Barry's Beef

Red tomatoes always beat green peppers at the half-time Ready Steady Cook

This one is for the football afficionado. A real meaty issue that you can get your teeth stuck into, just like a burger in the Debate. I don't know what I was looking for but a random google search has directed me in this...direction. UT Arad. Who dey den? I hear you ask. A Romanian football team, of course.
And by looking at the photo you can clearly see they love their football. Or they are ex-Communist weirdos. You decide.
This isn't an opportunity to take a dig at football's poorer cousins however, well it is but not the sole reason. The main issue is their transfer policy. Luton Town's very own Mike Newell has come out about slimy, money-grabbing agents, even Sven alluded to it in an interview with some Sheikh but it really is a very MEATY issue.
Regal Horia (which is not Latin for Princess Di). Who dey den? I hear you ask. A Romanian football team, of course. A very skint football team. And now a very hungry team too. ("Hungry? How so? I thought you said they were Romanian", I hear you cry in utter disbelief.)
In one of football's dafter stories UT Arad sold a player in exchange for 15 kilograms of meat, local sport daily Pro Sport reported on Monday. Before you rush down to the newsagents I should say that, I assume, Pro Sport is local in Romania not England. But defender Marius Cioara decided to chicken out and instead swan off to Spain, retiring from football to take up a job in agriculture or construction (nothing else just those two possibilities).
A Regal Horia official was quoted as saying: "We are upset because we lost twice - firstly because we lost a good player and secondly because we lost our team's food for a whole week."
UT Arad seem to be quite the vultures of lower league Romanian football. As intense research shows that in 1998 struggling Romanian club Jiul Petrosani sold defender Liviu Baicea to UT Arad for a fee of 10 footballs and a set of shirts and shorts. Now there's struggling, there's struggling and there's Jiul Petrosani. Jiul Petrosani may well be the butt of everyone's jokes as midfielder Ion Radu was sold to second division club Vilcea for two tons of beef and pork. That's a lot of meat folks. And the moral of the story? Don't treat footballers like a piece of meat.

Update: Having just re-read this post, I noticed you will have to click on the picture for a better view.