Daily Schmankerl: Pulisic already wanting out? Bayern U19 out of the DFB-Pokal; Italy in... green?! Swarms of bees, and MORE!

Pulisic “already” thinking about leaving Chelsea (Daily Mail)

That didn’t take long. According to our favorite publication from the Merry Isle,

Christian Pulisic is ready to consider his Chelsea future in January if he continues to be left out of the side by Frank Lampard.

The 21-year-old has been an unused substitute for the last three Premier League games before being omitted from the squad entirely for the Champions League win at Lille.

The good news, of course, is that Lampard finally gave Pulisic 15 minutes to show himself in an already won match against Southampton. Pulisic provided an assist to likewise former BVB man Michy Batshuayi to make the score 4-1. Pulisic said (NBC Sports),

I did the best I could with the minutes I got. I tried to get in and help the team as best I could and I was happy I could do that. I’m happy. I want to continue to work harder and I never want to stop and I want to continue to get more minutes.

Good luck!

FCB U19 loses wild DFB-Pokal match against Cottbus 2-3

Alas, the youngsters training under Martin Demichelis just couldn’t hold on to their 2-1 lead. Check out the highlights below:

Italy wows with “Renaissance” national jersey (B/R Football)

Italy has debuted a whammy of a new kit for its upcoming match against Greece. Check out these pictures reposted by Bleacher Report:

On the Italian federation’s account, President explained

The green symbolizes the great work that we are doing with the young men. We want to celebrate the renaissance of Italian soccer with a color that does not replace the blue, but rather makes it more luminous.

I’M COVERED IN BEES! (The Sun)

Former PSG defender Dani Alves, now playing for São Paulo FC in his native Brazil, had a strange encounter with a swarm of wasps that had made itself a temporary home on a corner flag. Check it out:

Alves was stung on the neck when the wasps were irritated to find their corner flag pulled up the corner flag and chucked away from the pitch. Not fun!

Ousmane Dembélé tossed for telling ref he was “very bad” (ESPN)

Naughty former Dortmund player and on-again, off-again (mostly off-again, really) Bayern target Ousmane Dembélé may miss the clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid after he was sent off for giving the referee a piece of his mind to protest a red card shown to a teammate. Barca beat Sevilla 4-0, but Dembélé’s night ended a little sooner than the final whistle after he protested a red card shown to teammate Ronald Araujo. He told the ref to his face, “

Referee Mateu Lahoz recounted in his match report,

The player Ousmane Dembele was sent off for saying: “Very bad. You are very bad,” to me while gesticulating with his arms from a close distance.

Insulting the referee carries a suspension of at least two matches. Bad, very bad, Ousmane!

Fun footnote: Messi supposedly tried to get Dembélé off by telling the referee that Dembélé “doesn’t know how to speak!”

Welcome back to the National Team Sebastian Rudy!

Sebastian Rudy was really pleased to leave the Allianz Arena with three points for Hoffenheim. What a strange journey the past three years have been for him.

The best news, however, was that Rudy won’t be resting his cleats this international break, but has been called up by Jogi Löw to rejoin the German national team. Rudy briefly featured for Germany during the 2018 World Cup, only to break his nose in an unfortunate collision. Rudy played well for Germany in the time he had. It would be interesting if Löw put him at CDM and moved Kimmich back to right-back, but that is perhaps a bridge too far at this point.