PRAVD’OH
The world watched on in goggle-eyed awe on Sunday afternoon as Chelsea Football Club stormed to a resounding 200-0 victory over the hapless village idiots of Manchester City, smashing their rivals with a performance that will make their critics think twice about ever denigrating their character again. The mayhem did not end there, with Chelsea’s website writers ordered to mount a predictably successful coup of this tea-timely football email. There will be no more satire. From tomorrow onwards, this page will turn into a 24-hour rolling news service documenting Chelsea’s many victories both on and off the pitch. Your inbox will teem with tales of Juan Cuadrado’s latest hat-tricks and pictures of Arsène Wenger looking upset. The Fiver you once knew is bound and gagged in a dark room somewhere. You do not need to know where. Questions will not be tolerated. It is all Eva Carneiro’s fault. You can ask questions if you like, but you have no right to ask them, and the consequences will be dire if you persist.
But back to Sunday’s magnificence. In galaxies far, far away, there were aliens who stopped building lasers that could destroy Earth with just one blast, resigned to the fact that it would only require John Terry to stick his brave chest in front of the beam to send it back their way. Terry, Chelsea’s lion-hearted captain, who has the beating heart of a lion, roared at the back as City’s feeble attack crashed against his manly frame and shattered at his feet. Terry rolled back the years once again, although initially Chelsea toyed with City, raising their hopes by letting little Sergio Agüero have a couple of sights of goal. Fingers were pointed at Eva Carneiro’s poor marking in the Chelsea defence, but Asmir Begovic thwarted Agüero, before ending the little Argentinian’s afternoon by plonking him on top of the crossbar and refusing to let him get down.
As Agüero attempted to clamber down from his perilous position, before eventually admitting defeat and calling the fire brigade, City suffered another blow when Lionel Messi scored his 17th goal for Chelsea after his £300m arrival from Barcelona in the summer. Messi was linking up well with Cristiano Ronaldo in attack, while Andrés Iniesta was pulling the strings in midfield. City were reduced to chasing shadows, but even that was beyond them, and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich deserves great credit for providing our inspirational leader, José Mourinho, with so much backing in the transfer market. Mourinho looked ecstatic when Radamel Falcao came off the bench in the second half to score 73 goals past a miserable Joe Hart. The margin of victory would have been even greater if Eva Carneiro had not missed a penalty.
Chelsea’s football was so beautiful that Michelangelo jumped out of his grave so he could catch the last 20 minutes, the Italian great observing that he had never seen art this good before. As for City, their attempts to park the bus were as lame as ever. “I tried to park the bus,” City’s manager Manuel Pellegrino wept, hot salty tears of shame streaming down his face. “But I was out of my depth. Mr Mourinho really is the best and I have decided to announce my retirement from football management. What’s the point?” It was the only thing Pellegrino got right all afternoon. The lads are top of the league and there’s nothing Eva Carneiro can do about it.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE TONIGHT
Join Jacob Steinberg from 8pm BST for MBM coverage of Liverpool 2-0 Bournemouth.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Blatter’s eye is caught by the gold-framed photograph of Nelson Mandela across the room. The former South African president is holding the World Cup shortly after the country won the bid for the 2010 World Cup. ‘He’s smiling at me’, says Blatter, and he smiles back” – Sepp Blatter hits peak David Brent in an interview with De Volkskrant.
QUOTE OF THE DAY II
“I have a great wife and a great family. It’s not nice when some people say this kind of stuff” – Manchester United goalkeeper Sergio Romero phones an Argentinian TV show to deny claims Sergio Agüero slept with his wife. Romero’s wife Eliana on the goalkeeper? “He is totally divine. Instead of annoying me, he calms me down.” So now we know.
FIVER LETTERS
“Using the tears of their little boy to effectively hold a big European club to ransom and give their lad what he really, really, really wants? It sounds like Louis Diamond’s parents (Friday’s Bits and Bobs) have missed their obvious calling as Mr and Mrs 15%s. They’ll soon have young Louis twittering outrage every time his Manchester club forget to buy him a card and a cake on his birthday and sending in sick-notes when that time comes when he wants to go shout for another team” – Justin Kavanagh.
