Wake Up Call: In which NZ youth soccer coach sends player’s mom a photo from ‘down under’

They call this Favreing yourself. The mystery over the resignation of New Zealand’s U-17 national soccer team coach was solved on Sunday, and it’s as you probably suspected. Steve Cain quit just weeks before the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Mexico because he emailed a photo of his genitals to the mother of one of his players.

He said the woman, the mother of a 16-year-old player who was eventually cut from the squad for the World Cup, had begun sending him suggestive and increasingly explicit emails in 2009.

“There were suggestions about perhaps meeting and doing things sexual. I never responded,” Cain said. “I deleted them. I was quite shocked. She kept pressing me to send her something back.”

After “a few beers and [in] a moment of madness” in April last year, Cain said he emailed her a picture of his abdomen, which also partially revealed his genitals.

He said the woman later became upset when her son failed to score a regular first-team place in the U-17s and retaliated by distributing Cain’s revealing email photo to his bosses.

The moral of the story is that if you’re going to email photos of your vuvuzela to the mom of one of your players, you had better not cut said player. It’s right there in the handbook.

But luckily for Cain, there are apparently only two licensed pro soccer coaches in New Zealand, and he’s one of them. So he may be back. Pulling a Favre yet again!

***
ABOUT LAST NIGHT

What you missed while finding Mr. Right …

• Balk? They should give Justin Verlander an award for this.

• Signed Houston Oilers helmet sold for … $2 million?

• Another American League pitcher succumbs to Bieber Fever.

• John Oliver: “I was playing blackjack, and Mike Tyson walked by me. And my rule is, when Mike Tyson’s life intersects with yours, it’s time to go to bed.”

***
TODAY IN MARK TRAIL …

Another one of Dr. Thrasher’s “personal problems.”