Latin flavour adds tasty spice to our dreams of the double

IF there was one reason for United being able to go one better in 2007/08 compared to last season’s slight shortfall, then it was surely the injection of the Latino vitamin-booster into the squad’s body: Tevez, Anderson and Nani have all exceeded expectations and made the difference — we hope — between being also-rans and continental kings.

Certainly, our Iberophone community is able to run the artistic gamut from alpha to omega. On Saturday, for example, Tevez gave us a work of art, a truly scintillating strike to match Scholesy’s days earlier … and then it was almost instantly undermined by the ugly hammy stupidity of Nani and his failed audition for Best Supporting Actor. Hey, Moscow demands that just the alpha males turn up, amigo.

Fortunately, West Ham’s hilariously craven refusal to make a second-half game of it meant that Nani’s moronity was of no enduring consequence, although it does join a list of similar incidents this season that trouble me like a pea under the mattress.

One can forgive, if not excuse, the headbutt itself: violent heat-of-the-moment reactions have always been, and will always be, a part of the game for as long as that game places passion and instinct at its heart. No, it was the calculating pause, the reflection, and then the face-grabbing fall that so nauseated. Fergie later put the whole incident down to ‘immaturity’, though I am not as confident as he that dishonesty is something you can just ‘grow out of’.

Perhaps fortunately, Nani is widely tipped to be out of the Moscow reckoning anyway, not least because of Park’s sterling display last week, which might be just as well seeing as his form hasn’t been good recently. But all the above shouldn’t prevent us recognising how much the kid did for us earlier in the season, this player who wasn’t even supposed to be a first team consideration until next year.

Then again, that’s the kind of season it’s been: unexpected bonuses at every turn. We saw this week’s Brucey bonus coming long ago, mind: when we looked at the fixtures in August and saw we were to have West Ham and Wigan as the finale, we all had a little conspiratorial chuckle.

After all, if you were to pick two bosses who you could rely on not to be transmitting any anti-Fergie fervour to their dressing rooms before kick-off, it’d be Curbs and Stevie B. The former is one of Alex’s biggest allies/bottom-lickers, whilst the latter is his beloved old captain and possible successor one day.

Once Wigan had assured their own safety last week, no-one in their right mind was going to be putting a penny on the Latics next Sunday, no matter how extravagantly generous the odds. If only Curbs could have kept his mouth shut last week about his overwhelming desire to see Fergie pip Chelsea, then all would’ve been cushty.

I’m being flip, of course: insert your own clichéd defence of the game’s so-called ‘professional honesty’ here. Still, funny how such issues arise in the very week when yet another English league game has come under the possible match-fixing spotlight; my informants tell me there are at least another two clubs who may soon be getting visits from the account-inspectors too. (And here’s where we insert this week’s other cliché, about a mere ‘few bad apples’ and so forth.) Nor will we find it so funny when the boot is potentially on the other foot in Moscow, Roman’s home turf, where a city crawling with his and Putin’s lackeys might be tempted to lean towards the Blues in every way possible. The ever-sus Fergie won’t need much persuasion that doings will be afoot; what’s the betting we will be getting the rough side of the bat from police and authorities, compared to the Blues? So eyes peeled for refs-in-brothels bearing jewels and rent-a-mobs near the team hotel at 4am, we trust…

* By Richard Kurt, whose classic ‘Red Army Years’ is now re-issued, only via [e-mail]