![A gentle rumble, earlier [well, a good year earlier given the current state of the Filling Station – Fiver Ed].](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/12/1/1448985868210/eb7a7728-7cd0-452a-8b67-0a6c29ff7a70-460x276.png)
PERFECT TIMING
The drip of a rusty tap, another completed 4,000-piece puzzle of first world war artillery units, the gentle rumble of the 16.19 from Cambridge rolling into King’s Cross; there are plenty of things to keep The Fiver busy. And while it doesn’t explain why your weekday email sometimes arrives in your inbox at slightly after tea-time, these things do illustrate one thing that The Fiver has in abundance: time.
Apparently, that is not the case for the rest of the world. Hanging on in quiet desperation might be the English way but in Mauritania, for example, things are done a little differently. People don’t have time to listen in on sub-standard plumbing or watch sport that is slightly below desired levels of excitement. And so it proved in the north African country’s Super Cup final between FC Tevragh-Zeina and ACS Ksar, which was cut short after 63 minutes and sent straight to penalties, reportedly because President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was bored.
With bemusement in the stands and outcry seemingly everywhere else, Mauritanian football federation suits were quick to shift the blame. “I deny in the strongest terms the intervention of the President of the Republic,” the federation’s president, Ahmed Ould Abderrahmane, said on Tuesday. “The decision was made due to organisational issues in accordance with the presidents and the coaches of the two teams.”
It remains to be seen what organisational issues would dictate the end of a match and the retention of a penalty shootout, but regardless of who called time on the final, it certainly seemed to suit Abdel Aziz: he’s got a lot on his plate. When you’re the top boy of a country blighted by poverty, FGM, and child labour, one simply doesn’t have time to be bored. With the match finishing early, the 58-year-old had more time to get back to issuing statements on why human rights organisations only serve to incite racial hatred. Keep on fighting the good fight!
The Fiver, meanwhile, will continue to savour the passing of time. Whether it’s cleaning Weird Uncle Fiver’s Kays Catalogue cupboard or enduring another 120 minutes of hot Milk Cup action, we’ve got plenty to keep us entertained, thank you very much. The hum of the 17.19 to Hull is literally minutes away.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
23 October: “I don’t think his record justifies his selection for the hall of fame. I think it’s a grubby little fix and I think this sort of thing has gone on around football for far too long, where money has dictated what’s happened and not what goes on on the football field” – shadow sports minister Clive Efford has a pop at the decision to induct former Manchester City defender Sun Jihai into the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame during Chinese president Xi Jinping’s recent state visit, when he also popped in to get selfies with Sergio Agüero and David Cameron at City’s training ground.
1 December: City Football Group, which owns Manchester City, announces £265m investment from a Chinese consortium that buys it a 13% stake and values CFG at $3bn. “[This will] leverage the incredible potential that exists in China,” cheered City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak.
FIVER LETTERS
“Arsenal flew home from Norwich (10 things we learned, yesterday’s Still Want More)? From Norwich? What kind of madness is this? I’d make some witty point about it being a metaphor, but I’m still too staggered by the news they thought it was worth getting a coach locally to drive them through the Christmas shopping traffic to the airport on the other side of the city, fly to an airport that can’t have been all that handy for their suburban north London homes, rather than go to the railway station, get a train and then have cars to take them home from Stratford. It’s the most profligate football team travelling scenario I’ve been aware of since March 2012, when I encountered the Middlesbrough team leaving King’s Cross station before their game at West Ham – and boarding a coach parked on York Way, which had driven down from Teesside to take them the few miles from Euston Road to Upton Park. Madness” – Michael Hann, Big Paper/Website Music Ed.
“Without wishing to come over all Alan Partridge, the dualling of the carriageway of pretty much the whole of the A11 has now alleviated the usual traffic snarl-ups around Thetford, rendering Arsenal’s flight to Norwich International Airport pretty pointless (particularly when you factor in the general hideousness of the traffic on the inner ring road journey to Carrow Road from the airport)” – Matt Leuw.
“Screenwriter Adrian Butchart hoping to turn the story of Jamie Vardy into a masterpiece of modern cinema (yesterday’s Quote of the Day)? Surely this film has already been made, 19 years ago: ‘A factory worker gets scouted, firstly by the well-known non-league side Hallam FC and then later by Sheffield United Football Club,” according to the Wikipedia plot summary. I refer, of course, to When Saturday Comes, starring Blades obsessive Sean Bean. I can’t remember at this remove much about the film, but I doubt the world has spent two decades clamouring for a Leicester-centric remake” – Matthew Stevens.
