Cristiano Ronaldo is fed up. Every day after training, he has his routine. He stands in front of the mirror, perfectly naked save for a snow white towel that ends just above the knee. He covers his face in foam and drags a razor across his face. He then exfoliates, brushes his teeth, cleans his ears and hacks away at his nose hair before replacing the towel with some freshly-bought underwear. Once assured he has the dressing-room mirror to himself, he flexes and angles and curves his body, spending a solid ten minutes pouring over the minutiae of every single detail on his frame. The problem is, there is only one mirror. How is a man of his standing, of his calibre, of his beauty meant to look at himself with only one mirror? “ It won’t do,” he cries, “it won’t do.” But no one is listening. He returns home glum to find another message on his machine from Laurent Blanc. Hey, maybe they have better mirrors in Paris, he thinks to himself.
Karim Benzema is also fed up. Every day after training, he has his routine. He goes back to his flat and he gets bogged down reading the second circle of Dante’s Inferno. He gets so bogged down he can move neither forward nor backwards. He runs his brains against the impenetrable passages until he hears the bells strike, then he slams the book closed and lights the gas ring before unhooking the square flat toaster. To himself, he repeats his mantra: “For bread to be toasted as it ought, through and though, it must be done on a mild steady flame.” That he does and when the bread is black, he slaps on some Savora and salt and Cayenne and wraps the pieces in some old newspaper. His meal is almost ready. It just needs the Gorgonzola. He finds it in his usual spot in the supermarket but he is sceptical. There is a faint fragrance of corruption but what good was that to him? “In the length and breath of Madrid, you won’t find a rottener bit,” said the grocer. Benzema places it between his sandwich and sinks his teeth in. Nothing. “ It won’t do,” he cries, “it won’t do.” He returns home glum to find another message on his machine from Arsenal. Hey, maybe they have better cheese in London, he thinks to himself.
In the Bible-black pre-dawn when Gokhan Tore cannot sleep, he lies with his hands behind his head, his body as straight as an Arizona freeway and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He generally uses the time to laugh and cringe in equal measure about the clothes he used to wear when he was a nipper – whoever thought X-Works and sock hats were good ideas? – or sometimes he makes up Rockbusters. The first ones he did were a bit too easy, like the clue would be, “you would call these lads if you needed some work done with wood” (TC). But he has been doing these for a while now and his grasp of the cryptic (or was it craptic?) clues and the language has got much better. Very few of his friends got, “take a leaf out of this book in a European country” (PF) or “that American river has got a trendy new haircut” (HM). However, he has had to put these activities to the side for now. There are more pressing matters that he has to consider. Arsène Wenger has been on the phone and promised him that he should he agree to join Arsenal, he can eat steak and lobster and salad bar all in a single meal. He found that offer interesting but what really sealed the deal was that Wenger promised a monthly trip to Cereal Killer for a bowl of Start and a serious talk about the use of onomatopoeia in the poetry of Wayne Rooney. How could he say no to that?
Finally, Shkodran Mustafi has got two DVDs and one choice to make. Pretty Woman or Notting Hill? The former, of course, is a classic of the genre and he has seen it many, many times by now so naturally he knows it word for word and has a favourite scene. Two favourites scenes really. The bit where she is about to get driving the car – “ I can do anything I want to, baby. I ain’t lost” – or the bit where she comes back to stick it to the stuffy shop assistant – “You work on commission, right? … Big mistake. Big. Huge!” And then there is Notting Hill. He has only seen that once or twice but he finds Hugh Grant’s bumbling charm endearing and then there is your man that he lives with, Spike, what a card he was. And when she says that line, “I’m also just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her” well there is not a dry eye, towel or piece of kitchen roll in the Mustafi household. That is the second most difficult choice Mustafi will have to make today. The other one is between Manchester United and Bayern Munich. Actually, now that he thinks about it, the film choice is harder. But before he can sit down to watch his choice, he texts his agent to see if he can get him a copy of the two films with Bayerische subtitles.
