BUSINESS IS PICKING UP
It’s fair to say The Fiver’s humourless, ruthlessly efficient sausage-munching, lederhosen-wearing German cousin Achtung! Schnell! Schnell!! Schnell!!! Mein Gott! Himmel! For You Tommy Ze War Is Over! Funfer is in bits. Sunday’s Skype sessions are normally a right laugh, rife with David Hasselhoff anecdotes, the shipping forecast and all the inevitable highs and lows that come with the territory of being a continental tea-timely email.
But outdated Cousin Funfer was a blubbering mess: short of breath, eyes puffy and seemingly alone without anyone to embrace. A regular Iker Casillas, if you will, but who can blame him? For Germany’s most decorated player, Bastian Schweinsteiger, has deserted Bavaria in his bid to become the new daddy of Manchester. “Manchester United is the only club that I would have left Munich for,” supposed Schweinsteiger. “I feel ready for this new and exciting challenge in what I regard as the most competitive league in the world and I am looking forward to working with Louis van Gaal again. I will never forget my time at Bayern Munich and I would like to thank everyone at the club and the fans for the great memories,” he #nicetouched.
What with the £24m signing of Southampton’s Morgan Schneiderlin, who admitted that the prospect of a pre-season Lads on Tour trip to USA! USA!! USA!!! was “too good to turn down”, it has been quite a day for United fans, and a considerably better ordeal than this day back in 2009, when the club signed – wait for it – Gabby Obertan, Lil’ Micky Owen and Tony Valencia. Construction on Ed Woodward’s statue, reminiscent of the dancing-woman-in-the-red-dress emoji, is said to be well under way outside Old Trafford. The transfer window might be as good as it gets, mind, what with Schweinsteiger’s impending knack during the first game of the season and Chelsea wrapping up the Most Competitive League in the World™ by Christmas, but hey, what a ride.
Meanwhile, things are still dreary in Deutschland. While England wallows in the glow of Shiny Schweini, Cousin Funfer has to put up with largely home-grown talent playing within a sustainable business model that allows working-class fans to attend matches for sensible prices. Imagine trying to get through the summer with just that.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“You can’t say the name World of Smile without grinning and that’s what our company is all about … There is a positive feeling around Cheltenham Town at the moment and I think we’re in for a good season” – sorry Jon Burke, chief suit of Whaddon Road’s new sponsors, turns out you can.
FIVER LETTERS
“Todd Van Allen wondered about the 1,057 pedants teaching English in Japan (Friday’s Fiver letters). I can’t vouch for the other 1,056 but I teach International Relations here, particularly security-related issues, and therefore understand that conflict reduction is both an individual and institutionally systemic responsibility, which is why I didn’t leap into the fray and decry the linguistic blunders of others, as correcting such relatively innocuous expressions as ‘milk’ and ‘Fiver/fibre’ could be regarded as aggressive. However, since another’s illogical prejudice motivated me to write, I might as well point out that the discourse paradigm is flawed. The literal (linguistic) translation of ‘schoolboy defending’ is inconsequential, for the socio-linguistic (Japanese perception) of the term would be positive, indicating energetic, joyful, and zesty play. High school football and baseball are popular spectator sports here in Japan for those reasons, as is ‘schoolgirl defending’ by young Nadeshiko candidates. Oddly, the term that would possibly be most suitable is ‘naive defending’. In British football culture that would indicate a negative characteristic: immature, lacking in experience, leading to a poor result. In Japanese, however, ‘naiibu’ 「ナイーブ」 may indicate a lack of experience as (possibly) negative, but also (positively) unpretentious, unsophisticated, and sensitive. Perhaps The Fiver might consider relocating to have its naive research and writing efforts more positively appreciated. Oh, and there used to be a brand of toilet paper here called ‘Naive Lady’” – Garren Mulloy.
“Todd Van Allen can rest assured that we are not all English teachers here in Japan. Some of us are actually engineers working on the sensor systems behind the recent advances in automobile active safety” – Craig Hills.
“I’m all agog. Will Monday night’s match between Poli Timisoara and Pandurii Targu Jia complete a series of seven draws on the opening weekend of Romania’s Liga 1 season? Kick-off is at 7pm BST and, you may say but I couldn’t possibly comment, available live on any number of illegal computer streams” – Kevin Porter.
• 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: Garren Mulloy.
JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES
Chances are that if you’re reading this tea-timely football email, you’re almost certainly single. But fear not – if you’d like to find companionship or love, sign up here to view profiles of the kind of erudite, sociable and friendly folk who would never normally dream of going out with you. And don’t forget, it’s not the rejection that kills you, it’s the hope.
BITS AND BOBS
In the end it took Manchester City £49m to get Liverpool to part with Raheem Sterling, with Brendan Rodgers confirming what we all knew months and months and months ago. “The situation is very simple. The club has agreed with another for a deal for Raheem to be transferred and subject to [a] medical that will go through,” he trilled, somewhat backtracking on previous assertions.
Asmir Begovic has agreed a deal that will allow him to sit on Chelsea’s bench for large parts of the next few seasons before frustration kicks in and he rejoins Stoke. “After speaking at length to the manager, I feel like I can develop here and be an important part of this team,” he trousered.
A record crowd turned out to see Manchester City beat Birmingham in the Women’s Super League over the weekend. Huzzah!
Stephan El Shaarawy is just like the rest of us. He breathes, he sleeps, he brushes his teeth at least three times a day and he likes to cut down on moving costs. That’s why when he decides to do one, he plans on moving just down the road from Milan to Monaco.
Anyone looking for a bargain in the Barcelona sales: good luck. Still, they’ve cut the buyout clause on Pedro from €150m to €30m, so that’s something. “It’s true, there are offers,” he yelled.
Víctor Valdés will be doing a lot of things this week, but posing around in the colours of Atalyaspor will not be one of them. “We have no intention of speaking to them again,” sniffed his Mr 15%.
Crystal Palace defender Scott Dann has scrawled his signature on some A4 to tie him down at the club for the next five years. “I’m over the moon,” he actually said.
And former Fulham defender Aaron Hughes has been researching the best coffee shops and boning up on what to do should he encounter a flamin’ large snake when hanging out his washing after he signed for Melbourne City.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
You can now listen to the extended interviews from our series of home invasion movies, starting with this Matt Le Tissier chin-wag.
STILL WANT MORE?
Here’s Raphael Honigstein on Bastian Schweinsteiger’s Schwexit.
It’s been a rough time for Iker Casillas at Real Madrid – and the club’s efforts to give him a belated send-off may have only made things worse, reports Sid Lowe.
Is Javier Hernández on his way to Liverpool? Will Marcelo Bielsa take over at Leicester? Today’s Rumour Mill hazards a guess.
Micronesia could soon be getting tonked 100-0 if Fifa gets its way, warns Jack Kerr.
If you wanted to learn five things from MLS this past weekend but were too busy licking ice-cream to get round to it, then let Grahams Ruthven and Parker come to your rescue.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace.
SIGN UP TO THE FIVER
Want your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up.
JLD
