Articles of Faith (17 page)

‘On what little things does happiness depend!’ wrote Oscar Wilde in
The Nightingale and the Rose
. He was referring to the heartbreak endured by a student who needed to get a red rose to impress a professor’s daughter. Actually it turned out that the professor’s daughter was a bloody idiot and didn’t deserve the red rose that was only secured through the agonising death of a lovely nightingale; he should’ve just written a request for fellatio on the back of a bus ticket and stuck it to her forehead – and insisted on the return of the ticket.

For the want of little things like three titchy little points and John Terry’s balance Chelsea’s season has expired without glory. It seems ridiculous that the difference between historic triumph and aching disappointment was a wet pitch and a penalty slip from JT, as sure-footed a man as has ever pulled on a boot. Once it becomes a spot-kick showdown irrationality takes hold and on Wednesday I think this was more in evidence than usual; playing in Moscow on a flown-in pitch at 1am after 120 minutes of football and Didier Drogba’s green mile strut out of the English game in the pouring rain, no wonder the players were tired and confused.

‘Sad that Drogba should depart under a cloud – the last action stains the retina and informs the legacy’

Sad that Drogba who, diving and whining aside, has graced the Premier League with such excellence should depart under a cloud for a feeble slap. Events like that linger – Zinedine Zidane was one of the modern game’s finest practitioners yet it is now impossible to think of him without recalling his World Cup final headbutt and subsequent sending off. The last action stains the retina and informs the legacy.

Were I to stage an impeccable concert, an hour and a half of ribticklers and humdingers then, after my ovation, as I left the stage jauntily kick the
choice lady right up the privates those in attendance would unlikely recall the well-structured anecdotes that led to the physical assault, the gig would become known as the fanny-kick night.

If the Queen on her death bed darts onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace and piddles onto the assembled press below people will no longer talk of the death of Diana as her darkest hour, they will say ‘the Queen let herself down there, with the ol’ death bed micturation fiasco’ and rightly so.

Cristiano Ronaldo is lucky that his penalty miss was rendered irrelevant by United’s victory, otherwise the season where he has metamorphosed into the world’s greatest footballer would become known as a cock-up. Manchester United will not be queried when people look at the record books, how close they came to finishing the season without a bean will not be recollected; they are champions of Europe and England and Sir Alex moves closer to the summit of sporting achievement.

How Avram Grant will be remembered still seems a little less clear. Abramovich was present for his side’s narrow defeat and typically you would imagine that a squad that came so close to success would be applauded and nurtured but I imagine in this case that the players will scatter around the globe and that Grant will quietly shuffle off into a den of bureaucracy – which will suit him all the better, he never looked happy on that touch-line.

The incident that for me was emblematic of his reign came in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final when he attempted to retrieve a ball that had rolled towards the dug-out and was battered on to his arse by Steven Gerrard who was undertaking the same act of retrieval with considerably more gusto. It was a bit sad. He looked a bit like a mugged geriatric sat there all confused. The other folk on the Chelsea bench offered no chastisement of Gerrard and no comfort to Grant but just stared ahead and he was forced to do the same but you could see he was all shook up by the encounter and that his heart would’ve been racing.

The triumphs of Sir Alex Ferguson will be what define this past season but numerous other sub-plots will linger in the mind, among them Grant’s
doomed stewardship, Liverpool’s failure to make a title challenge in spite of the acquisition of a truly great striker in Fernando Torres and the return of Kevin Keegan.

A troubling contradiction for English football comes in the form of our dominance of the Champions League and our inability to qualify for the European Championship – it’s a bit gloomy that after this astonishing campaign we must now endure a major international tournament in which we shan’t be represented. By mid July I will’ve forgotten the sense of superiority that I had in May and will be consumed once more with post-colonial doubt.

With no home nation to root for I might yield to xenophobia, yelping at the jinxing foreigners that dart across my screen, blaming them for depriving Englishmen of top-flight football with their talent and their diets. But the truth is 10 English blokes contested that match on Wednesday and this season has shown Sven-Goran Eriksson to be a brilliant manager, unjustly sacked. Football does not make sense.

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First published by HarperCollins
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2008

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© Russell Brand 2008

Russell Brand asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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