Paul Ince’s Reminiscences: Baddiel and Skinner, 2006 World Cup podcast

In 2006, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner recorded a series of podcasts for The Times during the World Cup. The comic duo and longtime friends travelled to Germany for the tournament, recording their observations live during games, as well as in their hotel rooms. The shows were a mixture of live reaction and post-match analysis, with the two riffing on various comic tropes, and offering their opinions on England’s stuttering form.

There was a sudden shift in tone for one particular episode, which has become a valuable resource to me whenever England flatter to deceive, which is often. It is something that I have returned to in the past, and expect to turn to again this summer, despite the best intentions of one Roy Hodgson at the European Championships.

The podcast recorded on July 1st, the day of England’s elimination at the hands of Portugal, deserves greater recognition for the way it transcends itself, becoming more than just a knockabout comedy show. As David and Frank mourn England’s latest failure, they pick over the bones of the corpse with the same confused heartbreak of someone lamenting a former lover. They spend half an hour discussing not merely a football match, but a broken relationship. Sven-Goran Eriksson is the lover that they collectively puzzle over, as they balefully consider the state of his legacy and his imminent departure.

The podcast is effectively a time capsule that condenses the Eriksson era. Sven is the aforementioned ‘lover’, with Baddiel and Skinner musing over every last gesture, every last word, desperately trying to decipher meaning amid the chaos. The show is, from the stand-point of an England supporter, gut-wrenching, rueful, cynical, optimistic, existentialist, and plenty more besides. Above all, it is essential listening. It offered strange comfort not just in 2006, but in 2008 and 2010 too. I expect it will offer the same dark solace this summer, when I break the emergency glass for this, the best available remedy for England’s failures…

The podcast begins as the match does in Gelsenkirchen, Baddiel and Skinner audible in the foreground as they join in singing the National Anthem. The nervous optimism of the live match recordings is intercut with a more despondent post-match inquest, as joviality and hope is gradually eroded by the advancing reality of England’s elimination. The two timelines intertwine, offering a similar timeshift as if watching Memento, with Guy Pearce’s insomniac, memory-deficient cop replaced by an acerbic Brummy and a neurotic jew. This non-linear dynamic cultivates that nagging sense of ‘what if?’ that haunts you after your team has lost a crucial game. Baddiel, post-match, says that’s he’s already getting over it, and you wonder if he’s being honest. He asks himself how long he would’ve been joyful for had England won: “About…two hours?”. It seems like he’s just kidding himself, compromising the integrity of his hopes with emotional bargaining. He jokes that he would still be pissed off that the show’s producer has a bigger hotel room than him, even if England had won. Skinner disagrees, saying that an England win would be “the gift that keeps on giving”, that he’d remember it in the shower the following morning and feel great again, rather than just remembering “Ah shit, we’re out of the World Cup.”

When we cut again to the ground, the two continue joking, perhaps just to allay their nerves, but it’s akin to the early scenes in Titanic when the poor people party below decks, unaware of the disaster that awaits. Our hosts compare the two managers, with “wily old fox” Felipe Scolari likely to be on the lookout for weaknesses to exploit, while Eriksson is more likely to see “a woman with big tits in row G”. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this point, until a drained post-match Skinner cites Elvis Costello: “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” It is worthy advice, and Skinner embraces it with enthusiasm. Baddiel tells of how he bumped into Victoria Beckham at half-time, and heard her say “Cheryl, can you take the boys to the toilet?”, with Skinner quipping that the Cheryl in question (the nation’s favourite cuckold and forgotten racist, Ms. Cole née Tweedy) would be the worst person to do such a thing.

Even a flippant story such as this carries some weight, representing the distraction and excess of the ‘WAG’ enclave at that tournament. It seems appropriate that the players’ wives would somehow feature in this podcast, despite having no direct impact on events on the pitch. That tackily-tanned harem with long legs and longer hair extensions made for fitting symbols of the attention-grabbing sideshow that served as an unwanted footnote to England’s risible campaign.

Mining the zeitgeist further, Baddiel laments the absence of Michael Owen, whose tournament ended after a knee injury against Sweden. He talks about how England made chances against Portugal, without having anyone available to take them, opining that we “still miss that type of player”. The type of player that Gary Lineker was for England, always popping up to score when a goal was required. Six years on, and England are still missing that type of player. Such a void will stretch ever larger this summer, when Wayne Rooney sits out the first two group games of Euro 2012 through suspension.

