In anticipation of Euro 12, Dutch supermarket chain C1000 produced a music video featuring stars of the Netherlands team and hundreds of the little birdie toys it's offering fans/potential shoppers.

During the video, you'll see Nigel De Jong's teammates sticking the orange toys to his head, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar almost eating one (but it wasn't made of grass, so he didn't), someone putting three on a kebab stick and grilling them, plus Arjen Robben sticking them to his backside and bending over. In other words, it's...strange.

And now we must wait and see if these things horrify the world by bursting out of Robin van Persie's chest during a group stage match.

Video via 101gg

Ring the bells and wake the children -- the King of Old Trafford, Portuguese sensation Bebe, is returning to Manchester United after his almost not completely terrible loan spell in Turkey. The 21-year-old Sir Alex Ferguson bought sight unseen for £7.4 million in August of 2010 has yet to be unloaded and never spoken of again, so he will now rejoin Man United until that inevitably happens.

And how did his year-long loan with Besiktas go? Well, you can't improve on perfection. From the Telegraph:

Shortly after Chelsea beat Bayern Munich in a penalty shootout to win the Champions League final, Fernando Torres reportedly claimed that he volunteered to take one of the all-important shots, saying, "I wanted to take a penalty but they didn't let me." And now video showing the moment Roberto Di Matteo left him out of the order makes it clear that Torres didn't hide his frustration.

With the score 1-1 after extra time, Di Matteo gathered his players and announced the order in which they would be taking the shots. When Torres didn't hear his name called, he threw up his hands and turned to walk away, but the Chelsea interim manager grabbed him by the arm and tried to calm him down before the decisive shootout.

Back in March, while Torres was still in the midst of his scoring drought, Juan Mata offered him the chance to take a penalty during Chelsea's 2-0 FA Cup fifth round replay win over Birmingham in his place, but Torres refused.

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Athletic Bilbao will play Barcelona in the Copa del Rey final in Madrid on Friday and its fans were very eager to give the team a warm send-off (literally). Some packed into the back of a truck that followed the team's bus to the airport, while others waited there with flares and flags held aloft.

Though the flares didn't make it inside the airport for obvious reasons, the fans, their flags and what appeared to be a Marco Bielsa pirate puppet all did.

It's been a tumultuous few months for Argentine Primera Division side Racing Club. First, Teo Gutierrez threatened his teammates with a paintball gun after they reacted negatively to him getting sent off in a losing effort, then fans threw crutches on the pitch during a Copa Argentina match to protest the team's poor form and now, they're combining those two incidents by threatening members of the team at gunpoint.

Racing Club players Giovanni Moreno and Federico Santander were leaving training together when another car cut them off and blocked their way. Two men then got out of the car and the situation took a sickening turn.

From Reuters:

"They told Gio they would shoot him in the legs and would ruin his career," Paraguayan Santander told a radio interview late on Tuesday.

"I thought they were going to shoot him. He was terrified as I was. I'm frightened, I don't know what to do.

"They said that if we did not win the game, we would suffer the consequences."

Moreno's agent Agustin Jimenez told the Fox Sports cable channel: "They put a gun against his knee."

The incident happened after it was reported that Colombian Moreno could leave the club and join rivals River Plate.

Well, that's why the fans thought Racing players could use some crutches. But shooting players on a team that is currently in 16th place every time they fail to win seems counterproductive. With only four wins through 15 matches in the clausura, Racing's entire starting XI would already be out of commission had the barra brava started this at the beginning of the season. And let's just say it's a good thing Blackburn fans didn't resort to this either. The chicken would've been all that's left of that club.

When kicking off, you don't usually see footballers take a David Luiz style run up to the ball and fire it at the opposing team, but the kid at the start of this video decided to give it a try. And after kicking the ball and charging ahead like an invading army of one, a player on the opposing team decided to blast the ball right back where it came from, resulting in the aggressive kick-off kid getting smacked in the face and launching backwards through the air.

As the flying kid's father notes in his YouTube description (he uploaded the video apparently), "My son learned a lesson the hard way. ... Best thing of all is that he got up and kept playing and his team ended up scoring. What a tough kid."

Except to see Rino Gattuso give this a try wherever he ends up playing next season.

This has been the Dirty Tackle of the Day: a chronicling of unfortunate events.

