DROPPING SOME UNEVEN BARS
There’s a recurring anxiety dream that occasionally prompts Football Daily to sit bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night with our Winnie-the-Pooh jimmy-jams and bedclothes drenched in a cold sweat. It harks back to the time many years ago when, for reasons best known to themselves, the Man thought it might be a good idea to send the world’s most popular football email to cover gymnastics – no, really – at the London 2012 Olympics.
“How hard can it be?” we wondered to ourselves. “Somebody wearing Lycra walks out into the arena and gads about on a beam, a pommel horse or parallel bars. They finish their routine, walk off and then somebody else walks out into the arena, etc and so on until everybody’s finished.” Suffice to say, you can’t even begin to imagine the sheer panic with which we were overcome, when it quickly became apparent that all this gadding about by different gymnasts in different disciplines takes place at the same time and it’s up to you to figure out which activity is the most important at any given time and report on it accordingly with an extremely tight deadline looming.
We were reminded of that dark day in the history of broadsheet gymnastics journalism as we sat down to try and keep tabs on the final round of group games in Bigger Cup on Wednesday. And while we have no wish to traduce the good name of Football Daily’s sponsors, with 18 matches kicking off simultaneously we can’t have been the only people in the UK who didn’t figure out their excellent Bigger Cup Goals Show was discreetly hidden behind the red button until Celtic were 2-0 down against Aston Villa. And while trying to keep up to speed with all the goals, red cards, near-misses, penalties, saves, dropped clangers and other talking points from 18 games at the same time was more traumatic than any amount of Olympic gymnastics coverage, in the cosmic scheme of things not much actually happened. Imagine taking out a Netflix subscription and being initially overwhelmed by the amount of choice on offer, only to sift through all the dross and realise most of what’s available to watch is complete bobbins or stuff you’ve seen somewhere else before.
For all the talk about how exciting this final round of fixtures was going to be, once the dust settled on all the thud and blunder, the night’s action could be summed up thus: two teams dropped out of the top eight and were replaced by two other teams, Manchester City scraped into the top 24 and an 18-year-old marked his senior debut for Liverpool by getting sent off after four minutes on the pitch for accidentally hoofing an opponent in the swingers. While it is to be hoped that, in time, Amaro Nallo will be able to look back and chuckle at what was a simultaneously auspicious and inauspicious landmark night in his career, for now Football Daily is pleased that it’s not just us suffering from night terrors.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Michael Butler from 8pm GMT for hot Bigger Vase minute-by-minute coverage of Steaua Bucharest 1-2 Manchester United, while Scott Murray will again be on hand for clockwatch coverage of the 18 simultaneous matches.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
9 July 2023: “The club has a lot of good people who represent the club from the board down. When I went down to Saudi I got a real family feel, they made me feel extremely welcome” – Steven Gerrard takes the Al-Ettifaq job.
30 January 2025: “Football is unpredictable and sometimes things don’t go the way we want” – Gerrard gets mutually consented.
I liked your oblique Shakespearean reference to ‘11 gentlemen of Girona’ (yesterday’s Football Daily). Turned out to be as you like it and much ado about nothing for the Gunners, neither a comedy of errors nor a case of love’s labour’s lost, just as you like it and all’s well that ends well” – Max Maxwell.
While I enjoyed the quote in yesterday’s Still Want More concerning Manchester United’s pursuit of a young Arsenal player (‘knock, knock, knockin’ on Heaven’s door’ – full email edition), I think that there’s a lyric from Dylan’s 1997 masterpiece, Tryin’ to Get to Heaven, that better summarises the Red Devils’ current predicament: ‘When you think that you’ve lost everything, you find out that you can always lose a little more’” – R Reisman.
I read with great interest that Ruben Amorim and Marcus Rashford are no longer on speaking terms (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). I’d like the same arrangement with my boss. Given that I’m self-employed, though, matters are a bit complicated. So, future communications between me and my employer (also me) will be exclusively conducted via Football Daily. Sounds sensible” – Mike Wilner.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our letter o’ the day is … Max Maxwell, who wins a copy of Football And How To Survive It by Pat Nevin. You can buy it from Big Website’s bookshop. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
Article by:Source: Barry Glendenning