Rooney has previous when it comes to international red cards, of course, and the response to his stamp on Ricardo Carvalho makes for riveting listening. Skinner, like most England fans would have been at the time, is apoplectic: “And fucking Rooney’s been fucking sent off for fuck all!” he spits. “I can’t fucking believe it! What did he fucking do though? We’re being cheated out of this!” Skinner is the more emotional and impulsive of the two comics, and appears to have more in common with the archetype of the England fan. The assumption that England were being cheated is something that was likely to have been echoed in pubs across the land that day, even with the benefit of TV replays. Skinner ticks off another square on the England supporter’s bingo card by defiantly declaring it “time for the courageous England performance. Ten young men of England taking on Portugal and the fucking referee.” Several clichés that come with the territory of England at a major tournament are referenced, but the show doesn’t suffer for this triteness. It is oddly comforting to hear the thoughts such as might proliferate in the head of so many England fans.

The subsequent conspiratorial wink from Cristiano Ronaldo is addressed by Baddiel after the game, suggesting that he “Can’t see how [Ronaldo and Rooney] can go on playing together for Manchester United ever again.” The fact that they would, winning three Premiership titles, an FA Cup and a European Cup, makes for an effective reminder that sometimes things are rarely as melodramatic as they might seem immediately after a game, especially when that game is a World Cup quarter-final (Recently the Carlos Tevez situation at Manchester City has further proven that no bridge is every truly burnt). Baddiel goes on to discuss ethics in the game, and suggests that “Any chance of [young players] ever thinking in terms of something [being] okay to do ethically on the pitch is completely gone now.” Since then we’ve seen such incidents as the Luis Suarez handball against Ghana, Thierry Henry costing the Republic of Ireland a place at the World Cup, and countless other high-profile instances of cheating that suggest that Baddiel, sadly, may well be right.

The reign of Sven is summarised by Skinner, who complains that the Swede only ever picked the players that the papers demanded, as if the squad was decided by a press vote. Rather than concentrating on finding the right blend of players, Skinner continues, he stuffed the team with Galacticos that never looked like a proper team. I remember when he picked unheralded Charlton Athletic defender Chris Powell in his very first squad. This singular thinking was rarely to be seen throughout the rest of a tenure which can perhaps be surmised by the albatross that was the Steven Gerrard/Frank Lampard conundrum. Warming to his theme, Skinner extemporises by comparing the England team to a greatest hits CD. He says that he prefers proper albums as they represent the band’s creativity over a specific period of time, and that, while there may be a few fillers, it works better as an overall product. The England team of 2006, as through Sven’s entire reign, was England’s greatest hits album, without the unity, focus or vision required to transcend the sum of its parts. Baddiel agrees, saying that no-one ever picks a greatest hits collection as their best album, and by that same logic, few will ever hold Sven’s perennial losing quarter-finalists in any great esteem.

As Baddiel and Skinner prepare for the shoot-out, they adopt the “penalty stance” – arms around each other, heads bowed in grim anticipation. There is still time for some gallows humour, as the two men embrace with faces smeared red with melting face paint. “Since our face paint has made us look red,” Skinner says, “People are looking at us saying ‘Look at those two blokes from the dermatitis clinic showing a bit of unity.’”

I have seen the key moments of that penalty shoot-out several times since, but no amount of repeat views can recreate the sinking feeling of imminent collapse as well as Skinner’s guttural reaction to Lampard’s missed penalty. “Oh…he’s….Oh no, not again. Please not again. Please not again.” It’s a reaction that is almost lewd in its rawness, and it perfectly captures the horrors of a penalty shoot-out. In some ways, Skinner’s reaction to the first Portugal penalty miss makes for even more distressing listening. The optimism and elation of the moment is retrospectively recast as the cruelty of false hope. Portugal’s second miss is even more vindictive. Skinner doesn’t say as much, but you can read his thoughts clearly: nobody misses penalties against England, but for a team to miss two? England are going to win, this is our time. When I listen to this moment again, I ask myself whether I could’ve ever felt that myself at the time, watching at home. I’m certain that perhaps I did, but it seems impossible.

