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ARGENTINIAN BEEF AND ENGLISH CORN 7-9-06
Calum Law
Argentinian Beef
Manchester United's peremptory dispatch of Jaap Stam to Lazio famously prompted Roy Keane to phone his erstwhile colleague and sympathise. In an exquisite simile, which demonstrated that 'you can take the boy out of the bog... etc', Keane is alleged to have lamented: 'they sold you like a cow.'
One wonders to which form of livestock Keane would have likened Tevez and Mascherano after their eye-popping double transfer to West Ham? Broiler chickens maybe? Or farmed prawns?
For one feels sure that Carlos and Javier weren't threatening to rip the Tony Cottee posters from their bedroom walls unless they got a move to the Boleyn Ground. And even the most dyed-in-the-wool empiricist must scent conspiracy in the 'what me Gov?' platitudes trotted out by the interested parties.
Despite whatever lingers unanswered in the air however, in this era of 'player power' - when footballers don't just throw their toys out of the pram till their wishes are met, but douse them in petrol and set fire to them first - such old-fashioned horse-trading can seem, paradoxically, almost refreshing.
It evokes the golden age of the patrician Chairman in spats (who'd sell Alf Tufnell for three tons of coal and a grouse moor) and is a salutary reminder that all the authorities bluster about probity and openness and cleaning up the business of transfers is so much hot air. As a cursory glance at the first 100-odd years of Middlesbrough F.C. will remind you: when it comes to football, where there's brass, there's muck.
West Ham fans plainly couldn't care less; though many will suspect their new acquisitions are not so much owned by them as parked in their driveway.
English Corn
Sticking with the Bountiful Game, it was a little disappointing, but not in the least surprising, to see Steven Gerrard advertising Persil (though if ever there was a brand name more designed to mock an unreconstructed Scouse accent...).
Gerrard, so thrilling and all-action on the field, always appears so measured and un-histrionic off it and was my preference for England captain. This aura of old-fashioned integrity that I'd sentimentally allowed to develop around him naturally vanished on witnessing his readiness to seek his next shilling from the peddling of detergent - long recognised as the ultimate triumph of marketing over content.
Footballers of course are not known for being the sharpest tools, but they are tools - and ones that capitalism is long-practiced in exploiting. And after all, why should a mere athlete be expected to resist the booty call of easy money when even counterculture demigods like Bob Dylan 'sanction' a tie-in with Starbucks. It's a road so well-worn it's practically a tramway - even Paul Scholes has likely got a couple of endorsements tucked away - probably for shinpads.
Nonetheless, it would be nice if somewhere there was a Hall of (unsullied) Fame for those public figures who've only ever taken payment for the day job. Such people are, as Gerrard might utter it in flat Merseyside vowels, "class". And though also poorer, at least will never have to cringe when hearing the words 'washes whiter'.
It's one of the very few advantages I can see to being born ugly. For let's face it, Peter Beardsley was only ever going to be the face of Tesco insofar as he looked like he should be pushing trolleys round the car park.
Corned Beef
Ah Beardsley, what a special little player he was. Part of the only England team to have reached the semi-final of a World Cup in the last fourty years, Beardo was one of four world-class attacking players in that line-up (Gascoigne, Waddle and Lineker the others).
Apparently the F.A. is to hold an 'inquest' as to why their 2006 counterparts failed to match their progress. Duh! It's a numbers game, Gents. They had four, we have two (Rooney and Gerrard).
Granted matters weren't helped by having a manager whose career trajectory was an eerie facsimile of Chance the Gardener in Being There.
Nevertheless, while tabloid clamour, due (as per tradition) to next reach crescendo in 2008, is at present clearing its mildly-embarrassed throat, it does no harm to bring a little camomile tea to the party and declare that, with the possible exception of Theo Walcott, two is likely to remain England's magic number in this respect.
Spam
And so to Middlesbrough and the nucleus of future England line-ups! And after leaving no Outpatients Clinic unbidden in his search for a halfway adequate defence, Gareth Southgate has already mooted the possibility of his new linchpin turning out in a shirt other than that of the fellow's new, undoubtedly generous employers.
Er, steady on Gareth. I can see where you're coming from an' all but can we please have half-a-dozen games out of the lad before you start filling his head with England?
Woodgate, of course, is pure thoroughbred - but with all the concomitant delicacy of limb. If (a gargantuan if) he can be kept on the training ground and out of the town, his signing could be a masterstroke. Either way it will be filed under capital 'd': Destiny or Disaster.
Perhaps we'll get an inkling as to which on Saturday when we visit Arsenal, where, like Aztec virgins on Groundhog Day we reconvene for ritual dismemberment.
Who knows? Maybe this time the Gods will be clement.
NOW HAVE YOUR SAY IN THE NEW HOLGATE FORUM
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