“Regarding tiny players (Friday’s Fiver letters), Nasty Leeds played Grasshoppers Zurich in Euro Vase in 2001. Grasshoppers brought a player on who was so small that Leeds fans took to him immediately – cheering when he got the ball and booing when we tackled him. Poor fella” – Chris Mellor.
“I’m not sure what Paul Buller wants to discuss about this, but Alan Wright sprang straight to mind as a 5ft 4in defender who was actually quite good despite being almost a foot shorter than nearly everybody he had to mark” – Katie Maddock.
“I don’t speak German, but I assume that ‘Was für ein tor’ (Friday’s last line and link) loosely translates into English as ‘Holy cr@p, that guy just scored off a forward flipping backheeled bicycle kick’. Thanks for the language lesson – I’ll try to use it in casual conversation this week” – Mike Wilner.
“Re: The Fiver’s Wiki page. Well yes, it’s inaccurate … who can forget the Rumour Mill stands by itself now? But the presence on Wikipedia has greater portent: the next obvious step is a Fiver board game for those times when (sob) the season ends. I will leave it to the better minds to come up with a trademark name, but I can see the face of the happy player when he gets a card that says he will appear with AC Jimbo on Football Weekly or the unhappy player who is told he must take the worst train possible to interview the world person possible for an article that may not even appear. And it has to be a board game so computer hackers can’t ruin it. That’s the job of the players. Of course, someone will have to write a complete guide to The Fiver (for reference) which should keep several people busy during the off-season and become a must-have for … well, for some people” – Lynn Mae.
• 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 prizeless letter o’the day is: Mike Wilner.
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BITS AND BOBS
If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of Louis van Gaal mournfully pouring a glass of Jacob’s Creek and putting All By Myself on the stereo, after long-term apple of his eye Sergio Ramos signed a new contract at Real Madrid. “I know this renewal has taken a while but my heart and head have always been with Real Madrid so I couldn’t be happier,” Ramos parped.
Wolfsburg coach Dieter Hecking reckons the coming days are going to be “difficult” for Manchester City target Kevin de Bruyne, raising hopes that this grindingly tedious saga will be coming to an end at some point in the near future. “These are going to be difficult days for all involved,” he sighed. “And even if our days together should not continue, I would already now like to wish him all the best.”
Model club Blackpool have denied one of their official accounts that referred to a fan as an “ar$ehole w@nker” has anything to do with them. “This account has not been utilised for promotional purposes by the club for some time and is not accessible to any current employees,” protested a club statement.
South Korean Chung Mong-joon has announced he will run to succeed Don Sepp in the Fifa big chair, promising to be a “crisis manager and a reformer.” That’s Chung Moon-joon, son of Chung Ju-yung, convicted in 1992 for misappropriating £50m; brother of Chung Mong-koo, convicted in 2007 for embezzling £45m; and a man who once called his then Fifa rival Mohamed bin Hammam “mentally ill”.
More from Fifa! The body will investigate claims that someone in their offices distributed a report that was critical of Uefa’s Michel Platini. “Fifa is investigating the matter,” third-personned Fifa.
Former jazz salt enthusiast Diego Maradona claims he has been drug-free for nearly 12 years. “I have chosen to live life for my daughters, grandchildren and those still to come. And be careful, I still haven’t closed the factory,” he nudge nudge, wink winked.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Join AC Jimbo and the pod for the latest Football Weekly NOW!
STILL WANT MORE?
Dominic Fifield finds five things José Mourinho can blame for Chelsea’s rotten start to the season that don’t include a club doctor, but do include John Terry.
Who knew Ellis Short had so many freckles? For a photo of the Sunderland chairman, as well as 10 Premier League talking points, click here.
Craig McCracken dusts off the history books and explains how Barcelona went a decade in the 70s and 80s without winning La Liga.
We need to talk about Kevin (De Bruyne). So says Andy Brassell.
Get them while they’re lukewarm: tickets are still available for Football Weekly Live in Manchester on 3 September, plus another date in Brighton on 16 October.
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