Postcard from... Lecce

It’s not easy for professional football players to acquire a reputation for being more stupid or badly behaved than common opinion already holds.

But Ousmane Dramé, a 20-year-old French midfielder on loan to Lecce football club, has done his best by doing a runner from a prostitute and getting caught – after attempting to flee the scene on his bicycle.

Local press reported that having failed to hand over, as promised, his iPhone 5 to the Nigerian sex worker in exchange for the sexual prestation, the footballer snatched the woman’s handbag and made off on his bike.

But in a plot twist that Pedro Almodovar would be proud of, a furious transsexual prostitute who witnessed the hit and run on her fellow sex worker, in the Piazzale Rudiae red-light zone of the southern city on Sunday night, pursued him after thumbing a lift from a passing Fiat Panda.

After cornering the footballer, and calling the police, the have-a-go hooker was declared a hero in the local press. Dramé injured her arm by tripping her up, but carabinieri officers arrived in time to arrest him.

The footballer, according to a statement released by Lecce police, “had scratches on his right arm and was in an agitated state” when he was held.

Lecce football club issued a statement announcing that the player had been suspended from the squad – and that his contract would be terminated if the claims were verified. They were also threatening to sue him for the damage he’d done to the club’s reputation – if not the reputation of the footballing profession.