Paris Saint-Germain raise eyebrows with Ashley Cole comment

This is an odd story. When new manager Rafael Benitez admitted that he believes that both Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole would leave when their contracts expire in summer, it wasn't too much of a shock. There'd been rumours that both were on their way out for some time. But when Paris Saint-Germain announce the summer acquisition of Chelsea's starting left back... well, that's another thing entirely.

Said announcement came via the verified @PSG_inside Twitter account, which this morning wrote -- and then more or less immediately deleted -- the following:

Angleterre Ashle Cole arrière gauche sera un joueur Rouge et Bleu cet ête.

Even with my terrible command of French and the slightly weird syntax, the translation is fairly obvious:

English left back Ashley Cole will be a Red and Blue player this summer.

Which um, wow. I can't imagine that that was authorised by anyone, especially since Cole isn't actually allowed to negotiate with other clubs until January. Either this is a giant prank designed to troll Chelsea fans and transfer rumour mongerers, or PSG have a deal in place and just accidentally released it (which sometimes results in said deal falling apart).

For now, I'll assume that this was a strange prank and carry on with my life, but either way this was a very very odd episode.