Paul Gascoigne has signed for struggling Chinese second division side Gansu Tianma, according to reports.
The former England star has agreed a one-year deal worth £400,000 with the B-League's bottom team, club officials have claimed.
Gansu Tianma general manager Zhong Bohong said: "We picked him because he's a real professional football player.
"We noticed he has two shortcomings - one is his physical fitness, another is leg strength.
"He has a good sense of the game. He has good skills and experience, especially in the big matches.
"We think he could play a key role in the team. We'd like him to be the spiritual leader of the team," Zhong added.
As well as playing for the team, Gascoigne is understood to be taking on an assistant coaching role and acting as a consultant to the club's academy.
The 35-year-old former Newcastle, Spurs, Lazio, Rangers and Everton midfielder flew to China earlier this month in the hope of reviving his fading career.
He failed to impress after training with first division side Liaoning Bodao and was not offered a contract.
When asked why he had agreed to move to the industrial city of Gansu, Gascoigne told Sky Sports News: "Why not? I've been missing football and this is a great opportunity for me.
"I could have signed for another team but I had the opportunity to coach this season. The manager speaks good English and so do some of the players and the opportunity to be player-coach and it's a chance to enjoy both sides of it."
Sex shame could cost him marriage
By Ed Harris, Evening Standard
2 March 2004
Stan Collymore today makes an astonishing admission that he has been having sex with strangers in public places for the past two years.
The former footballer admits that he became obsessed with "dogging" - driving to countryside car parks to have sex with strangers - after reading about it on the internet.
The BBC Radio Five Live commentator admitted he has been involved in the practice on at least a dozen occasions, sometimes joining in and at other times watching.
His most recent visit was to Cannock Chase country park near his home in Cannock, Staffordshire, on Saturday, he said.
The former Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa striker used the alias "John" and met a couple who quizzed him about the activity. He said he later exchanged phone numbers with the couple, who claimed they were new to it.
He said he swapped numbers with them and later received a text from the man saying his wife "wants to get f **ed " tonight".
Collymore spoke out in a damage limitation exercise after his secret visits were revealed by undercover reporters from The Sun, who met him at the car park at Cannock Chase country park. He admitted: "Over the last couple of years I have been to dogging sites maybe a dozen to 15 times, and yes I have taken part and had sex during them.
"My only hope is that the people I know and love can find it in their hearts to forgive me."
According to The Sun, Collymore sent a couple mobile phone text messages inviting them to have "some fun" at the same car park the next day.
Collymore said he became curious about what happened at dogging sites after reading about them on the internet.
He told reporters about the etiquette of dogging and described to them his first experience of the activity, saying: "You don't do anything you don't want to. If you chat to somebody and get on well they may say: 'Do you want to go somewhere-a bit quieter?' which is maybe a car park with two cars instead of 200." He added: "I pulled up next to a car and there were two guys in the front, two girls in the back. I stood there and before you knew it everything was going off."
The revelations will be a blow to Collymore, who had been attempting to rebuild his life after the incident in 1998 when he hit his then-girlfriend, Ulrika Jonsson. In an interview with Marie Claire magazine in 2001 he claimed he "lost it" as the couple spent the evening in a Paris bar.
Collymore's representative Simon Kennedy said today: "As Stan has said, he has been very foolish.
"He is very apologetic, he is very remorseful, but he has to move on. I hope the public at large will realise that Stan has made mistakes but that fundamentally he is not a bad egg."
The former striker said he had confessed what he had done to his wife Estelle and she had threatened to leave him.
He told the Daily Mirror today: "I am ab s ol u t e ly devastated at the hurt I have caused everyone, to my family a nd to Estelle's family. Estelle is furious but absolutely calm. I can't believe I've caused her all this hurt."
Telling more about his experience, he said: "I went three nights ago. I have a telly in my car. Sat up there in the car park and within half an hour there was a local couple in a Range Rover.
"The husband wanted to see his wife with another guy. We got chatting. They then said they would be up there the next night. We exchanged mobile numbers."
The following night, Collymore met the couple again. "It was fascinating... I got chatting to them. A car pulled into my left.
"They had their interior lights on so I wound my window down and she said 'hi'... They said they were new to it.
"I laughed and said: 'There's no hard and fast rules. There's a code. Some couples like to be watched, some couples like to participate'."
Arsenal star's divorce battle
By Paul Cheston, Evening Standard Courts Correspondent
10 May 2004
Arsenal star Ray Parlour faced a legal battle today as his wife claimed a huge share of his multi-million-pound earnings.
He has already been ordered to pay £250,000-a-year maintenance to his ex-wife Karen on top of his offer of a £250,000 lump sum and two mortgage-free homes.
But today Mrs Parlour launched an appeal, demanding at least a third of his £1.2 million annual earnings until their three children can support themselves.
She claims she is entitled to the money after helping the former England international player back from the brink of alcoholism in the Nineties, enabling him to continue his lucrative career. If Mrs Parlour wins it is likely to be seen as a legal precedent forcing many other husbands to hand over half their wages.
For the first time it can be revealed that at an earlier hearing Mr Justice Bennett, ruling that Parlour's offer of £120,000 a year was not enough, said his wife played a major part in persuading him to drop the
"laddish" culture among certain Arsenal players and to "grow up".
The judge added: "Her contribution to the home and the children both now and in the future must not be underestimated, overlooked or played down."
Today, three appeal judges in London heard argument that Mrs Parlour's annual maintenance should be increased even further. She had originally claimed £440,000.
In his judgment Mr Justice Bennett added: "The wife has suggested in her evidence that the husband was and is a drinker." Before Arsene Wenger arrived at Arsenal in 1996 Parlour had participated in an environment in which "there was considerable drinking among certain players" at the club.
The judge said: "However, the wife realised that this was the way to ruin and unhappiness and I'm satisfied that in about the mid-Nineties or slightly later she took a grip on the situation and encouraged and persuaded her husband to move away from that style of living."
He added: "She was part of the circumstances that persuaded him to drop the laddish culture and, as she put it, grow up."
The Parlours' seven-year relationship produced three children, now aged eight, six and four, the court heard. At the earlier hearing the judge said he was "satisfied that she had borne the burden of bringing up the children" while they were together. He added: "She will have to bear the burden of bringing them up
during their childhood." He was satisfied that Mrs Parlour had no earning capacity. "She told me in evidence that she made no sacrifice in giving up her work with an optician in 1994, nor has she been disadvantagedin staying at home." He said he recognised that Parlour, 31, was a talented footballer who had created the family's wealth, adding: "However, in my judgment there is a very significant factor in the success of the husband in which the wife played a vital role."
Today Mrs Parlour's counsel Nicholas Mostyn QC was putting forward her case in the Appeal Court hearing, expected to last two days, to Lord Justices Thorpe, Latham and Wall. It is the first time Parlour's identity could be revealed as the previous hearing took place in the High Court Family Division, subject to reporting restrictions.