Skinner takes a turn for the maudlin when he tells how he had tears in his eyes at the thought that he doesn’t think he’ll ever see England win a major tournament in his lifetime. “I’m 50 next year and I honestly think time is running out, I just can’t see it happening.” Baddiel reminds him that he said the same thing after leaving the Stade De France after the 1998 World Cup final, before suggesting with all sincerity that a healthier lifestyle could be the way forward – “If you live a bit longer you might have more of a chance.”, he says, with no hint of irony or sarcasm. Unwittingly, Baddiel sums up the desperation of the England fan with some genuine, wholesome advice. Rather than hoping for a more tactically astute manager, or a brighter crop of young players to emerge, it seems that yoga and a macrobiotic diet offer a more likely route to triumph (Possibly heeding this advice, hydrophobe Skinner completed a swimming challenge for Sport Relief earlier this year).

As Owen Hargreaves successfully puts his penalty away – the only England player to do so – Baddiel and Skinner talk afterwards about how their perceptions of him had changed after the tournament. It has long been my contention that, had England beaten Portugal, that his performance in this match would have deserved the same canonisation as David Beckham’s against Greece in 2001. If anything, it would’ve warranted additional merit – England were expected to beat Greece in front of home support, whereas a team of ten men in a World Cup knockout match had far more to do. Beckham’s performance against Greece, full of apparently selfless running, may have provided a problem of its own that day. By seeking involvement in order to grab the game by its scruff, Beckham dispensed with positional sense in a way that may well have made it harder for England to form cohesive attacks on goal. Hargreaves would have covered similar ground against Portugal, but it was absolutely essential with ten men on the field, in a match where survival was paramount.

Skinner damns him with faint praise by lauding the typically English decision to name him man of the match “for basically just running out of his skin”, and not for anything technically cultured. “It’s alright, but it’s not going to win us the World Cup”. One might well adopt this maxim for Scott Parker this summer. Parker has made “running out of his skin” the bedrock of his game, and is the long-awaited successor to Hargreaves, but Skinner is right – more is required to win tournaments. This is not to downplay the importance of Parker in 2012, nor the importance of Hargreaves in 2006, but the point is valid. Either way, it is staggering to consider that, in all likelihood, this was the last a major international tournament would ever see of Owen Hargreaves.

“Hmm…perhaps if I steal his knee while he’s busy weeping?”

Skinner offers another theory concerning English football, by suggesting that the national game was irreparably damaged by Brazil winning the World Cup in 1970. Prior to this, England were a major power by playing English football, with “big stopper centre-halves, big, strong centre-forwards, some skill, but a lot of hard work, sweat and guts”. Then, after seeing Brazil in ’70, England underwent a shift in ideology. “We basically turned our back on our inheritance to try and play like continentals or South-Americans. You have to keep true to what your football self is.” Roy Hodgson, with his penchant for pragmatism, may well agree with such a philosophy.

There is further tactical insight from Baddiel, who says that, after five years, he couldn’t say what Eriksson’s style of play was. They discuss the misperception that England endeavoured to play defensive football when, in Skinner’s view, really it was just “failed attacking football.” Baddiel is angered by Eriksson’s assertion that he wouldn’t mind if England won playing ‘bad football’, arguing that teams never win playing ‘bad football’. “Greece played tight, dull defensive football in Euro 2004, but it wasn’t ‘bad’.” Take Chelsea’s Champions League elimination of Barcelona this season; some derided Roberto Di Matteo’s allegedly anti-football tactics, ignoring the fact that defensive football is a tactical discipline with its own intrinsic qualities and nuances. England could only dream of such accomplishment in Germany. Baddiel provides a fitting epitaph for the 2006 campaign: “We gave the ball away, we constantly looked frightened at the back.” ’twas ever thus.

Skinner closes the podcast with an almost apologetic tone, confessing “We couldn’t be bothered sitting here trying to be funny, I’m pissed off.” This is something that the ubiquitous ‘Toby Jug full of hot piss‘ Adrian Chiles would do well to take note of. Sometimes it’s right to be morose if it captures the moment. In the wake of a defeat, you don’t want to be laughing and joking about it. You can’t force yourself to stop agonising over it. It might not be the right thing to do, like picking at the scab of a grazed knee, but even if it is painful, you just want to feel that something is being done to heal the wound.

