20 February, 2008

Rob from the Rich…

In shock news this week, it turns out that Liverpool is not the only place in the world where football supporters are pikey enough to actually steal from their heroes. This weekend Luca Toni’s luxurious Italian villa was broken into and burgled, with thieves taking all sorts of personal items such as old kits from the striker’s illustrious career to date. Perhaps wisely they left the World Cup winners medal, as well as his Golden Shoe accolade, but took further liberties with his fiance’s jewelry and other trophies.

The elaborately coiffured Sicilian hitman found out about this just hours before his team Bayern Munich were due to play Hannover, in a competitive game where they needed to win to stay top of the Bundesliga. Ever the professional though, Toni manned up and was able to bag a quickfire hat-trick in just 24 minutes to give Bayern the win. Check it out for yourself here:


This comes just two months after Steven Gerrard became the sixth Liverpool player in 18 months to be ripped off by masked hooligans, who planned their raids while players were out of the country either on European or International duty. “Four men, wearing dark clothing, hoods and balaclavas, entered the property and stole items of jewelry,” a police spokesman said of the incident. It was a “confrontational burglary” too according to Merseyside police, as professional WAG Alex Curran was present at the Formby mansion while this all took place, although thankfully she was left unharmed. She was understandably pretty shaken up, but it seems that luckily neither of the couple’s two kids were home that night with her.

Previously the homes of Dirk Kuyt, Daniel Agger, Pepe Reina and Peter Crouch were all targeted, with a variety of jewelry and trophies stolen to presumably be fenced for a tenner each to buy heroin. Additionally, former teammate Jerzy Dudek had jewelry, a range of football memorabilia (including his 2005 European Cup winners' medal) and even his Porsche stolen in an attack in June 2006, just before he moved to Real Madrid. Pretty shameless I think you’ll agree.

So what conclusion can we draw from all of this faithful reader? Simple: don’t live in Liverpool as it’s full of scum, but I’m guessing if you are smart enough to work the internet you kinda knew that anyway.

UPDATE: Luca has since thanked his burglars for their 'mercy'. Whether he gets any mercy himself tonight against Aberdeen is a different matter ......