Did I read the other day that Spitting Image is coming back? Not a moment too soon, in my view. And not just for the fun to be had with the current nightmarish bunch of politicians. No, the greatest gift to the puppeteer satirists is the court of the Emperor Roman, which is currently on a kind of working holiday in Portugal.
Seen from the heights of Alfama, an old quarter of Lisbon overlooking the port, Roman Abramovich’s gigantic yacht, festooned with radar domes and helicopter pads, has the impact of a Greek trireme or a United States Navy aircraft carrier. Its looming presence is intended to remind the poor colonials of their subservience.
The paparazzi’s lenses have been pointed at its gangplank for weeks, capturing the comings and goings of agents and players. Television pictures of Abramovich and his flunkeys attending various Euro 2004 matches cast a shadow over the simple enjoyment of anyone who happens to run or support a club that hopes to hang on to its bright young players.
For the makers of Spitting Image, however, the comic possibilities are self-evident. They can cast Abramovich as a dazed young man in a baseball cap, lighting his cigars with share certificates that once belonged to Siberian peasants. Peter Kenyon, Chelsea’s chief executive, will be the David Steel figure, popping out of the Russian’s wallet to perch on his employer’s shoulder.
Pini Zahavi, the so-called ‘superagentâ€, might be represented by a cash machine that refuses to dispense money but will only accept it. Jose Mourinho, cold of eye and slick of suit, will hand out business cards printed with his personal mantra: ‘Please do not call me arrogant but I am a Special One.â€
The Stamford Bridge dramatis personae would be fleshed out by a magnificent cast of supporting players, including the Argentinian duo of Hernan Crespo and Juan Sebastian Veron, cramming the last wads of notes into their kitbags while saying fond farewells to the club’s physiotherapists, the Chelsea colleagues with whom they became most familiar. Joe Cole, Glen Johnson and Scott Parker would be wandering around asking what had happened to their careers.
Borrowing from the Muppets, another puppet series with a strong sense of human absurdity, Ken Bates and Claudio Ranieri lean out of the window of Bates’s Chelsea Village penthouse, commenting on the action in the manner of Statler and Waldorf.
When he thought up those two characters, the late Jim Henson was adapting a dramatic device from Greek tragedy. And it is hard to avoid the suspicion that this must surely be where the Chelsea story is heading, into the realms of hubris and nemesis.
Thank goodness, then, for the announcement that Steven Gerrard has decided not to move from Anfield to Stamford Bridge, a rumour that gathered substance with the inevitably of an approaching cold front while the England squad were in Portugal.
Gerrard’s reasons for staying put may turn out to be based on something less straightforward than an enduring affection for the club he first joined at the age of eight. If true, stories that his family received threats from Liverpool fans represent the extent to which the exaggeration of the emotion engendered by football has become a seriously worrying feature of life in England.
No one should have to base a decision like Gerrard’s on fear. But perhaps the rest of us can be permitted a moment of quiet pleasure in the news that, for once, a contract is being honoured and the lure of money has not proved irresistible.
There is also the matter of Liverpool’s footballing integrity. No club has an inalienable right to success but a strong Liverpool is good for English football and a strong Liverpool is best achieved by a team with, as Gérard Houllier once put it, ‘a good Liverpool heartâ€. The continued presence of Houllier’s last captain would seem an essential element.
Before we get too pious, it is worth remembering that Liverpool themselves built the foundations of their success not just on local talent but on other clubs’ best players, from Motherwell’s Ian St John and Preston’s Peter Thompson to Celtic’s Kenny Dalglish and Watford’s John Barnes.
The sheer scale of Abramovich’s operation, however, is what makes some of us recoil, along with reservations concerning the source of his wealth.
Maybe Mourinho and Kenyon really are as clever as they believe themselves to be. Perhaps Chelsea will flatten all opposition next season, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the club’s last league championship in the most appropriate manner and cutting a swathe through Europe.
But they should not complain if every little stumble draws a giggle from the cheap seats. —