England manager Roy Hodgson has admitted to leaving centre half Rio Ferdinand in the toilet of the local O’Neill’s portapub, flown in to Ukraine specially for the Euros.

“Last I saw of him”, said Hodgson, “We were both in the pub toilet playing on a slot machine and arguing about change. I took personal offence at the name of the machine being ‘used condom’ as I thought it was a judgment on my managerial performance, so I left.”

The controversy surrounding the abandonment of the centre back comes amidst concern that he was ignored for an England call up in favour of an expired can of spam, an exact replica of Gordon Strachan’s moustache from 1986 and a ferret who expired in James Corden’s arse during a rendition of the Smiths classic “Sheila Take a Bow”.

Hodgson, however, maintains that he couldn’t get a player of Ferdinand’s calibre out of the toilet as cover: “It’s only a matter of time”, Hodgson added with deep regret in his voice, “before Rio enrols on an Open University course on quantum chromodynamics, Gareth Barry goes to Mali to mediate between parties in the upcoming civil war using only his copy of the Nolan Sisters’ posthumous album and I decide to write for the theatre. I just wanted to make sure everything went smoothly in preparation for that.

Hodgson, 29, assumed that Rio had followed sheepishly behind with Terry Venables keeping his beard and pretending to be Robert De Niro in Heat as protection for Ferdinand. A press release created by Bell Helicopters stated that Hodgson was “devastated” and “confused” by the “accidental mix up”, with a savvy PR dude adding in brackets that a deliberate mix up would have been even more unusual.