SHOWTIME FOR CLAUDIO
All the greatest and most popular leaders through the ages have been blessed with the entertainment gene. Take US presidents, for example. Ronald Reagan was a star of the silver screen during Hollywood’s golden era. Barack Obama could deliver a well-timed joke on the nightly talk shows. And the main guy from that affectionate Richard Nixon tribute show that’s running right now seems to be getting some really good notices.
It’s the same with the best Premier League figureheads. Entertainers all. Natural comic and ham Jürgen Klopp, for instance, has crowds rolling in the aisles week in, week out, simply by dint of not wearing his spectacles properly, turning to perform the Eric Morecambe-influenced bit when everyone else is getting on with necessary substitutions and desperately required tactical alterations. Then there’s the easy-on-the-ear whiny warble of professional Mancunian miserablist Steven Patrick Mourinho. And legendary French mime Arsène Wenger is into the third decade of a north London residency, regularly putting a smile on every paying punter’s face with his famous slapstick coat-and-zip routine. He probably needs to update his act at some point, if we’re being brutally honest, but until audiences stop lapping it up, it’ll do for now.
By comparison, that Claudio Ranieri at Leicester City has absolutely nothing going on! All he does is stand there, all quiet and nice and modest and occasionally masterminding the kind of story so good you’ll never witness anything like it ever again in your entire natural-born life. Well, this is no good, no good at all. Where are the controversies? The zingers? The ostentatious attention-seeking shapes? So you can see why he’s under threat of the sack before Wednesday’s FA Cup fourth-round replay against local rivals Derby County. In an attempt to shake things up, the boring bugger’s promised to make a few changes to his currently out-of-form team. Wes Morgan’s run of 49 consecutive matches is likely to end, the old boy rested, bereft of puff. Yohan Benalouane may replace him, for his first run-out since being hauled off at half-time a couple of months ago against Nottingham Forest U-23s. Oh dear.
“I have to protect some players who are not very good, who need more recovery, more rest,” shrugs Ranieri, who may also call on the likes of Marcin Wasilewski, Papy Mendy, Andy King and Daniel Amartey. Should this new-look side get battered by lower-league opposition, all that’ll be left for Leicester this season is a chance to win Big Cup. What thin gruel. Otherwise, it’s living with the shame and disgrace of not winning consecutive league titles at a club that won their first in 133 years of trying just eight months ago. No skew-whiff specs, refereeing conspiracies, or struggling-with-the-poppers-on-your-winter-coat routines to offer, Claudio? Then no trading on past glories for you!
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I was spending serious amounts: nightclubs, clothes, cars. Because you try to buy happiness. I couldn’t play football so I buy a Lamborghini. Wow, you’re happy for a week. After that you don’t even use it. Who drives around Loughton in a Lamborghini? I still have a picture: three cars, big house, I’m standing there like I’m 50 Cent. I look at it sometimes and say: ‘Look how stupid you were.’ But that made me who I am and I can look back and see it. I’ve learned. I grew up. I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and thought: ‘No, that’s not me, I don’t want to be that. I’m a footballer’” – Kevin-Prince Boateng chats to Sid Lowe in an absolute zinger of an interview.
FIVER LETTERS
“Can I be the first of 1,057 people praising the opening gambit to yesterday’s Fiver: it was truly exceptional, absolutely wonderful stuff, and whoever was responsible deserves a large can of Tin. Now, I may cancel my subscription as it is doubtful you shall reach such heights for the remainder of the year” – Karl Gibbons (and 1,056 other humble-brag-enablers).
“I was a bit pressed for time yesterday, so was grateful that the bulk of yesterday’s Fiver enabled me to skip directly to the letters section, secure in the knowledge that I’d missed absolutely nothing. Thank you” – Bruce G Bradley.
“I’m confused as to whether the Billy Joel missive was the result of too much Tin or a lack of it” – Philip Lewis-Jones.
“PLAY FREEBIRD!” – Connor Flanagan.
“When email was invented, back in the nineties my mates and I realised very quickly that this method of communication was a golden opportunity for work avoidance/top-class b@nter (this was back when it wasn’t considered a euphemism for casual misogyny, racism, etc). One of the games we used to play across the interweb was ‘Song for Rigobert’. Rules were simple: you replaced a song title lyric for a footballer’s name (Tears On My Pirlo, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Platini, etc). We evolved this to such an extent that we even produced whole songs, replacing lyrics with the names of players. Once such example was We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel, so was surprised to see you had this ‘idea’ some 20 years after we had. One can only conclude The Fiver is plunging new depths by leveraging its contacts to access long discarded Yahoo accounts for its content” – Marc Sinfield.
“I await with anticipation your rewrite of a David Moyes-themed Agadoo. Or would the Quo’s Down Down be more appropriate?” – Andrew Tate.
• 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 … Connor Flanagan.
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BITS AND BOBS
Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana reckons a lack of winning experience in the squad beyond James Milner has cost them in 2017. “Milly is probably the only one in our group who has that type of experience,” he trilled. “We maybe need to realise how good we are at times.”
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern Munich suit, is feeling funky – again – after World Cup-winning defender Philipp Lahm announced plans to hang up his boots. “FC Bayern is surprised by the approach of Philipp Lahm and his adviser,” he sniffed. “Uli Hoeness and I have held open, intensive and constructive talks with Philipp in recent months about a possible position as sporting director of our club. At the end of last week, he informed us that he is currently not available for such a position and that he would like an early termination of his player contract, which runs until June 2018. Until yesterday we assumed that there would be a joint announcement.”
![They’d have preferred … [puts on Horatio Caine shades] … silence from the Lahm.](https://media.guim.co.uk/c9c37c68cd4851ef405c0f050a9557bf0df72a32/0_230_5293_3306/1000.jpg)
Barcelona are appealing against Luis Suárez’s Copa del Rey final suspension after he was sent off in the semi-final win over Atlético Madrid. “I’m laughing at that second yellow card, it’s not even a foul,” he sniffed. “I did absolutely nothing.”
FA suit Greg Clarke will step down if he fails to convince sports minister Tracey Crouch that the governing body is serious about reforming itself. “I will be accountable for that failure and would in due course step down from my role,” he parped.
Speaking of which, here’s Marina Hyde.
Qatar will shell out $500m per week – PER WEEK – until 2021 on infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. “We are really giving ourselves a good chance of delivering things on time and we don’t want to get in a place that we start painting while people are coming to the country,” whooped finance minister Ali Shareef Al-Emadi.
6 December: “We have absolutely no intention of selling our best players in January and our players are most certainly not being ‘put up for sale’ as might have been claimed elsewhere” – Bolton chairman Ken Anderson vows not to cash in on star striker Zach Clough. 31 January: Nottingham Forest sign Clough. 8 February: Anderson: “I am having to make some very difficult and unpleasant decisions to try and achieve a sustainable business plan for the club and hotel going forward.”
And Brisbane Roar only flamin’ went and ruined Carlos Tevez’s debut by winning 2-0 at Shanghai Shenhua in Asian Big Cup.
STILL WANT MORE?
Dan Westwood, Wolverhampton schoolteacher by day … relentless non-league scoring machines by night (and weekend). Rob Smyth meets him.
“I don’t miss from there.” Derby’s Darren Bent talks all things embarrassing own goals, Leicester and still doing it at the top level, with Andy Hunter.
Scott Murray on the legend of Leicester City.
Which teams have had most hat-trick scorers in a season? The Knowledge has the answer.
Chelsea’s brutalisation of everyone outside the top six is key to their league success, writes Martin Laurence.
Archive reading: a Joy of Six on table-top sports games.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
