On the field, Manuel and Lalo are soccer teammates in the hit primetime Argentine soap “Botineras.”

But off the fictional field, and inside the fictional locker room, let’s just say things are getting complicated when it comes to the question of which team the two play for.

Take a look at the video below (our story continues after the jump).

It would seem that the Argentine public’s fascination with this pair of papis and their romantic storyline goes beyond fiction and into the real world of the country’s most macho sport.

The entire country is abuzz with whispers that the gay plot is pulled from reality, and futboll fans everywhere in South America are wondering if the story might be based on the real-life sexploits of a handful of the sport’s biggest stars.  It’s causing lots of whispers about whose team some soccer players are really on, if you get The Rat’s drift.

Soccer legend and Argentina World Cup coach Diego Maradona even went on the defensive after rumors that his PDAs with team-members amounted to more than just a physical expression of encouragement and congratulations.

“No I have not gone limp-wristed,” Maradona homophobically told the press after one of his team’s World Cup wins. “But I like to acknowledge and congratulate my players when they play as well as they did today. That was a pleasing result and display. It was a job well done.”

Off the set of “Botineras,” the two actors who play Manuel and Lalo (Cristiano Sancho & Ezequiel Castaño) happen to be as straight as a soccer goal line, but on screen they certainly give convincing performances.

And the viewers love it enough to make the show’s one of the country’s top-rated.  If only we knew how many of its millions of viewers happen to be pro ballers.

CNN-US President Jon Klein told long-time Larry King staffers "if you're under contract, you're here till the last day."

This week’s gone from bad to worse for staffers at CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

Less than 24 hours after the shocking news that their on-air leader would soon retire from the nightly grind, they were rounded up by telephone for a conference call with CNN-US president Jon Klein.

“We expected a pep talk,” one person who listened in on the Wednesday call tells The Rat.  “What we actually got was a clear message that if we’re under contract, we’re expected be here until Larry says his last goodbye.”

But Klein refused to make any guarantees about keeping the contracted staffers on the network’s payroll after King’s November swansong.

Their resumes will be put “at the top of the pile” for whatever show replaces Kings, Klein told the anxious employees.  When questioned further, Klein curtly refused to say that LKL staffers would get any sort of preferential treatment.

Klein did, however, encourage the King crew to end the show’s run with a their best hours ever.  That way, he said, they’ll look good to the incoming show bosses, and might — might – end up being kept on at the network.

King has already inked a new deal with CNN, which has him hosting at least four one-hour specials each year for the next two years.  His current executive producer will stay on to honcho those specials, but at a substantial pay-cut.  No other staff member’s future at the network is guaranteed.

One-time Hollywood powerhouse talent agent Ed Limato — who, as Rumor Rat was first to report, entered Cedars Sinai several weeks ago — has been released from the hospital, and sent home after doctors gave him little chance of survival.

Limato, who’s represented the likes of Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Richard Gere, was admitted to Cedars in May with a serious illness, according to Rumor Rat sources.

During the weeks that followed, our sources say, he showed no improvement.

Limato worked with ICM agency for 32 years before winning a bitter court battle in 2007 to free himself from his contract.  He and a number of his A-list clients quickly landed at William Morris.

With all the ratings gloom & doom at CNN, there’s a bright spot at sister network HLN (formerly Headline News).

Joy Behar’s show is the only hour in the empire to enjoy a 39% up-tick in viewers for the second quarter of this year, compared to 30%+ declines for Larry King and Anderson Cooper.

Now there’s buzz that Behar could be the heiress-apparent to the 9pm throne on CNN’s flagship channel, replacing King when he steps aside this November.

The Rat’s still not giving up hope on Brit Piers Morgan and his chance at grabbing the American broadcasting brass ring.

As we wait to hear from the CNN mothership, some entertainment from SNL’s Fred Armisen as Joy Behar… after the jump.

Rumor Rat has learned that, as colleagues looked on in shock, one of the top dogs at website/TV show TMZ was quite literally shown the door after she revealed she would not be renewing her contract and was taking a job elsewhere.

What TMZ chief Harvey Levin doesn’t yet know – and Rumor Rat has learned exclusively — is that Angela Laughlin-Bailey is going to work for his biggest competitor, RadarOnline, a website with an adept reporting staff and the deep pockets necessary to finance its celebrity news coverage.

Laughlin-Bailey had been working with Levin since the pre-TMZ era… during his days at syndicated show “Celebrity Justice.”

But, according to The Rat’s sources inside TMZ’s newsroom… she hadn’t risen through the ranks as quickly as her peers, despite being instrumental in some of TMZ’s biggest gets.

Laughlin-Bailey, whose contract would have been up next month, had been negotiating with Harvey and the Telepictures bosses, but they wouldn’t give in to her reasonable demands, say our sources.

“It’s no surprise that she wanted to move on,” our insider says.  “In the past five years, she’s watched a man she trained in the business get promoted past her.  The atmosphere here is like a frat house, with no girls allowed beyond a certain point.”