To my mind, the appropriate tone at such a time is the one captured in this podcast – unashamedly dejected, bleakly conciliatorial, strangely cathartic. I’ll listen to this again at some point this summer, seeking consolation by reminding myself that this is just the way it has to be. The FA should make this available on their website as dejected England fans nurse their grief. If you’re an England fan, I suggest you do the same, using the links below.

DOWNLOAD – Baddiel and Skinner – 1st July 2006

SOUNDCLOUD – Baddiel and Skinner – 1st July 2006

 

Black History Month 2012: The Highlights

Ruud Gullit Sitting On A Shed is a proud supporter of the Kick Racism Out Of Football campaign, as well as the Slap Silliness Out Of Swimming campaign and particularly the Fling Fustiness Out Of Fencing campaign.

In our continuing efforts to spread the good word of these endeavours, we are proud to parp the trumpet of peace, and bring you this thrilling video compendium of the highlights of this year’s Black History Month. Football, as ever, has a firm grip of its own moral compass, which is always facing north – precisely the same direction in which we can find the Path to Salvation, the Avenue of Amicability and the Cul-de-sac of Coalition.

Watch in awe as we see football collectively swing the snooker-ball-in-a-sock of defiance in the hateful face of racial twattery. And remember: once you go Black History Month, you’ll never go Back History Month (until next year, where it’s rumoured that Patrice Evra may face Luis Suarez in a rematch…inside a steel cage!).

Paul Scholes 3:16 – or – How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Football and Love Adam Bomb

“Can football still be considered a sport? Or is it something else? It possesses characters, narrative, plot. It attracts more attention for what happens on the field rather than on. The game still continues, of course, but the edifice around it suggests that sport is just an aspect of what football has become. Is it, in fact, sports entertainment?”

Recently I wrote a flippant piece imagining a pop culture mash-up of sorts between football and professional wrestling. Since then, two things have happened that have compelled me to stretch this comparison further, like some poor sap trapped in a Crippler Crossface.

Firstly, I read an article by Rory Smith in The Blizzard, quoted above, which posits the theory that contemporary media coverage of football has unwittingly thrust the game into the realm of sports entertainment, the term with which pro wrestling is synonymous.

Secondly, Paul Scholes emerged from retirement to dust off his boots, to stage an unlikely comeback for Manchester United…

I used to watch wrestling. Like squabbling brothers we no longer get along, despite their playing a vital role in my formative years. As a naive child I cheered for the likes of Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. As a teenager I matured during the ‘Attitude’ years of Stone Cold Steve Austin and D-Generation X. As a young adult I marvelled at the curious hinterland where scripted drama and legitimate conflict overlapped. As such, I have often viewed different forms of entertainment through the prism of this bizarre, often misunderstood world, where scripted beefs and simulated sport combine.

The return of Paul Scholes made so much sense and yet so little sense at the same time. Viewed through ginger-tinted spectacles, it was a romantic, heroic return of a legend, and a sensible addition to a depleted midfield. In purely football terms, it seemed perfectly logical. But something about it roused the slumbering wrestling fan within me. The style of the last-minute announcement, with United’s players not finding out until hours before the game, smacked of the sort of stunt booking one would see in wrestling, where eleventh hour interference from an outsider is a staple trope. When Scholes leapt from the Etihad substitutes bench to pad back on to a competitive football pitch, it may have lacked the dynamism of, say, The Undertaker announcing his return from a lengthy hiatus by riding in on a motorcycle. But in terms of its shock value, the way it changed the game, and it’s drama as a spectacle, the two events made for convincing, if unconventional, bedfellows.

A more pragmatic view would have it that it undermined the confidence of the rest of United’s midfielders. Darron Gibson saw the writing on the wall that he frequently missed during shooting practise, and left the club to join Everton. Ravel Morrison has decamped to West Ham, where his prodigious talent will war with his self-destructive streak in a battle for his footballing soul. United may well prove better off without them both, but if Scholes was what finally ushered them to the exit, it was akin to dumping a girl by kissing someone else in front of her – thrilling yet tactless, and lacking a certain class.
Another surprise was that it begged the question – why do so few footballers turn their back on retirement? Wrestlers are notorious for finding it hard to walk away, unable to leave behind an all-consuming lifestyle that sustains them. Mick Foley famously retired from wrestling in 2000, only to return weeks later for a lucrative WrestleMania pay day, where he retired again for real. In January 2012, he was confirmed as one of the 30 participants in the Royal Rumble event. Ric Flair continues to wrestle to this day despite numerous abortive attempts to retire, having first laced up boots in 1972. Occasionally footballers change their mind when it comes to international retirement, with the results ranging from the sublime (Zidane in 2006) to the sub-par (Carragher in 2012). In time we may look back on the comeback of Scholes and see it as a groundbreaking event, the moment a door was opened to shed light on retired players, who may wonder what their bodies and minds may be capable of after a similar break.

