The Warm-Up: Disgustingly rowdy hooligans, and Phil Neville

Russian sport can sometimes appear to take a pretty relaxed approach to things any right-thinking person would find abominable. Racism. State-sponsored doping programmes. Robbie Williams.

However, in any nation there’s a line – and it appears that attacking a civil servant is way, way, WAY the wrong side of it.

Following an altercation at a café in Moscow, Russian Euro 2016 squad members Aleksandr Kokorin and Pavel Mamaev are in water so hot it is quite literally just scalding gas. Video appeared to show Zenit St Petersburg striker Kokorin hitting trade ministry official Denis Pak with a chair, before Krasnodar midfielder Mamaev punched him in a car park.

Safe to say it hasn’t gone down well. Here’s a statement from the Russian Premier League:

And here’s Igor Lebedev of the Russian FA:

Here’s Kokorin’s club Zenit:

And finally Mamaev’s club Krasnodar:

Yikes.

Here are Kokorin and Mamaev in happier times, at a New Year’s party in Monaco.

Still in Eastern Europe – and can’t you tell it’s an international week edition? – West Ham’s Andriy Yarmolenko is looking to get fighty with a Ukrainian TV pundit who slagged him off.

Wladimir Kobelkov’s constant sniping elicited the following response from Yarmolenko:

The Warm-Up would certainly sign up for the pay-per-view promotion. Just keep the fighting away from Moscow okay, chaps.

Good on Eden Hazard. The man clearly, CLEARLY wants to leave Chelsea for Real Madrid.

Yesterday’s Warm-Up quoted him saying as much, and rest assured the journalistic rigour of this morning snarkfest is unparalleled. OK, so a couple of generally reputable sources picked them up, so we assumed they were kosher.

And yet there’s something unusual about this wantaway behaviour, for it is not accompanied by a sullen attitude and a lack of on-pitch application.

In fact, Hazard is playing the very best football of his career. Consequently, Chelsea are lining up a massive new contract offer to ward off Real’s interest.

Whatever happens next, Hazard will become unimaginably rich, and get to play either for the biggest club in the world or one of them. Who’d have thought that performing to a ridiculously high level instead of sulking would bolster your negotiating position?

From the democracy is stupid department. France Football’s public Ballon d'Or vote has Leo Messi (48%) and Mo Salah (32%) dominating the standings, with Cristiano Ronaldo (9%) the only other player with more than 2%.

Fortunately le peuple doesn’t have a say in this one, but remind us again how Salah’s 6.5/10 goal won the Puskas Award?

“It sums up... Karen, you say it please.”

Phil Neville was a picture of boiling hot rage after England’s women drew 1-1 against Australia at Craven Cottage. As well as missing several chances to put the game away, England were denied two clear penalties and had a goal wrongly disallowed before Australia’s late equaliser.

Neville may well get himself in trouble at some point by criticising the quality of officiating in the women’s game... but you have to admire someone who gets this worked up about a friendly.

We’ve all had our LOLs about how Neymar left Barcelona to escape Messi’s shadow and now finds himself firmly in Kylian Mbappe’s.

But the real black sheep of the PSG front three is poor Edinson Cavani, who... well, the other two barely ever pass to him.

It’s been a while since we’ve bigged up David Squires here, but rest assured he’s still excellent.

OK, so here’s how we got here. We saw it was Chris Tarrant’s birthday today and immediately made the leap across channels and formats to Mark Lawrenson’s career-defining appearance on Pointless.

Yes, this part of the international break can be a slog. But on the upside, there’s football at 9.30 this morning. All aboard for Bangladesh v Palestine. Lovely.