TMZ is a behemoth when it comes to readership, scoring millions of hits a month.  It’s also notoriously thrifty, with low-level A.P.’s hired in at $500 a week.

And wait till you hear where Levin goes scouting for cheap labor.

“Harvey will run into a kid who works at a car-wash he frequents, or at a gas station.  If they make an impression on him, the next thing you know, he signs them to a five hundred dollar a week contract,” the insider reveals.

“And those guys don’t work eight hour days.  They’re here first thing in the morning, and they’re the last to leave at night.”

The Rat has to wonder if Harvey won’t start hitting up the street hustlers on Santa Monica Boulevard to come work for him.  But they probably make more money at their current job.

Then there’s Levin’s management style – or lack of it.

“He has like a throne in the middle of the newsroom.  His desk actually sits on an elevated platform so he can see his whole kingdom and make sure the peasants are all working,” says our newsroom spy.

And from his perch, the height-challenged boss barks orders and questions the competence of his underlings, using salty language and an intimidating tone:  “Why the hell don’t we have that story? he’ll ask.  “Do I have to do everything around here?!”

Shocking that they put up with it, right?

Not so much, actually.

“It’s like everybody there has battered wife syndrome.  They’re afraid to leave because Harvey has them all convinced they can’t survive in the outside world,” says a staffer.

Since Laughlin-Bailey’s departure last week, none of the TMZ brass has bothered explaining her absence.

“We saw them collecting things from Angela, like her ID and other stuff,” an eyewitness confides in Rumor Rat. “Then she was just gone.”

To paraphrase Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest:  “When Harvey doesn’t like you, he can make you disappear.”

The Rat tried unsuccessfully to reach Laughlin-Bailey, but she didn’t respond to our e-mails.  We didn’t try to reach Harvey.  If he’s not saying anything to his own staff about the situation, he certainly wouldn’t say anything to The Big Cheese.

The shit storm that used to be a relationship between ABC’s latest “Bachelor” and final rose recipient Vienna Gerardi seems to be getting uglier by the minute.

Since the couple announced that their engagement was off, the war of words has been on.

Saucy Vienna gave an interview to one of the tabloids, dishing the dirty — or actually not-so-dirty — details of their relationship.  Including her claims that they had never done the nasty, despite the fact that they allegedly lived in sin (obviously NOT literally) for several months.

Now a friend of the new queen of the kiss & tell is spouting shit about Vienna confiding (big mistake) that she didn’t think Jake was “into girls.”

Vienna herself told Star magazine that Jake used the ol’ “premarital sex is a sin” excuse during their six months together.

Let’s see… Jake lives in a state where gay marriage is not legal.  So, technically, there’s no such thing as “premarital” anything when it comes to being gay, right?   The Rat’s just sayin’.

Almost exactly a year ago, The Rat told you about what turned out to be a brief romance between country megastar Taylor Swift and a young Rodeo wrangler named Tuf Cooper.

Now, we’re hearing from an eyewitness that Swift’s former bronco buster is seeing one of Taylor’s good friends… Australian country music cutie Shea Fisher, who also happens to be an accomplished cowgirl.

Our rat was at a rodeo in Houston the other day and caught the two cowpokes canoodling.

The Big Cheese can only assume that Shea and Tuf have Taylor’s blessing.

There’s a rumor afoot  (you should pardon the pun) that Oprah Winfrey’s decided to rid herself of her sixth toe.

That’s right.  Six toes.  On the same foot.

There’s even photographic evidence – provided a couple of years ago by that three-letter website that’s a four-letter word in the Rat’s Nest.

The Rat has no idea the origin of the amputation rumor, but it’s a good enough excuse to reproduce the photo here.

And O’s not the only celebrity with this problem.  Marilyn Monroe had the same issue, back when she was Norma Jean Baker and before she had the money to pay for the extra digit’s surgical removal.

Photo – after the jump.

A report is making the rounds that Warren Beatty and Annette Benning’s 18 year old daughter Kathlyn is planning gender reassignment surgery.

The Rat’s tried to nail down the original source of the story, but hasn’t had any luck yet.  However, it’s all over the tabloids, complete with the two pictures you see above.  One is Kathlyn with her father in the mid 00′s.

The other is Kathlyn as she appears now, dressed as a man.  The National Enquirer reports that she’s determined to have the procedure now that she’s of legal age, and she’s already living as a man named “Stephen Ira” while she attends college.

The Big Cheese and his Rat Pack love to play good news/bad news.  Ready?

Legal experts say Perez Hilton could actually face a 36 year prison sentence if he’s tried & convicted on child porn charges in connection with that nasty little panty-free pic of Miley Cyrus he reportedly posted, then promptly took off of his twitter page.

That’s actually the good news, as far as The Rat’s concerned.

Nothing would please us more than seeing the internet’s boy-blunder behind bars.

The bad news is that nothing will likely come of this whole scandal, just because P-Diddiot Hilton has the ready cash to lawyer up and save his ass (literally) from any sort of negative outcome.

But, hey, wouldn’t it be fun to watch him sweat for a while?