NEVER SAW IT AS THE START …
One of football’s enduring beauties is its ability to bring out the very worst in everyone; only politics accomplishes the same with anything like comparable elan. And, given how that lot are involved in stuff that matters, it’s fair that we judge and accord them slightly different standards of behaviour.
Football, on the other hand is not important; we simply pretend that it is for our indulgence and pleasure. So, because we’re all in on the ruse, for the duration of the game and within certain parameters, we become legitimately unhinged, shrieking, singing and flapping, embracing and sometimes even conversing, with complete strangers; wonderful, wonderful football.
Complicit in the mania are players and managers, enjoying the same liberation and morally governed by the same rules. So, if a Leicester City supporter fancies offering Nigel Pearson some advice, Nigel Pearson may respond in kind; we’re all in on the ruse. But, when the game is over, so too are the special circumstances which govern it; additional dispensation does not exist, regardless of how intense, entitled and imbecilic the indignation. Accordingly, when he’s preparing to board a train, Arsène Wenger is nothing but a 65-year-old man minding his own business – unless you’re an Arsenal fan, or actually, unless you’re a football fan, in which case he’s a man who has given every fibre of his being in order to supply you with joy, entertainment and Thierry Henry beyond your wildest dreams.
Which is not to say that he ought still to be manager of Arsenal, nor that anyone whose success is contingent upon his can possibly think such a thing – hell, he probably doesn’t. But haranguing him in public, in vaguely threatening fashion, is not what we call “football”, rather what we call “being an appalling human being”. Do not.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
26 October 2014: “Having worn the shirt of great Italian clubs such as Inter, Napoli and Parma, as well as being a graduate of the prestigious Coverciano coaching and management centre, Mauro will be an important fixture on the Orient bench” – Leyton Orient look forward to a long and prosperous future with new manager Mauro Milanese.
8 December 2014: “Liverani, a former Italy international, has managerial experience with Genoa in Italy and has signed a two-and-a-half-year contract with the club” – Leyton Orient look forward to a long and prosperous future with new, new manager Fabio Liverani.
A BIGGER PLUG THAN THE ONE FROM THE BFG’S BATH
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“As a long-time reader of the Fiver, I can’t help but feel you’re simply going through the motions these days. Nowhere is this typified more than in your tired, lazy sub-headings, none of which ever seem to change. So, as a favour and for no cost (other than a copy of Football Manager), may I suggest the following replacements to shake some life back into your moribund existence: Quote of the Day = football personality in ‘says something stupid/contradictory’ shocker; A Bigger Plug Than the One From the BFG’s Bath = A Bigger Plug Than a Beloved Beano Character on Steroids; Fiver Letters = Pedants’ Corner (to be misspelled Padants corner, just to annoy the irritating little …); Join Guardian Soulmates = Let us cash in on Your Inability to Get Lucky by Normal Means Like Copping Off With an Equally Drunk-Looking Person When the Lights Come On at 3am in Your Local Meat Market on a Saturday Night; Bits and Bobs = Some Stuff So Irrelevant it Couldn’t Even Make it Into the First Paragraph – Which is Really Saying Something Considering That Was Just Filler Anyway. No need to thank me, just fire that copy of FM over and thus secure me the title of Uncle of the Year to one of my dozen or so nephews” – Paul Cantwell.
• Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver. Today’s winner of our letter o’the day is: Adoni Patrikios, who wins a copy of Football Manager 2015, courtesy of the very kind people at Football Manager Towers. We’ve got enough copies to see us through to the end of the week, so keep trying.
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BITS AND BOBS
The club formerly known as Steaua Bucharest have been stripped of their name, colours and emblem after losing a trademark battle and were called only “hosts” on their own stadium scoreboard this weekend.
Given that rugby union is a game of passing the ball sideways over very short distances, the Japan World Cup side have done the obvious thing and hired Pep Guardiola as an advisor.
Croatian side HNK Rijeka will not be punished for allegedly abusing Manchester City Under-21 player Seko Fofana as Fifa has claimed there is not enough evidence.
Jack Wilshere is on course to suffer season-ending knack next March after Arsenal confirmed he will return from an ankle-gah! operation in February.
And Wolves chairman Steve Morgan has said sorry for haranguing referee Mike Jones following his side’s 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth. “I would like to apologise personally to Mike Jones. I was extremely angry and frustrated at many of his refereeing decisions, and I still am,” he ‘apologised’.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Andy Brassell visits Madrid and bumps into El Sid, prompting the pair to have a right old chinwag about whether Atlético Madrid are forgotten champions.
STILL WANT MORE?
The Guardian’s bunch of football writers stopped talking about the commercialisation of Christmas long enough to jot down 10 talking points from the weekend’s action in the Premier League.
With its three gyms, ultrasound room, cold plunge pool, hot plunge pool, resistance pool, three-lane pool and the empty quotes plastered all over the walls, Jamie Jackson was never going to mistake Manchester City’s new playground with Fiver Towers.
Paolo Bandini gets his Serie A on to review the weekend in Italy, including more misery for Milan.
The French Basque country may be pants at producing decent football clubs but it’s not so pants at producing decent football players, as Steven Scragg points out.
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