The Warm-Up: Where there's a will, there's a Ney

24 hours ago, it seemed Paris Saint-Germain were in a deep, deep, Neymar-shaped hole. Their biggest asset spent the season getting injured, moaning about his team-mates, punching fans and being late for training, and Nasser Al-Khelaifi had had enough.

“They will have to do more, work more… they are not here to have fun,” the club president glowered. “I no longer want to have superstar behaviour. If they don’t agree with this point of view, the doors are open. Ciao!”

It was the spiciest missive to come out of the Parc des Princes this side of Adrien Rabiot’s mum’s latest ravings, and very enjoyable for it. Is it wrong to take pleasure in PSG’s failings? If it is, The Warm-Up doesn’t want to be right.

Where could Neymar go exactly? Real Madrid have just signed Eden Hazard for the same position. Manchester City don’t need him, Chelsea have a transfer ban, Manchester United are pretty much the only top (‘top’) club likely to beat PSG in a crisis-off, and there’s no way Barcelona would embarrass themselves by getting him back.

But wait! It appears the Camp Nou boys actually are courting the pretty girl who dumped them for Chad with the posh car and Rolex. And while they don’t actually have enough money for a date, they’re more than happy to bribe Chad with… OK, this analogy has run its course: they’re going to offer some players in part-exchange. Ivan Rakitic, Samuel Umtiti and punctuality’s Ousmane Dembele are the… lucky ones, is it?

The Warm-Up imagines there will be some awkward phone calls coming up in the days ahead. “Hi, is that Ivan? It’s Ernesto. Now how would you like to swap one set of serial European tankers for another?”

In actual football, a few things got settled at the Women’s World Cup: France progressed to the knockout stages with a perfect record after beating Nigeria, and have been joined by Norway, Germany, China and Spain.

Down in Brazil, it was retro night at the Copa America, with Chile All-Stars thrashing Japan. Gary Medel, Gonzalo Jara, Jean Beausejour, Arturo Vidal, Alexis Sanchez, Edu Vargas… one phone call to Marcelo Bielsa and we’ve got ourselves a real reunion party.

A special Warm-Up high five to bona fide QPR legend Vargas, whose brace took him to 12 Copa America goals – more than any player still in activity.

The inaugural Well Durr Prize for Open Secrets goes to Frank Lampard, who has let it be known – via an off-the-record press briefing, naturally – that he would be up for talking to Chelsea about their managerial vacancy. Glad you cleared that up, Frankie, old chap.

Derby, understandably, are keen for the Blues to use formal channels. “If Chelsea want to hire Frank, then it is in their gift to make an offer in pursuit of that,” said chairman Mel Morris, channeling his inner 1940s tax lawyer. “There is no change except that Chelsea no longer have a manager.”

So there’s no change apart from the one massive change that obviously changes everything. As you were, then.

This week in former footballers paying the accounts any which way they can:

On this day in 2002, South Korea recorded one of the most controversial World Cup wins of all time, beating Italy to set up a quarter-final date with Spain.

The game was good, but the fallout was better. There was Ahn Jung-Hwan, the scorer of the winner deep into extra time, whose contract with Serie A side Perugia was unilaterally terminated the day after the match. “I have no intention of paying a salary to someone who has ruined Italian football,” was Perugia owner Luciano Gauchi’s hot-headed take.

And then there was referee Byron Moreno, who annoyed the Italians firstly by giving South Korea soft early penalty, then by ruling out a Damiano Tommasi goal, and finally by sending off Francesco Totti, despite being miles behind the action.

Moreno was later arrested trying to smuggle heroin into the USA in his underwear, which is about as good a coda as you could possibly want to any story.

That’s The Independent‘s Miguel Delaney with a very lucid summing-up of the Paul Pogba situation and what it means for Manchester United.

Oh, and Diana Ross missed her World Cup penalty 25 years ago yesterday, so read this:

Glamour klaxon at the ready, folks, for the news that the draw for the first round of this (next?) season’s League Cup is to take place at… the Colindale branch of Morrisons.

Staggeringly, that isn’t a joke. To prove it, here’s Ray Parlour – who is conducting the draw alongside John Barnes – with his not-at-all-written-by-a-PR-person-called-Clemmie-or-Hugh take on the whole thing: “Hosting the draw in a supermarket as fans go about their daily lives provides them with a great opportunity to engage with the competition.”

Italy v Brazil in the Women’s World Cup. Brazil v Venezuela in the Copa America. England vs France in the U21 Euros. If you need us, we’ll be on the couch, OK?