In the case of both Foley and Flair, as with so many others, their inability to step away from the limelight succumbs to the rule of diminishing returns. Earlier triumphs are tainted by shambling, inept attempts at reliving long-distant glories. The early signs for Scholes (and passing completion statistics) indicate that the comeback could prove a masterstoke. If his level of performance should wane, it would betray the send-off he was given last May. Scholes’s final game was the Champions League final against Barcelona, and despite a comprehensive 3-1 defeat, there was a scrum amongst Barca players to swap shirts with a player identified as one of their spiritual kin. Andres Iniesta won, and it seemed like a symbolic, if somewhat belated, passing of a torch, with Scholes ceding the limelight as Iniesta enjoys his peak years.

It is rare for a wrestler to return from retirement with renewed vigour, but one example springs to mind. Shawn Michaels was forced to retire in 1998 due to a debilitating back injury. After five years of convalescence he returned, and stunned the industry by being as good as he ever was in his prime, winning the World Heavyweight Championship. Scholes may yet prove to be like Michaels, and leave people ruing his absence rather than malign an ill-judged return. If anything, Michaels bears comparison to Scholes’s team-mate, Ryan Giggs. Both men were considered too old, and yet still too good. Both men (Michaels’ five-year hiatus notwithstanding) experienced similar career trajectories. They both emerged as flying, precocious pin-ups, with talent to burn. Growing older, they became mainstays through consistent performances, particularly in the big matches. As they aged they continued to raise the bar by modifying their game, whilst showing their employers up for failing to promote new talent to replace them. (One exception is in their proclivity for scandal; Giggs maintained a monastic lifestyle throughout his career, until his much-publicised affair and subsequent waving of a futile, skyward fist at Twitter for besmirching his name. Michaels’ career was the exact inverse, with a tendency for controversy eventually eroded by the spiritual lure of born-again Christianity.)

If Giggs is football’s answer to The Heartbreak Kid, then it’s because they share common ground in a founding principle in wrestling – the gimmick. A wrestler’s gimmick is their personality, the manifestation of character, the thing that makes them stand out from the rest. The ‘Million Dollar Man’ Ted DiBiase arrogantly flaunted his wealth on the way to the ring. Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts would terrorise opponents and fans alike with a live snake. The Gobbedly Gooker was a man dressed as a giant turkey, who would go on to embody the phenomenon of ‘wrestlecrap‘ by hatching from a giant egg.

Just as the most interesting wrestlers have the best gimmicks, so do the most interesting footballers. Increasingly, the media pigeonhole football personalities of interest according to their own, easily identifiable USP’s. In this era of homogenised, media-trained bores, anybody that bucks the trend by demonstrating personality are exalted out of proportion, and are considered oddities, rather than just the lone, sane voices in a world awash with tedious, rent-a-quote post-match interviews. Mario Balotelli is an enigmatic, child-like buffoon. Joey Barton is a Nietszche-quoting reformed thug. Harry Redknapp, to his evident consternation, is seen as a cock-er-knee spiv. Craig Bellamy blends genres by casting himself as a sort of philanthropist tosspot.

Scholes’s gimmick was almost subversive in it’s anti-gimmickness. His on-field persona eschewed the passion of the box-to-box midfield general, or the bombast of the tricksy winger. Scholes was a no-frills performer that found the spectacular in the mundane. Keeping the ball, savouring possession and carving a few feet of space from mere inches became his art. He was the footballing equivalent of a solid mat technician, such as Bret Hart or Chris Benoit. Both, like Scholes, were utterly bereft of charisma, but more than made up for it with peerless technical acumen. Scholes was technically magnificent, the footballer’s footballer, just as Benoit was the wrestler’s wrestler. Both men were throwbacks, publicity shy, rarely giving interviews. They were devoted to their vocations in the purest way possible, in wanting to excel without wishing to discuss it, in seeking the kudos of approval without courting it. (Here the comparison ends, as Benoit’s career and life came to a tragic end.)

