We use the “REASONS TO HATE SOCCER” tag pretty liberally at With Leather, but this has been one of the worst-ever weeks to be a soccer fan. The embarrassment ranges from flopping shame all the way up to fans slicing open their own players’ heads with beer bottles, so it’s only fitting that Friday would feature the crown jewel of any depressing soccer week: the stadium-wide riot.

Here’s the gist: Gremio played Huachipato in a Copa Libertadores group stage match and tied up 1-1. Not something you’d think would cause a bunch of macho posturing, right? Well, apparently Gremio manager Vanderlei Luxemburgo started laughing at/antagonizing/making snide remarks to Huachipato manager Jorge Pellicier. The Huachipato players decide to kick his ass, but Luxemburgo thinks he’s in the clear and jogs away with a smile on his face. He runs into a bunch of riot cops, however, and with nowhere to go just kinda falls down and receives stage 1 of a riot ass-whomping. That causes every fan, player and ball boy within a mile radius to charge in and start fighting and it was all extremely necessary.

Luxemburgo’s explanation:

“None of this was necessary,” Luxemburgo said.

Oh, sorry.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not going to call them “grenades” anymore because people on the Internet know way too much about the semantics of what is and isn’t a grenade (“grenades have shrapnel!”), but this is the third story in two months we’ve written about soccer fans indiscriminately tossing explosives at soccer players, and I’ve got to ask … why is this a thing? Seriously, why are you trying to bomb the soccer guys?

The first story happened in Iran, where a player almost lost a hand disposing of what he thought was tossed garbage. A month later, a player gets injured during a Cypriot soccer match and fans throw firecrackers at him to “teach him a lesson” about not taunting them. Now, a first-division soccer match in Argentina gets suspended because somebody threw a bomb at a goalkeeper and nearly exploded his eardrums.

Again, why is this a thing? I guess “insanity” is a viable excuse, or maybe a surplus of bombs and nobody around but soccer players to murder, but can’t we find a way to riot about soccer without bombs and walls of flame? Jesus Christ, soccer, come on.

[h/t to Larry Brown Sports]

Carmelo Anthony has single-handedly destroyed entire nations during the 2012 Summer Olympics, so it should come as no surprise that some countries would love to run up and punch him in the dick. That dream was made flesh during Team USA’s final group game against Argentina.

During the final seconds of the third-quarter — and the U.S. holding a comfortable 102-76 lead over their rivals— little Facundo Campazzo hit Anthony between the legs as the All-Pro forward drained a three-point shot.

Campazzo— who is the backup to the Knicks newly signed free agent Pablo Prigioni— claims that he did not intentionally hit Anthony.

After the game, Campazzo accused U.S. point guard Chris Paul of punching him in the first half. (via The Other Paper)

Ah, the old “I didn’t do it, but he started it” defense. The best part is the side story about Kobe Bryant getting mad at yelling at Campazzo in Spanish, causing the guy to apologize TO KOBE but not Melo. That’s just the way it goes, I guess. Here’s the clip, if you want to see the “confusion” of a guy purposefully punching somebody in the junk and telling us we imagined it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in June, Colombian women took to the streets to promote their new found joy of pole dancing, and their countrymen put down their rifles and giant bags of drugs and started waving dollar bills around. Soon after, the rest of South and Central America took notice and joined in the fun, endorsing what we have long associated with fake breasts and C-section scars as the latest exercise fad.

Well much like an underground cocaine lab in a Tom Clancy novel, pole dancing exploded throughout South America and this past week the 2011 South American Pole Dancing Championship took place in Argentina. A dozen or so women traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina to first witness the 2011 Pole Dance Argentina contest and then compete for the continental title. Argentina’s Maria Luz Escalante was the big winner of both events, as I assume she blasted Buckcherry and made her ass clap on that pole. A very warm With Leather congratulations to Miss Escalante, who will go on to compete at the World Pole Dancing Championship, which I assume takes place at Charlie Sheen’s home.

Alas, I bring bad news for fans of our own American pole dancing. Via the U.S. Pole Dance Federation’s website:

USPDF has decided not to host amateur regional competitions this fall 2011 due to various projects and some positive re- structuring. We’re is holding off with our next competitions until the spring 2012.

Well, at least it was written like a true pole dance champion. Viva Argentina after the jump!

UPDATE: Apparently the whole event didn’t take place on the set of Hostel, so I added some more pics.

Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Sheen made a few headlines when he picked up over a million followers in his first day on Twitter. Hollywood’s curious curator of tiger blood now sits just shy of 3.8 million followers. But Lionel Messi, in his own special way, has blown Sheen out of the water. In just 9 hours on Facebook, the wily Argentine (and arguably the greatest soccer player on planet Earth) has picked up over 6.7 million fans. So who’s winning more?

Granted, the “Likes” on facebook are probably easier to come by than Twitter followers; Facebook has about 600 million member profiles compared to about 200 million profiles on Twitter. And Messi’s following is worldwide, and I wonder if “Two And A Half Men” has any sort of following in Spain (it does air in syndication there, apparently, as “Dos hombres y medio”).

It helps that Messi adds entries to his page in both Spanish and English, and that his worldwide following would almost certainly eclipse that of Sheen’s. But regardless of the platform, gaining nearly a million followers an hour is pretty cool. But you know what’s really cool? A billion followers an hour, but you could only do that for…like, seven hours.

Thanks, Quickish, for the heads-up.

Roberto Pettinato is the host of a show called “A Perfect World” in Argentina, and while I think that title would be more suited for a show about Brazilian models, Pettinato apparently used it as a platform to express his opinions on the 2010 World Cup tournament. While showing his support for the Argentina soccer team, the host showed that he’s a man who stands for two things – animal cruelty and 70-year old German stereotypes.

Discussing his country’s team’s loss to Germany, Pettinato pointed out that world famous psychic and With Leather gambling liaison Paul the Octopus had indeed predicted Germany to win this specific matchup. To show his respect, the host displayed a dead octopus, called him Paul, proclaimed him a Nazi, chopped his head off and pulverized him in a blender. Haha, soccer fans, don’t ever change!

I’ll have the calamari for an appetizer, The Sun:

Read the rest of this entry »