Doha Dave plays Yorkshire pudding role to perfection

He might be a knight of the realm and chairman of the Premier League to boot but it seems Dave Richards is now destined to be forever remembered as the man who put the ‘Doh’ in ‘Doha’.

Dave had a Homer Simpson day at the office on Wednesday, following up a colourful rant about England’s claim to ownership of the game of football by toppling into a water feature at the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.

You really couldn’t make it up, so I reckon we should be exceedingly grateful to Dave for sparing us the effort.

Bolton chairman Phil Gartside, the man who fished Dave out of the water, was at pains to clarify that there was no gargle involved. “Any suggestions he had a drink is nonsense,” he said, adding, “It’s a dry place.”

Well, apart from in the city’s five-star hotels, of course, a subject which, as it happens, had been another strand in Dave’s oration earlier in the day when he accused his hosts of having — oops! — their “heads in the sand” over proposed alcohol restrictions at the Qatar World Cup in 2022.

Magnificently, Dave made his point as follows: “In our country and in Germany we have a culture. We call it ‘we would like to go for a pint and that pint is a pint of beer’. It is our culture as much as your culture is not drinking. There has to be a happy medium.”

Again, we must take it in good faith that Dave was not himself “happy” as a result of a few “mediums”, but rather fuelled by the kind of patriotic passion which also inspired him to reclaim England’s ownership of football, charge FIFA and UEFA with “stealing” the game and argue that Sheffield got there ahead of China in actually inventing the sport.

With the FA and the Premier League quick to erect their own great wall between “the personal views” of Dave and their own official positions, the man of the hour played the old bluff Yorkshireman card by way of apology, telling Sky Sports News: “I’d like to clarify something — I am a Yorkshire man and I am quite broad and if I say something it can be taken out of a little bit of context.”

Well, that’s all that cleared up, eh? By coincidence, Wednesday also saw another example of English culture on full view, as Chelsea staged a stirring comeback in the Champions League to keep alive Blighty’s interest in the final eight of the competition. Okay, so the west Londoners only did it with a little help from a few of them foreign lads — including, let’s see now, their owner, manager and seven of their starting 11 — but, still, with Lamps and JT to the fore and the whole night suffused with an nostalgic FA Cup-type of atmosphere at the Bridge, this was English football in brimming, full-pint mode with no half-measures allowed.

Thoroughly entertaining it was too, even if Napoli contributed to their own downfall by entering into the spirit of the English game on the night and repeatedly giving the ball away. But Chelsea’s relentless pressing was part of the reason for that and, when the home side did get control of the ball themselves, their direct, no-frills approach and lethal finishing simply put the Italians to the sword.

From Chelski to Hellski to Heavenlea, the recent history of the Blues has been nothing if not eventful but even as they continue to bask in one of the great nights in the club’s history, it’s hard to escape the feeling that, ultimately, it will be remembered more as swansong than new dawn. After all, the old boys haven’t got any younger as a result and, while Roberto Di Matteo has certainly burnished his managerial credentials in a brief caretaker’s role, no-one realistically expects him to last any longer than it will take Roman Abramovich to lure another marquee name to the Bridge.

And as long as the Russian is at the helm, Chelsea seem doomed to maintain a bumpy trajectory, not because he’s an interfering owner who knows nothing about the game but because he’s an interfering owner who knows just enough about the game to think he knows it all. Which is just one of the reasons why it’s so absurd to think that Pep Guardiola, as the bookies would have us believe, would even contemplate for one moment abandoning Barca for the Blues.

For now, Chelsea will just be glad they have avoided the holders in the Champions League, although Sporting Lisbon’s elimination of Manchester City from the Europa League should ensure that Di Matteo and company won’t make the mistake of thinking they’ve got an easy ride against Benfica.

And of course Chelsea must also shoulder the added responsibility of being England’s sole remaining representatives in European competition this season, now that both City and United have been given the opportunity to concentrate exclusively on their domestic tussle.

Which was nice of their Iberian counterparts and, I’m sure that Dave Richards will be the first to applaud international recognition of the fact that English football culture does indeed have its place — mainly, as it happens, in England.