There was a time when Alexandre Pato was tearing through Barcelona's defence at the Camp Nou for AC Milan in the Champions League. Now the 27-year-old Brazilian is being ridiculed by opposition players in the Chinese Super League for missing a penalty.
The one time wonderkid fluffed his spot kick horribly over the bar during Tianjin Quanjian's game against Shanghai Shenhua yesterday, and Shenhua midfielder Sun Shilin couldn't wait to revel in the Brazilian's failure.
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While it wasn't quite Keown on Van Nistelrooy at Old Trafford in 2003, Shiling's trolling was still quite savage, with the sarcastic hug and thumbs up equally as effective a form of mockery as Keown's impression of an angry vampire after a skinful of super strength lager.
The Brazilian forward's career has taken a series of twists and turns since his early rise to prominence, with early promise at Internacional and Milan failing to materialise into anything bigger.
Pato returned to Brazil in 2013, signing for Corinthians, before taking in a loan spell at Sao Paolo and then, forgetably, with Chelsea. He spent last season with Villarreal in La Liga before making the move to China in January of this year for a reported fee of £15.5m.
Pato's far from the first 'wonderkid' who didn't end up enjoying the career everyone thought he would...
Tianjin would have to settle for a point after Pato's miss, drawing the game 1-1 after Axel Witsel had scored a crucial equaliser.
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Bizarrely, Pato's penalty miss and subsequent trolling from an opposition player wasn't the weirdest thing to come from the game.
That's because news emerged that Shanghai Shenhua's Qin Sheng will be docked his wage for the entire season.
That's right. Sheng will be docked an entire season's wage following a 'deliberate' stamp on Tianjin Quanjian midfielder Axel Witsel.
"Given Qin Sheng was shown a yellow card in the season opener, we intentionally warned him over his poor on-field behavior before the game." said club president Wu Xiaohui.
It really was a rather remarkable turn of events and Sheng is paying the ultimate price:
Qin Sheng has already fined ¥300,000 (£35,000) by Shanghai.
Reports state that the Chinese Super League side have incredibly threatened him with reserve team football for the remaining four years of his contract
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Club president Wu Xiaohui went onto say: "I don't think he was just caught up in the heat of the moment. Instead, it's a flagrant violation of the club management."
""The extremely irrational behaviour of Qin Sheng has severely tarnished the image of this club, the football of Shanghai and even Chinese football."
Chinese media believe Qin's annual salary is around HK$5.6m which in the grand scheme of things, is the same amount as Carlos Tevez earns every week.
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Which is still a huge amount of money.
In the words of Ron Burgundy, "well that escalated quickly..."
(H/T The Mirror )
Featured Image Credit: Football24/TwitterTopics: Football, Chinese Super League