His bad tackling has become a lazy comic trope used to deride him, whilst simultaneously managing to overlook the fact that he got away with an awful lot, despite the occasional red card. In this regard, you can also see a likeness to the late Eddie Guerrero circa 2003. His gimmick at the time was captured by his catchphrase, ‘Lie, cheat, steal’, and would see him living up to that mantra by doing whatever it took to win, without compromising his ‘good guy’ status. Similarly, Scholes’s tackling, which veered wildly from the clumsy to the barbaric, was dismissed with an almost-universal chuckle because – bless ‘im! – he was rubbish at tackling, wasn’t he?

In short, Scholes spurned the very notion of showmanship. While we all know that wrestling’s not sport, just as in the field of acting, the best in the business are the ones that can convince you that it’s real. The best ones are good talkers, and can hold court on a microphone, trying to convince you that they really do intend to pulverise their enemies. The best promos are the ones that ‘talk them into the building’, (see CM Punk, Paul Heyman and Jake Roberts) drawing in rapt audiences desperate to see the denouement of a bitter feud. 

After Scholes’s return, a disappointed Roberto Mancini spoke to ITV’s Gabriel Clarke, who pressed him for a response regarding Vincent Kompany’s contentious red card. Undeterred by Mancini’s reticence, Clarke pushed and pushed, rephrasing the question, desperate for the Italian to get himself into trouble. This is what the media has made of pre- and post- match interviews, turning them into antagonistic, inflammatory wrestling-style promos. They are no longer solely intended to extricate news on whether a left-back’s groin strain has cleared up, but to extract exclamations of war, digestible, ready-for-air soundbites that stoke the fires. Journalists and broadcasters poke, probe and agitate, mining spite.

Nowadays, interviews tell the stories which feed the narrative of the match. Rafa Benitez pulling out a slip of paper to angrily recite his infamous list of “facts” regarding Sir Alex Ferguson was the equivalent of Benitez telling Fergie that he was gonna lay the smack down on his candy ass. Kevin Keegan’s “I’d love it if we beat them” address is remembered now, in the light of his ultimate defeat, as the sign of a man descending inexorably into madness. At the time, he was telling Ferguson (That man again! The cerebral assassin! The dirtiest player in the game!) that he was gonna take that championship belt from around his waist, and watcha gonna do, brotha, watcha gonna do, when the Toon Army runs wild on you!!! (History also forgets how Sky Sports cameras cut away just as Keegan ripped off his t-shirt and flexed his muscles inanely, like a ‘roided-up chimp).

"Well, y'know something, Mean Gene.."

In football, just as in wrestling, the storylines are just as important as the matches themselves. The preamble to ITV’s coverage of Manchester United’s visit to Liverpool in the FA Cup dwelt on the thorny backdrop of Luis Suarez vs. Patrice Evra. When Wayne Bridge faced erstwhile love rival John Terry on a football pitch for the first time after their very public personal feud, the image of Bridge refusing to accept Terry’s handshake took on the gravitas of, say, Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant sizing each other up before battle. In both cases, this was wrestling-style promotion for the purposes of football. Smith gave the example of how, the morning after Barcelona eviscerated Arsenal 3-1 in the Champions League last season, the papers focussed on Arsene Wenger’s accusation that the referee killed the game: “The beauty of Barcelona was relegated to second billing behind the whisper of illusory controversy.”

"How do you expect me to play for England again when you've boffed my missus?"

It is this notion of illusory controversy that made the return of Scholes so bizarre. That a player so averse to publicity would court the idea of doing something so outlandish in the face of such anathema was entirely at odds with the man that everyone thought they knew. Perhaps this is the most encouraging thing about his return. By allowing his sheer enthusiasm for the game he loves to overcome such an instinct for shyness struck something of a blow to the edifice surrounding football, as cited by Smith at the top of this article.

To quote Smith once more: “Everything, in football, is heightened. Reality is not enough, so it is expanded, meaning is extrapolated, significance is assumed.”

This is as true of Paul Scholes as it was for Adam Bomb…

"My favourite player is Frankie Bunn."

