It’s super soccer Sunday! It’s super soccer Sunday! In addition to being Easter (oestrogen? Oh yes, it’s all to do with eggs) the celebration of Christ’s resurrection and the rebirth of nature itself through the sexiest of the seasons – spring – Manchester United play on-form Liverpool and Chelsea take on the Gunners at the Bridge.
A toy shop round the corner from me in Hampstead has a sign in its window confirming its holiday opening times which reads: Good Friday 10am–3pm, Easter Sunday 10am–3pm, Holy Saturday 10pm–3pm. Holy Saturday? There is no Holy Saturday, it’s just Saturday, a Saturday like any other. Holy Saturday sounds like an exclamation made by Robin on discovering that Batman had only recruited him for weekend bumming. However holy Saturday may be in the eyes of Hampstead’s toy shop owners, it is as a child’s plaything compared to the divinity of Sky Sports’ super, special soccer Sunday.
‘I think there is only one messiah appearing this Super Soccer Resurrection day and that is Cristiano Ronaldo’
Easter after all yearly shifts, being celebrated in March, February or April as God sees fit – I wouldn’t be surprised if suddenly we had to contend with a new Easter 2, ‘this time it’s personal’ turning up mid-June. As a religious festival it is all too capricious, a whimsical affair obeying only the cosmic wandering of the moon. Whereas super, special, sugar-free Sunday special soccer-day is a regulated occasion appearing at the behest of Sky, whenever they deign the event ought to occur.
I wonder if the final match of the season in 1989, when Arsenal beat Liverpool at Anfield to win the title, when Michael Thomas scored the winner, had been prescribed by Sky? Or if the Stanley Matthews final should retrospectively be regarded as the super Stanley soccer final? We’ll never truly know. The only thing of which we can be certain is that football matches are now scheduled for the convenience of Sky TV and although, I’m sure, there’ll be many negative side effects due to the rise of billionaire media tyrants, one positive we can all take from the monopolisation of our sporting culture is a magnificent day’s viewing on Sunday.
Starting with the incomparable Soccer Supplement in the morning, a programme so assured of itself that it doesn’t even say goodbye at its conclusion but its participants continue chatting as the credits roll, indifferent to our eyes, on to Goals on Sunday where we reprise the previous day’s events with Chris Kamara and whoever partners him this week after the regrettable departure of Rob McCaffrey, then the main event – Super Soccer Sunday, an alliterative football festival which will pin us all to our couches, grateful for our relentlessly rewarded immobility.
I hope they don’t find a way of making Mondays entertaining or before too long we’ll be committed to a lifetime of vicarious titillation, whilst the seasons come and go and Easter sprays random festive celebration across the pages of the calendar like an indiscriminate teen onanist decorating Keeley Hazell’s paper chest.
Manchester United will win the title this year. They have steeliness to their play and stability that one cannot imagine capitulating. Liverpool squandered the opportunity to end their barren spell by neglecting to capitalise on the remarkable form of Fernando Torres.
Of course, Rafael Benítez can argue that by resting him earlier in the season he has facilitated Torres’ recent form, but this I believe to be balderdash.
A friend of mine did some work with Liverpool and told me that Torres is an incredibly serious young man, which is pleasing to me. He’s so beautiful and skilful that he could be forgiven if he were giddy and frivolous, forever letting off fire alarms and pinching girls’ arses, but apparently he has the demeanour of a young clergyman, poring over scriptures and worrying about his soul.
I think he could’ve played another 10 games this season and had he done so Liverpool would still be in contention. Arsenal seem now to be tainted by Eduardo’s terrible fate and tread the turf as though desecrating his grave, but this is an opportunity for them to turn that around as Avram Grant’s Chelsea seem not to have the stomach to overturn first-class opposition.
Reportedly the team has become detached from his leadership and he is seen as a dead man walking, yet if ever there were a time for such a figure to triumph it’s Easter. I think there is only one messiah appearing this Super Soccer Resurrection day and that is Cristiano Ronaldo – I think it is he we shall all be worshipping come the festival’s close.