better still he scored. Even better than that is that the goal was the winner over Hearts which secured Celtic Champions’ League football next season. Take a look at the goal by clicking here – it’s at 3:10 and it’s a belter. Whether or not this affects ZZ’s Celtic career remains to be seen but goals like that should mean he’ll not struggle for offers.

Zhu Jun, who we mentioned last week as a potential bidder on Liverpool has upped the stakes. Apparently he has signed a deal with none other than Diego Armando Maradona. The deal is reported to have been inked last Thursday and Zhu will install the Argentine as Liverpool manager if his bid is successful. There are links here and here for you to decide the validity of it for yourself

Sina also reports that Zhu is trying to sign Juan Roman Riquelme for Shanghai Shenhua. The mercurial midfielder was seen as the natural heir to Maradona and he would certainly light up the CSL. Zhu said “We’ve actually talked to Ronaldinho before, then we found out if we want to buy him, we had to buy his endorsement contracts together, so I did some maths, and it turned out that we have to pay about RMB 100 million altogether. So it didn’t work out.” Considering that Ronaldinho cost around RMB 325 million when he moved to Barcelona and RMB 185 million when he moved to AC Milan it seems that Zhu’s figures might be a little off. That’s doesn’t bode too well for the red half of Merseyside if he takes over.

Team China play a friendly with Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen on Wednesday in Jiangsu. The game kicks off at 10pm as CCTV scheduled a broadcast of the opening game of the 2010 AFC Women’s Asian Cup at 7.30pm. Bayer might be worth staying up for as they beat the China Olympic Team 6-1 on Sunday.

The World Cup is a little over 23 days away. Despite being the first team unable to qualify China has already got involved according to the South African press. Fake flags bearing the legend “Made in China” have flooded the South African market. One vexillologist said "The green is luminous and not dark green; the red is almost pink and the blue looks purple" of the counterfeits. Full story here.

Birmingham City are planning to tour China and Beijing is one of the stops. Those of you who would like to watch the Blues in action have until July 20 to change your ways.

Finally, Beijing Guoan were held 0-0 at home by Changsha Ginde on Sunday. They were dumped out of the AFC Champions’ League last week so it’s not going well for the boys. But it’s worse for Joel Griffiths who vented his spleen over his exclusion from the Australia World Cup squad by manager Pim Verbeek – :"I would have been much happier if he had given me a phone call to say, 'You are shit', but not even having the respect or courtesy to take 30 seconds out of your day to call." The full article is here.