The Mario Balotelli 2012 Futurescape

If 2011 was anything to go by, Mario Balotelli will be all over 2012, finding ever more ludicrous ways to capture the imagination. Given the reams of press coverage he generated last year, it is safe to assume that he will accumulate a similar acreage this year, which will ask for a fair time commitment from us, the reading public. It will also leave us in a collective quandary as we desperately wonder whether it’s sufficiently hip to like him or not.

With this in mind, RGSOAS has devised a definitive compendium of opinions that sum up the divisive nature of the man. The accompanying stories are deadly accurate approximations of what I’m sure we can expect this year. This is your one-stop shop for your Balotelli reading; get it out of the way early, in order to free up time to devote to other pursuits. Enjoy it, then move on. We’ve got the Olympics to get on with, after all…

BANDWAGONTACULAR

I prefer his earlier, cooler stuff personally. Did you hear that story about when he was fourteen years old and he hid his teacher’s keys? Nah, you probably haven’t heard that, but it was probably his most seminal escapade. It really changed the way I think about horseplay. Brilliant, it was. He just took the keys and hid them behind a radiator. Teacher had no idea. It sounds rubbish, but it was way ahead of its time, y’know? Ah, you probably don’t get it.

MY WHACKINESS IS TOO CONTRIVED

Manchester City called for a total media blackout today after it was revealed that a year’s worth of upcoming storylines for Mario Balotelli have been leaked. City manager Roberto Mancini is said to be furious that details have been circulated via a mislaid memory
stick, which has left the club on the crisis-cusp. The details of twelve months’ worth of madcap hi-jinks have spread online, leaving the club to consider the possibility of hasty rewrites. The following ideas were found:

* A DNA test arrives in the post – is Mario really the father of Pixel’s baby?

* Mario finds himself sharing a flat with Luis Suarez and John Terry in a brutal sitcom spin-off.

* Robert Mancini is taken ill, and Mario is appointed caretaker manager – the same week as the big Manchester derby!

* Local thugs challenge Mario to a skate-off, but will the builders erect his solid-gold half-pipe in time?

* Mario’s estranged brother Luigi (played by character actor and renowned character James Nesbitt) turns up – with hilarious (and tragic) results!

* “Did someone say ‘long-lost triplets’!?”

* Mario jumps a shark on a jet-ski.

LEVEL 10 HATRED (GARTH CROOKS)

It’s true…

FOOTBALL NEEDS ITS PERSONALITIES

Such is the demand for Mario’s own homespun style of zany buffoonery, he even had the foresight to execute his own Christmas Special, as yuletide rumours swept the internet that he had dressed as Father Christmas and driven around the Manchester streets handing out cash to passers-by. Robert Mancini, in his dual role as City manager and ad-hoc clown handler, had to deny the allegations in a press conference. Regardless, football’s self-appointed court-jester-in-chief had taught children and grown adults alike a
valuable lesson about Christmas – as unfeasible as the whole thing sounded, people wanted it to be true. People clung to the idea of Balotelli as a benevolent philanthropist, in order to restore their faith in the magic of Christmas. He did more to invigorate a
collective sense of festive wonderment than any episode of Noel’s Christmas Presents ever could, and I have very nearly cried at that programme.

NICKLAS BENDTNER TRIBUTE ACT

Nicklas Bendtner is to sue Mario Balotelli for plagiarism. The humility-conscious Dane has accused Manchester City’s whacky striker of “ripping off” his act. City fan and renowned idea thief Noel Gallagher has unsurprisingly spoken out in support of Balotelli, by saying: “Imagine all the people living for today, oh-oh-oooh”. Bendtner claims that the final straw came when he began handing out money to strangers whilst dressed as Father Christmas, only for his advances to be snubbed by members of the public who condemned the gesture as hackneyed. “I wouldn’t mind, but Mario got more publicity
for NOT doing it than I did for actually doing it. What more do I need to do to buy some popularity around here?!”. Bendtner, who hopes to sue Balotelli for around £1m, plans to spend the money on importing the Loch Ness monster into his back garden.

POOR ROLE MODEL

My mother, a mother, writes:

“That Mario Balotelli needs to grow up! I got children and they look up to ‘im!”

LOL M8!

He’s got so much banter! He really is well banter. Seriously though, his banter is great, and he can’t stop bantering. Such is the level of his banterness that I can’t quite decide whether I use ‘banter’ as a verb, adjective, noun or other. Either way – Limit Of Liability M8! Ledge!

COOL

Nah, he’s alright innit?