”You know that thing they say about David Beckham,” my mate Steve asked on Saturday night, ”about how he runs seven miles during the course of a game?” ”Yes,” I said. ”Clearly demonstrating how incredibly fit he is.”
”That’s what I thought,” Steve said. ”Then, the other day, I was watching a game when it suddenly dawned on me — a football match lasts for 90 minutes; an ordinary person could walk seven miles in 90 minutes.”
”Are you suggesting that the England captain stands around doing nothing for long periods?” I asked. ”That he stares blankly into space, fiddling with his earring and is overcome by a deathly ennui?”
”Either that,” Steve said, ”or he just runs very, very slowly.”
We lapsed into silence. Once again football had proved to be the most paradoxical of all enigmas, a place where every solid, cast-iron certainty is soon revealed to be the mere shadow of a chimera drawn in water on shifting sand. Or something.
Steve and I had already discussed one of the game’s other enduring mysteries, the transfer window. This is the football manager’s answer to Christmas. And just like the festive season, the build-up to it seems to start earlier each year. Why, the pumpkin lanterns are no sooner on the shelves these days than Steve McClaren is smiling wanly and assuring us that he will look to freshen up his squad in the New Year so Boro can mount a challenge for a European slot.
By the time the first round robins have come a-bob-bobbin’ along we are hearing how the window will be crucial for this club, or vital to that one. For some it’s light at the end of the tunnel: for others it’s a corner to be turned, or a platform to be kicked on from.
Many fans are puzzled. Why, they ask, don’t managers buy the players they need in the off-season? This is easy to say. In practice, of course shopping for players is a lot like normal shopping. You spend four hours trawling round Tesco Metro filling your trolley until pushing it is like scrummaging with Andrew Sheridan, yet it’s only when you get home and open the cupboard that you realise you’re clean out of bin liners. Or left-sided midfielders.
Then why, you may say, don’t the managers get their staff to take a proper inventory before their August buying spree? My bet is that they do. But we all know how that ends up. The list gets dropped in a puddle as you get out of the car and the next thing you know you are stopping complete strangers and saying: ”Does that look like an ”F” or a ”T” to you?”
And then there is the case of incomplete information. You know the torch needs a new battery, but what size? You weigh things up, you take a guess, you end up with a big rectangular battery that looks as if it ought to fit, but doesn’t. You hope one day you’ll buy something that it does fit, so you stick it in a box in a cupboard under the stairs. Five years later you discover sticky blue foam coming out of it and you say ”Oh, bugger the expense” and chuck it in the bin. And that, pretty much, is the story of Juan Sebastian Veron’s spell in the Premiership.
For many years, of course, there was no transfer window. Managers could buy players when they wanted. In those days it was a transfer air-conditioning unit that could be switched on and off. There was no pleasure in that, however. Under the old free-for-all system Sunderland fans would already have given up, whereas now they can see a tiny ray of hope glinting playfully in the panes.
One man gazing more longingly than most towards the transfer window is Harry Redknapp. The once and present Pompey boss speaks in the long-suffering, weary voice of a man who has just been forced to put down the sports section, get up from the sofa and go and free his son’s head from a saucepan for the fifth time. By his own account he has recently been ”in limbo”.
As Marina Hyde discussed recently, the pope has shut down limbo, so there is something of a fire sale going on at the moment. Ever the bargain hunter, Harry was no doubt scoping out Limbus Patrum, residence of the Old Testament Hebrew prophets.
The Old Testament is full of experienced battlers with a bit of fire left in their bellies. Jeremiah is obviously not the sort you want around in a relegation scrap, but the same can’t be said of Ezekiel. He is just the committed old pro you need to gee the lads up before a six-pointer by issuing dire warnings about hideous and unimaginable torment. Or an away trip to Stoke.
After some thought on the matter of seven miles in 90 minutes, I said to Steve: ”If what you’re saying about Beckham running incredibly slowly is correct, then, since he is by no means the slowest footballer, many others must be moving even slower.”
”Less than 4,6mph,” Steve said. ”Often far less. In fact, by my calculations Gary Breen could be overtaken by a glacier.” — Â