Spade_Cooley

So this guy not only bluffed his way onto the same football teams as Pele, Beckenbauer and Eusebio, he scored the key goal in the second NASL season? Fucking hell.

My guess is (and this theory may have holes in it): Real Jelinek born 1941, plays in World Cup (at a young age as well let's remember, he'd have been 21 during the final?) Fake Jelinek born 1946, starts playing football after Real Jelinek. At some point he decides to emigrate/seek asylum in a foreign nation, starting with Italy. He uses the fact that he shares the same name as Real Jelinek and passes himself off as him, getting trials and contracts with at least some minor French team, and possibly others. He's since kept up the charade and claimed to be the Real Jelinek, despite the years not matching up at all. His family are none-the-wiser, and so when it was reported that "Jelinek" had died, they contacted local media and said "what do you mean, he's still here?" The only thing I'm not sure is which Jelinek played for the Cosmos - Real Jelinek or Fake Jelinek. Anyone got a team photo of their 1971 roster?

https://www.pametnaroda.cz/en/jelinek-josef-1941

Yeah, from 2021: here's a Czech interview with (the now dead) Jelinek. It says after he retired, he worked backstage at Bohemians. No chance to emigrate to the US at all. Plus, even more obviously: the US "alive" Jelinek says he was born in 1946. The dead, real Jelinek was born 1941.

The guy in the second story can't be Jelinek. I haven't listened to the interview yet, but in the description it says The footballer Jelinek surely can't have claimed asylum, as he went back to play for Bohemians in 1973, after his spell with the Cosmos. Also he never spent any time in Italy, he went from the Czech League, to the Dutch League, to the NASL. Is this a guy who has pretended to be the real Jelinek for the past x years while living in the States?

The other Josef Jelinek was born in 1902, I'm pretty sure he's not still alive. This interview from two years ago with Jelinek makes it clear he's both the World Cup alum and the NY Cosmos player. Although.... I'm faceblind as fuck, are these actually the same people?

The longlists are taking a fucking beating today.

The big rumour now is that Foxx was poisoned by Diddy, leading to his health troubles. Foxx hasn't commented on the claims, perhaps because they're true or, more likely, because he has a Netflix special about his illness coming out on December 10th that he wants you to watch.

Peter Falk has lung cancer

Three down, four to go. If they stick to that counter-clockwise pattern, should Old Meo be on the 2025 DL?

Would Ian Smith be the first time a DL pick has shared a name with a previous DL pick (former Rhodesian premier Ian Smith, a perennial favourite of "actually I'm not a conservative I'm a classical liberal" types on xformerlyknownastwitter, was a hit in 2007)?

One of Dubbya's final pardons was for hip-hop producer John Forte, who was behind the worst single of 1998 and possibly one of the 50 worst songs ever recorded: (he was in prison for coke-dealing rather than somehow capturing the worst excesses of shiny suit rap into four minutes)

Denise Welch pulls out of playing Captain Hook in Nottingham's Peter Pan pantomime due to ill health. Don't worry though, you will still be treated to Gok Wan as the Magical Merman, Paul Chuckle as Starkey and Steve Hewlett (presumably the Britain's Got Talent ventriloquist, rather than the DDP alum Independent journalist of the same name) as Smee.

Him in The Beat My Heart Skipped might be the best cinematic performance of the 2000s, great loss.