“Is there really such a dearth of stories for films these days that Vardy’s recent scoring run, incredible as it is, is being considered by a screenwriter for his latest script? I can only presume that, should no one break the record over the next few years, Adrian Butchart will be forced to consider writing a prequel, set 12 years prior to Vardy’s exploits. Perhaps the imaginative screenwriter could call that film ‘Ruud’” – Bill Iliffe.
“Although The Fiver can evidently discuss those ‘floaty pink bibs of doom’ with a carefree attitude (yesterday’s Fiver), my overwhelming memory of them is from the local youth league. Trying to put on a soaked, mud-stained, twisted bib in hurricane-style winds and stinging rain, while wearing gloves, I even made Arsène’s coat-zipping-ability look competent. On top of that, it inevitably meant spending at least the next hour sitting around in the aforementioned Arctic conditions. They truly were ‘bibs of doom’” – Tom Sharp.
“Surely the proof that garment-related incidents at Tottenham are no coincidence (yesterday’s Fiver) is that both cases involved a distinct lack of sleeves. And what do we have here in the Spurs club shop? Of course, calling anything with a ‘false insert T-shirt’ a tank top is obviously designed as click bait for 1,057 shoppers …” – Brandon Stockwell.
“While Costa and Tactics Tim got well deserved mentions in yesterday’s Fiver for garment-related bench abuse, mighty Mario Balotelli’s ineptitude passed off without even a whimper. Probably the most famous case of garment-related self-abuse in the history of the game. Why always him, eh?” – Srinath Sripath.
“Querido Fiver: as your semi-official foreign-language pedant, having already corrected your French and Yiddish, now let me make it a hat-trick and correct your Spanish. Valencia coach Nuno would not have been told to ‘has uno’ (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs), despite Google Translate’s assertion. In the imperative he would have had to haz uno, if the owners were friends of his, or he’d have had to haga uno if they weren’t all that close. Certainly if Nuno and his bosses were once the former, they are now the latter. Hasta luego, for sure” – Mitch Abidor (and 1,056 other foreign-language pedants).
• 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: Matthew Stevens, who receives a copy of Football Manager 2016 courtesy of the very kind people at Football Manager Towers. We’ve got loads more copies to give away, so if you haven’t been lucky thus far, keep trying.
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BITS AND BOBS
Yeovil Town, bottom of the Football League, have sacked manager Paul Sturrock. “We had no alternative,” parped chairman John Fry incorrectly.
Chelsea have popped down to their local council offices and handed in a planning application for rebuilding Stamford Bridge as a 60,000-seater. Or however one goes about submitting planning applications these days.
Fifteen Venezuela players have issued a statement to say they’ll refuse to play in the remainder of the World Cup qualifiers unless the national coaches and federation (FVF) officials are replaced. “Our integrity is non-negotiable and the damage done can only be repaired by a total overhaul of the leaders of the FVF,” huffed the squad.
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Qatar winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup, Amnesty International says Fifa has done too little to address “rampant migrant labour abuse” and warned that fans will be “benefiting from the blood, sweat and tears of migrant workers” if nothing changes.
Rafa Benítez insists he and James Rodríguez are, like, total BFFs, despite what those nasty peeps in the media would have you believe. “There is no problem, he is a great player,” cheered the Real Madrid manager. “The more he trains and plays the closer he will be to the James that we all know and love.”
Jürgen Klopp reckons any speculation that Liverpool are going to send Simon Mignolet on an all-expenses paid trip around the world with Do One Tours and replace him with Stoke’s Jack Butland is as false as your granny’s gnashers. “I am absolutely satisfied with our goalkeeping situation,” he balloon-bursted. I am sorry to kill your stories about German goalkeepers and goalkeepers from Stoke.”
And Robert Lewandowski has been awarded not one, not two, not three, but four world record certificates for his five goals against Wolfsburg earlier this season. “It is a great honour to have my achievements on the pitch hit the Guinness Book of Records,” he trilled.
WIN! WIN! WIN!
We’ve got red-hot (home) tickets for Chelsea v Bournemouth and Swansea City v Leicester City up for grabs. Red-hot as in good, not red-hot as in thieved.
STILL WANT MORE?
David Squires on … football sulks.
Mauro Zárate and the special pleasure of a free-kick specialist, from Paul Doyle. Read on if you dare.
Arsenal’s mountain of injuries and the Gulliver Theory. By Barney Ronay.
Paolo Bandini watched Napoli’s Gonzalo Higuaín and the woodwork sink Inter in a Serie A barnburner.
Raf Honigstein on the grounded approach of Hamburg.
Newcastle United, definitely not too good to go down, writes Martin Laurence.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
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