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DON'T COUNT YOUR CHIPS 25-1-07
Calum Law
It was love at first sight when Denise and BuBu's eyes met across the row of sauce bottles. 'What a lovely smile,' she thought, as he stared meaningfully into her limpid green eyes.' 'What a cracking arse,' he thought as she turned round to wrap his chips.
From that day on BuBu came in every night. He'd always order three Parmos at a time - the daft fella always seemed to spill at least two for every one he managed to consume - but despite this, Grease was the Word and their love bloomed (or rather oozed).
BuBu played for the local football team. He explained to Denise that he might have to leave when his contract expired. This worried Denise - if she had to live in another town she'd miss Mam and Dad - so she was overjoyed when, towards the end of his five years, BuBu told her he'd been offered the same deal again - only this time, the Chairman insisted, 'minus the agent's fees'.
The next evening Denise was making up BuBu's favourite - double saveloy and mixed with a wally chaser - when his mobile rang: 'BuBu, it's Uncle Pini here. Uncle Barry and myself need to come over and have a chat...'
When George Burley wondered if Manchester United's £8 million bid was for Gareth Bale's 'left leg or his right leg', he thought he was being facetious. But a simple bipedal ownership split such as he mooted may soon come to seem uncomplicated. In the case of Yakubu, one wouldn't be surprised to hear an Abu Dhabi consortium owns his kidneys whilst a Bucharest hedge fund underwrites his eyebrows.
The burly Nigerian appears to be some kind of human petition, picking up 'supporters' as he passes from place to place. Barry Silkman, who supposedly spotted Yakubu in Nigeria and brought him to Israel, appeared to still merit a 'consideration' when (three tranactions later) Potrtmouth sold him to Boro, as did his previous club Maccabi Haifa (to the tune of £3.5 million). Along the way, Pini Zahavi - fully justifying his tag of Super-Agent - arrived at the Buffet Bar and managed to gouge a cool £3 mill.
Given such a (high-denomination) paper-trail therefore, it's legitimate to wonder exactly who'll be sitting in on the deal should (for example) the high-cholesterol Mills & Boon imagined above come to pass, and Yakubu decide his heart belongs to Teesside.
What multitude of sins, we may wonder, shelters beneath the moniker Super-Agent? Agents, after all, are fond of spinning the line that they're an honest service industry, 'instructed' to negotiate transfers and broker sponsorship deals on behalf of their clients. Clients who, we are invited to infer, are fully within their rights to dispense with their services. Perhaps that's what the Super is implying - unsackability - like the God in Godfather. If so, it sounds less like 'agency' and more like 'pimping' - or maybe stud-farming. Grimly inevitable, one might say, that a young African should end up being traded like a prize stallion.
It's hard not to sympathise with Steve Gibson, Simon Jordan and other Chairmen who've railed against the baleful influence of these characters - because football fans (the mortar that holds the whole luxuriant edifice together) are so clearly not in agents' sphere of empathy. Whilst self-interest naturally comes into it, Gibson and Jordan, as genuine fans, still feel, first-hand, the destabilising effect this class of chancer is having.
And now Gibson finds himself at the heart of quite the most infamous example of this the football world has yet seen. One may cite the truism that, for every successful organism a corresponding parasite emerges, but when one considers that the gross receipts from one Premiership game per season at the Riverside goes into Zahavi's pocket then the limits of laissez-faire are surely exposed.
It's highly unlikely that Zahavi has ever set foot therein, but should he find himself abroad amongst the townsfolk who've so handsomely remunerated him, let's hope he avails himself of the local delicacy - it's interior warmed by Our Denise to thermonuclear levels.
Don't Fear the Reaper
An abiding concern of this column has been to keep a sense of proportion in light of the cyclical nature of sporting fortune. Having several times experienced relegation - with the world appearing to continue its stately circumgyration - one is able to view this 'catastrophe' a little more phlegmatically than the Sky-driven media agenda - which gives roughly the same degree of importance to membership of the Premiership that Soviets once gave to membership of the Communist Party.
At the behest of this agenda, a peculiar (and, one might add, un-British) craveness has begun to pervade the game. Bryan Robson waves the white flag and sends out half a reserve team against Chelsea: Bolton and others do likewise in F.A. Cup ties - believing it a competition they're incapable of challenging for; and manager, fan, tout le monde parrots the tautology 'our ambition is to finish 17th'!
But with news last week of the huge 'add-on' of foreign TV rights to the already eye-popping sums negotiated by the Premiership, I felt myself succumb. It was as if a life model I'd spent a term drawing turned up one week with implants - my perspective was forced to change.
'Please,' I thought, 'don't let me have to confront the prospect facing the huge fanbases of Wolves, Forest, Leeds - becoming feeder teams for Fulham or Wigan. Take my wife and kids instead!'
Fortunately, our handsome win over Bolton has eased those worries. Nevertheless, a stark truth had been evinced: football fans no longer have dreams that 'fade and die' - we don't have dreams at all. We're dreary little calculating machines.
Don't Bite the Hand
Of all the attributes that go in to making a great football manager, the most important is intelligence. Put bluntly, this means the ability to manipulate people. In order to be able to make a disparate team of egos work with (and for) each other, it is essential that you be the smartest person in the (dressing) room.
The three managers that bestride the English game are fine examples of this. Of the three, journalists love Mourinho the most because he gives such good copy. This is because he never utters a non-tendentious phrase - everything he says is designed to manipulate somebody - be it rivals, players, referees, chairman, even fans. He's instinctively, relentlessly political.
Mourinho's tried to cultivate a legend for himself as the Special One - the one who never fails - and he has indeed motivated his teams to achieve great things. Yet managing Benfica then Porto is essentially like managing Celtic then Rangers, just as Abramovich's backing is like having two aces permanently up one's sleeve.
He can dish it out for sure but, with his interview after the Liverpool defeat, one wonders if he's mentally equipped to deal with the kind of adversity which his career thus far has avoided. He came close to saying he expected to lose - a strange and dispirting message to send to his charges. He was like a spoilt brat who if he can't win, won't play, and rumours of his intention to depart would seem to back up such a theory.
That irritating little kid who, just as you'd started to beat his team, claimed he had to go in for his tea - and took his ball away with him.
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