Larry Ryan: They are human after all

Sat, 13 Feb, 2021 - 07:05

Apologies for this break in normal service. Your scheduled content tracing the cantankerous behaviour of Jurgen Klopp in tandem with the fading power of ‘bad champions’ Liverpool FC has been cancelled.

It will be replaced by a short reflection on the fact that Klopp’s mother Elizabeth died recently with him being unable to attend the funeral this week. So some recent volatility in his dealings with post-match interviewers might only be taken as proof we are dealing with a human being.

Football has some unusual ways and sayings — it is generally only after a player has missed a sitter that we decide he or she might be “human after all”.

So it can do no harm to acknowledge the humanity of this figure we know as Kloppo, and to remember that Pep Guardiola and Dean Smith — just two that we know of from the Premier League — have also lost parents during the pandemic.

Because there appears to be another epidemic out there stripping all these people of their humanity, reducing them to semi-fictional characters to be abused and threatened and demeaned.

When Arsenal announced that Pierre Emerick Aubameyang would be taking time off due to a ‘personal matter’, it duly triggered an avalanche of lurid speculation about the reasons. When it was confirmed his mother had been ill, it did little to defuse anger that he hasn’t been scoring.

When even jolly Ian Wright has endured the most vile racism, when cuddly Steve Bruce is fielding death threats, it’s clear that too many have stopped seeing these guys as people at all.

Whether Klopp’s agitation is professional or personal, it’s kind of endearing that he can’t really wear a mask — figuratively at least. He has what the brand managers tend to call authenticity.

You generally suspect they are all wearing masks to some degree, hiding from us in plain sight.

Even Carlo Ancelotti, blowing on his coffee to celebrate Everton’s winner in the ‘nine-goal thriller’ — on some level Carlo can’t be as calm as he is letting on.

But few can be leading as dramatic a double life as Dermot Gallagher.

After he interviewed the former Premier League referee this week, Joe Molloy, presenter of Newstalk’s Off The Ball, noted wryly that “it seems the scoop of my career really will be Dermot Gallagher’s accent”.

We all had the vague idea there was a good bit of Irish in Dermot, but his regular appearances on Sky Sports, explaining away officiating controvassy in what the Daily Mail has described as “a generic English accent” had not prepared us for him going full Old Mister Brennan.

This week, he was Dermo Gallagher — he couldn’t have been more Dubalin if he had countered Molloy’s questioning with ‘ask me bollix’.

Turns out Dermo has been doing a Schteve McClaren in Holland all along, admitting he had to crank the accent down so the English could understand him, and watch the BBC News to practise his th’s.

In a week when Mike Dean also encountered death threats, it was a reminder that the man in the middle is human too — maybe more of them should let the masks slip and talk to us occasionally, in whatever accent they want.

Dermo duly gave thanks that he reffed before social media took off. “When you drove out of the car park and hit the main road, it was over.”

Meanwhile, if you only occasionally tune into the tennis, it may surprise you to learn that Nick Kyrgios is now among the more popular and marketable figures on the circuit — and widely regarded as the game’s voice of reason.

The very same character who had become synonymous with smashing his racket, chucking water bottles, abusing all and sundry, not trying when things were going against him, and filling in opponents on their girlfriends’ alternative love lives during play.

Just another reminder that everything truly has changed.

A year ago, Kyrgios was the man sponsors rejected, now they are flocking on board. Crucially, he hasn’t played much tennis in the meantime, considering it too dangerous during Covid.

Which is the real Kyrgios, the one raising money to fight bushfires and calling out the pandemic behaviour of other players? Or the fella on the court, who’d annoy even cool Carlo?

Does sport reveal true character or does it take the appointment of a super agent, like Stuart Duguid, who took on Kyrgios last year? Maybe in an age when the game is never over, even after you hit the main road, everyone needs a little filtering by the experts.

This reinvention is not all a PR job, insists Duguid, who says we’re just dealing with a complicated human. “Brands want even more than ever to work with athletes that are authentic — what you see is what you get from Nick and that’s what sells.”

Yesterday morning, Kyrgios was on court in a Melbourne thriller with Dominic Thiem, a delirious crowd squeezing every last drop out of their final minutes before lockdown.

Kyrgios gave it the usual mixed bag. Underarm serves, between the legs trick shots. Whipping up the atmosphere one minute, grousing about distraction the next. Exuberant celebrations of audacious winners, then copping a penalty for flaking a ball away in anger.

But at least his heart and soul stayed in it until the end, which might yet prove the most important part of his reinvention — at least if he wants to win the Grand Slam that Duguid says will make him the biggest brand of all.

Yesterday, however, Thiem, implacable throughout, came from two sets down to win it. This time, the man in the mask held sway.