I always appreciate when things get added to soccer to make it more difficult — random MMA rules, firecrackers, whatever — but my new favorite unnecessary soccer accoutrement is BLINDFOLDS, because apparently telepathic soccer is a thing. You know, like when Luke put on a helmet and tried to block shit with his lightsaber in Star Wars. Exactly like that.

Legendary Manchester United strikers Dwight Yorke and Andrew Cole put Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez to the test in a Telepathic Football challenge organised by bwin, the club’s official online gaming and betting partner.

All joking aside, it’s a really cute and endearing clip, and no amount of Believing In My Partner could will me to score a soccer goal in pitch blackness. Pun intended. But no, I couldn’t kick a soccer ball out of the air if you let me use all five senses, stood five feet in front of me and calmly said, “I’m going to lob the ball at your foot now.”

I think the next step should be to organize a completely blindfolded (emblindfoldened?) game, with people just running and kicking blindly into each other. Put blindfolds on the fans, too, and let them react to bone break noises and headbutt echoes. Do the entire thing telepathically, is what I’m saying. Let’s just stay home and pretend soccer!

[h/t to Dirty Tackle]

Italy may have had its meatballs snipped off by Spain with a 4-0 loss in the Euro 2012 Final, but that doesn’t mean it’s all misery and depression for Mario Balotelli and Co. In fact, for Italy’s star player, today is filled with nothing but good news, as he has rekindled his failed love affair with soccer WAG Raffaella Fico. So what’d it take to bring these two lovebirds back together? An unexpected pregnancy. Hooray, cupid!

Fico told the gossip rags that she used a pregnancy test to confirm her expectations and she let Balotelli in on the news over the weekend. And it’s really nice to see that Balotelli is manning up and taking responsibility. Hopefully, this time he won’t allegedly cheat on Fico with an expensive English prostitute 5 times, after Wayne Rooney also allegedly had a fling with her.

But if Balotelli can get over everyone reminding him that Fico is just Cristiano Ronaldo’s sloppy seconds, then he can get through anything. After all, it must be pretty hard to say no to this woman.

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England and Ukraine will face off against each other at 2:45 ET on ESPN today in a match to determine which of the two teams will advance from Group D at the Euro 2012 tournament. England seems to be the favored team, as Ukraine’s top player and captain Adriy Shevchenko is all banged up. I don’t know what happened to Shevchenko, so I’ll assume that he was attacked by some of the stray dogs that have overrun his country.

As for England’s hopes, a lot of the attention today will be focused on the return of Wayne Rooney, who was suspended for England’s first two Euro matches for what I believe soccer experts call “being a big ol’ doody head”. Regardless of how he plays today and all of the ridiculous things he’s said in the past about his own fans, it seems that people still love the guy, because they’re willing to drop more than $90,000 (so far) on his custom motorcycle.

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Get some, Pele.

Last we checked in on international pop superstar Shakira, she was dumping her no-good soccer star boyfriend, Gerard Piqué, because he allegedly couldn’t stop putting his balls in other girls’ nets. But it turns out that Shakira’s not only ridiculously talented and attractive, but she’s quite forgiving, too. At least that’s what I’m taking away from the fact that she attended last night’s FIFA Soccer Awards at the Kongresshaus in Zurich with Piqué. Oh, and she also hosted the ceremony, so that may explain why she was there, too.

Regardless, Shakira was on hand to present Argentina’s Lionel Messi with his third Ballon d’Or football award, and Japan’s Homare Sawa with the Player of the Year award, as her team shocked the world by winning the Women’s World Cup. I would have given the award to Alex Morgan, in case she’s reading this and wants me to brush her hair later tonight.

Other soccer players like Wayne Rooney also won awards, but I’m just going to pretend that the entire event looked like this…

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British tabloids are “blazing hot” this morning after Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney tweeted the first photo of his hair transplant, because British tabloids spent a month talking about that one lady’s wedding hat and get bent out of shape over everything. Within minutes the Daily Mail had constructed a 10,000-word essay and a slideshow photo gallery of Wayne Rooney’s skull scab. Rooney got a hair transplant because he’s a rich grown up.

From his Twitter:

Hi all there’s my head. It will take a few months to grow. Still a bit bloody to. But that’s all normal. #hairwego

After Tweeting that, he marveled at his hash tag and spent two hours coming up with great names for hair salons. Some of his favorites include “The Gang’s All Hair”, “Hair Me Out”, and “Hair-O-Dynamics”. He also suggested a nail salon called “A Show of Hands”. None of this happened. Hash tags are #thedevil.

Just to confirm to all my followers I have had a hair transplant. I was going bald at 25 why not. I’m delighted with the result.

The result? Having the same amount of hair as before, only now it looks like it was stitched to his head. But hey, if he’s happy, I’m happy for him. Does anybody know where he could find a really elaborate hat?

[H/T Busted Coverage]

Google Analytics drives me insane. Instead of just writing jokes and posting pictures of girls, I find myself hunched over a desk, trying to figure out where the words should go for maximum SEO compliance. I study my own tendencies. For example, I use the phrase “In a story that ___” a lot. I also only seem to write about soccer and people running their mouth on Twitter.

So! In a story that brings together my two favorite sports-o-sphere topics, irrepresible bald-boy Wayne Rooney is challenging anonymous Internet soccer fans to fights in real life on Twitter. The issues began when “sam-oldham-LFC” (who may or may not be Chaucer) wrote:

Rooney ya fat whore ill smash ya head in with a pitchin wedge an bury ya with a ballast fork ya fat ugly lil nonse

After cross-referencing the index page and a few international urban dictionaries I’ve deduced that this means “I will beat you up, jerk.” So Rooney reponds with:

haha u know were I train every day kid come and do it good luck

But then the guy says

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