Just three days after Arjen Robben missed a penalty kick that might have won the Champions League final for Bayern Munich, his club hosted his national team -- the Netherlands -- for a friendly in the same stadium that housed his nightmare. And though some of the 33,000 fans in attendance at the Allianz Arena were forgiving, others booed Robben's every touch of the ball after he entered the match as a second half substitute for the Netherlands, who lost 3-2.

Robben's international teammate (and former Bayern teammate), Mark van Bommel, was not amused by the harsh response. From Goal.com:

"It's a disgrace. When you look at what Robben has achieved in his career. He led Bayern to the final at Madrid and is so important to the club. Bayern should be really happy to have a player like him," the veteran told SBS6 after the match.

"Arjen has signed a new three-year contract but if I was him I would think twice about my future. I don't know what Arjen will do, but I would think about leaving the club if I was him.

"Nobody from the club supports him, I'm the only one that supports him in the press. Mentally he is very strong. Everytime something bad happens to him, he comes back stronger."

"Bayern Munich should be ashamed," Rafael van der Vaart told Bild, echoing Van Bommel's sentiment. "We expected no such thing. It's embarrassing."

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After a few days of intensified speculation and rumors, Didier Drogba brought a relatively swift end to the guessing over his future and announced he will leave Chelsea when his contract ends in June.

As Drogba told ITV, he decided that winning the Champions League was his chance to follow the Seinfeld method and go out on a high note like George Costanza.

"Winning the game was the turning point, " he said. "That's why I decided - we made history all together and I want people to remember that - and I think that's the best time to move on."

As sad as it is to see him go, Drogba really didn't have anything left to prove after winning the Champions League. He scored 157 goals in 338 matches for Chelsea, won three Premier League titles, four FA Cups (becoming the only player to score in four FA Cup finals), two Carling Cups and two golden boot awards. He successfully vanquished all disgraces and accomplished everything he could've hoped, so now it's time for something new.

Here's Didier's parting message to his fans...

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Citta the elephant consumes a football

Paul the Octopus wowed us with his soothsaying skills during World Cup 2010, but he has since moved on to the exploitative aquarium in the sky. Since his passing, man has longed for a new animal-based method of predicting football results. The Champions League Llama may have a 100% record by calling Chelsea's unlikely victory over Bayern Munich, but Poland and Ukraine are each boasting their own zoo creatures to help gamblers who don't want to rely on statistics and facts when making game predictions.

Ukraine will be acquiring the services of a two-year-old pig, who — much like Wayne Rooney — loves drinking beer and eating fries in his down time. Instead of ending up as a key component of the Ukrainian national dish of sliced hog fat, the imaginatively-named 'Psychic Pig' will be at the heart of the action throughout the tournament, says Mercury News:

[...] He will be brought to a specially-built house in central Kiev outside the Olympic Stadium, where some of the Euro 2012 matches will be played. Ahead of each game, he will be asked to indicate the winner by deciding whether to eat from one of two plates of food, each marked with the national flags of the teams playing.

Poland, meanwhile, will be placing their faith in Citta the elephant, a resident of Krakow Zoo who beat off fierce competition from a parrot and a donkey by correctly selecting Chelsea as Champions League winners. Before each game, she will be offered an apple emblazoned with the colours of each competing nation.

It isn't clear what happens in the event of a draw, or if Citta and Psychic Pig's predictions contradict one another, but the public's insatiable appetite for animals making arbitrary food choices will ensure you'll be hearing plenty more about these zoo dwellers in the next few weeks.

We saw Barcelona's 2012/13 fuzzy striped home kit before it was officially released, so the real shocker of Tuesday's unveiling was the orange and yellow away kit. Sort of like staring at the sun after squirting alcohol into your eyes, the club's official website describes it as "a veritable array of vibrant colors to celebrate the team's dazzling football."

It continues:

The FC Barcelona change strip for the 2012/13 season merges orange and yellow in honour of the city's culture, art, style and architecture. It has a classic orange collar with the famous Barça colours on the nape and sleeves. The back of the shirt also features the Catalan flag, and the 'More Than a Club' slogan on the inside of the collar, written in a typeface was specially chosen to reflect Catalan architecture.

I'm not sure I've ever heard a bright orange collar described as "classic" before, but if orange and yellow are accurate reflections on the city's culture, art, style and architecture then, clearly, the entire city is on fire. Hopefully Leo Messi keeps his Lego collection in a flame-retardant room.

Here's the comparatively subtle home shirt...

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