As the Premier League returned this weekend, I thought you could say something similar about big football. It's the gestural arts that drive it rather than the results: Rooney's pointedly not celebrating with the rest of his team, Mourinho's dewy-eyed welcome back to Stamford Bridge, Suarez turning up at Anfield clutching his tiny daughter as if to deflect any aggravation his behaviour may have stored up, the Arsenal fans holding up banners telling Wenger to spend.
BT Sport should find room in their army of pundits for a theatre critic.
Fair point, but one thing irks me about that widely-disseminated, selectively-cropped image: how much of Wayne Rooney's isolation is down to narkiness, and how much is due to the fact that Michu had painfully clattered him from behind in the build-up to the goal being celebrated?
ReplyDeleteI can't possibly empathise with his (agent's) Machiavellian move-manoeuvring machinations, but I certainly know that after being hacked from the back by a six-foot striker, I wouldn't go sprinting to cheer a dead-rubber fourth goal.
As is usually the case, The Guardian's Daniel Taylor writes well on the Rooney/Suarez business: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/aug/17/leighton-baines-transfer-window