BEWARE THE SIDES OF MARCH
Big Cup soccer returns to our tv monitors this night, and in contrast to remaining weekend’s Match of the Days, we are completely sure the standard, full-fat, bangs-and-whistles model of The Manchester City & Leipzig Show will cross forward with out being compromised by means of the absurd grandstanding and sinister maneuvers of piss-poor populist politicians. That’s since the tournament goes out on BT Sport, which in contrast to the BBC no one can pay the blindest little bit of consideration to, and offered by means of Jake Humphrey, who in contrast to Gary Lineker … and that is the place the comedy of repetition is our good friend.
So it’s going to surely get broadcast. Socialist chat! Cooperative theme song! All the penalty calls! The program will even characteristic a number of pre-match interviews, which, as is conventional all the way through March, consist basically of City gamers looking to persuade themselves they in point of fact, really, in truth do not care that a lot concerning the Big Cup, with controversial good fortune. “I don’t regret the things I do,” insists Kevin De Bruyne. “We’ve not won [Big Cup] but we have done really well in it. That objectively fair assessment was only slightly undercut by his immediate segueing into a morose review of those Real Madrid and Tottenham defeats. “We deserved to go through. Moments happen. People base everything on only winning but there has been a lot of circumstances.” Oh Kevin! You nearly had us believing it used to be true as neatly.
Naturally his supervisor additionally sought after a slice of that candy denial pie. “It’s lovely … it’s special!” started Pep’s paean to the Big Cup, a event that has remained tantalizingly out of achieve all the way through his decade in Munich and Manchester. “So nice to show our club all around Europe!” However, that comfortable petal-strewn reverie may most effective remaining see you later, and shortly sufficient he’d snapped again into trade mode and started free-associating about this night’s warring parties. “We were better … they were better … figure out what we’re going to do … adjust a few things … more control … play a bit better … transition … a coin … it can go in your favor … maybe we need to break more of the game … maybe we don’t.”
The sort of jumpy monologue, one could argue, that betrays an all-encompassing desire for that elusive valedictorian Big Cup – and contains worrying signs that he may be overthinking things at the business end yet again.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Scott Murray for piping hot MBM coverage of the Big Cup, Manchester City 2-1 Leipzig (3-2 agg), with kick-off at 8pm GMT.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We’ve earned £45,000 for the club but if we were men we would have earned £450,000; I was shocked to know that that was the difference” – Lewes midfielder Lauren Heria makes the not unreasonable point for equal prize money for men’s and women’s teams in the FA Cup to end the “shocking disparity” between the rewards on offer in the respective competitions . Lewes will receive no money from the BBC for their FA Cup quarter-final against Manchester United on Sunday, whereas the men’s teams will each be paid £200,000 for their televised quarter-finals.
“Re: Steve Pilgrim’s no-prize-winning letter [Monday’s letters], Probably not ideal to correct a bad French translation by writing that it ‘should, of course, have read’ followed by … another bad French translation. No, the French equivalent for ‘and no others’ is neither The Football Daily’s ‘et pas d’autres’ nor Steve Pilgrim’s ‘et rien d’autres’, but … ‘et personne d’autre’. But I suspect you already know that at this point, and are just hoping that other aspiring French-writing Football Daily readers will join this rather delightful hole-digging parade. Sorry for being the reader who has to pleuvoir on that parade” – Pierre Igot (et d’autres).
“Re Monday’s news, bits and bobs: whisper it, but presumably Chelsea’s potential new signing will be ushered through the Door Marked ‘Dujuan’ when he inevitably fails to dislodge Ruben Loftus-Cheek from the squad” – Joe Brown.
“You would not be so dismissive of VAR had you been an Arsenal fan in the glorious heyday of Terry [sic?] Henry. He was endlessly flagged for offside only for the cameras to show him not to be. More, bigger VAR now!” Graham Williams.
“Re Monday’s Football Daily and the ‘many reasons why, as kids, we fell in love with the absolute mess we know as football’, I played in a Sunday league, so fortunately one of my reasons was ‘to get away from my moms’ interpretation of Sunday lunch’. Also, because I got home about 5pm you could add “to get the mud off in a bath that lasted the duration of the charts on Radio 1” – Antony T.
Send your letters to [email protected]. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Joe Brown,