Theatre of the absurd has usurped glory game
“I don’t even know what word it begins with,” Paul Merson replied.
The very same thing Algerian goalkeeper and philosopher Albert Camus said when somebody drew down the subject for the first time. Maybe.
Taking up the baton, the philosophical Roberto Di Matteo this week gave voice to the ongoing existential crisis eating away at the foundations of football with the chilling words: “The most important thing was not that we won the Champions League, but that it qualified us for the competition again.”
You know what he means; it’s more vital to keep a nose in the trough than hold a cup in the air. But imagine it coming from Osgood or Hudson or Harris if the Blues had just become London’s first winners of the big one.
With the glory game never seeming more distant from us, it is just as well we have compelling things to distract us. Like who will sing what, and who will shake hands with whom.
And we can only hope that Alex Ferguson sees fit to select Patrice Evra at Anfield tomorrow, so we can be treated to the full, enthralling spectacle. The will they won’t they between the United full-back and Suarez will make for a fascinating reverse duel. All the while, we will peel our ears, prime our outrage and strain for evidence of choral jubilation in the deaths of others.
Then we will sit through a dull nil-nil. And if we don’t suffer grave existential angst of our own after that exercise in the absurd, we probably never will.
