Colin Sheridan: Manchester Utd through the eyes of Wright Thompson is a sight to behold

Manchester United fans celebrate after the Premier League win over West Ham. Picture: PA

“ Loving something as deeply as the people in this stadium love United requires a lot of remembering, remembering Nobby Stiles and Busby’s Babes, but it also requires a lot of forgetting, too. Forgetting Kathryn Mayorga. Forgetting that the Super League concept will almost certainly return. Forgetting all the times you swore you were finally done with a club that took your love and made you pay for the privilege”

— Wright Thompson, Super League rage, Ronaldo mania and the fight for the soul of Manchester United

Wright Thompson looks exactly like a guy with a name like Wright Thomspon should. He talks like you think he’d talk, too. Search his name and you’ll find a biggish, bearded man most likely holding a whiskey sour and always — always — wearing a hat.

Listen to him talk on radio or a podcast and you’ll hear a voice that is pure Americana.

To the ignorant amongst you, Thompson is arguably the American sportswriter of his generation. You could argue that such a mantle carries little of the currency it used to. Gone are the halcyon days of Frank Defort, Gay Talese, Dan Jenkins and George Plimpton living Don Draper lifestyles; late breakfasts rolling into liquid lunches at Elaine’s near the corner of Second Avenue, months to write profiles of ageing pugilists, unlimited expense accounts.

Back then, the writers were often more famous than the subjects they wrote about, and in the case of Plimpton and Talese, certainly better paid. In some instances, their participatory — or gonzo — style journalism was as much by accident as design.

They’d show up to a boxer’s training camp or go on the road with a Major League baseball team and just kinda forget to leave. This process undoubtedly tested the patience of both their editors and wives, but it often produced storytelling that would take your breath away. These were men who understood their role in life; apostles who would bear witness and write the gospel accordingly. In doing so, they contributed to the creation of the cult of the sportswriter. The beat poets of the ballparks. Their prime bookended a glorious half-century when newspapers and magazines ruled the world.

Alas, the great asteroid that is the internet struck, and changed that landscape forever.

Yet, for all the click-bait and corporate-sponsored sycophancy that has dominated and forever damaged the dynamic between the actual sportspeople follow and those who follow them by birthright, some dinosaur storytellers remain, and Wright Thompson, writing for ESPN.com, is a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Last week, his story “Super League rage, Ronaldo mania and the fight for the soul of Manchester United” dropped on ESPN.com, and quickly took its place amongst the best that Thompson has ever published, which is saying something.

Though Cristiano Ronaldo features, for once he is not the star. That goes to the city of Manchester, and in an unexpected twist, to the late Nobby Stiles whom Thompson uses as the perfect antidote to everything that has gone wrong with football, and inadvertently, society. Greed, money, globalisation, gentrification, capitalism. Wright gives each one its time in the dock. There is very little interrogation needed, the evidence presented speaks for itself.

Thompson himself is no stranger to occasionally getting it wrong.

In his 2017 profile of Conor McGregor, he visited Dublin, and in the final piece his descriptions of the city, and in particular his descriptions of McGregor’s city, drew heat from many who saw Thompson as either condescending or naive for his assertion that Dublin was “a clannish, parochial place. Crossing the wrong street has traditionally been reason enough for an ass-whipping”.

Last year, as a guest on Gavin Cooney’s brilliant Behind The Lines sports writing podcast on The42.ie, Thompson acknowledged regret at how portions of his piece were written and edited, literally thinking aloud to Cooney how he wishes he’d written it better.

It says a lot about him.

There are no such missteps in his recent ode to Manchester. In it, he brilliantly captures the contradictions that can define and divide supporters of a football club that at once sees itself as “of the people”, while being owned by American billionaires who use it as a vehicle to fund their myriad of other interests. As Thompson tells us, the club’s core support can barely afford to follow them anymore.

What makes Thompson so brilliant at what he does is though, is despite being in the middle of everything he writes, he is nowhere to be seen.

He is never “an American in Manchester”. He gives the stage to people and places and gives them a voice. His descriptions of Manchester past and present brought to life a city I have never visited, to the point that when I finally do, it will be his piece I think about. It’s like Ken Loach meets Martin Amis.

I loved United as a kid. Before they won anything. I once drew a number seven with a permanent marker on the back of a jersey that had been passed from brother to brother, before arriving at me, the youngest.

The jersey itself was the most uncomfortable garment ever produced, and time and a million washes had long since rid it of its original colour (white).

I took some kicking for the number seven stunt as I remember, but it was my own private homage to Bryan Robson. With no highlight reels to deep dive into, I played in the garden the way I imagined Bryan Robson played in Old Trafford.

Like all kids, not only was I top goalscorer and skipper, I was a commentator and the crowd as well. My love for Man United left the day Roy Keane did, but my fascination with the club remained, even if somewhat dormant.

Thompson, with his quill and kaleidoscope eye, erupted it once again.