I didn’t talk to my best friend last night.
But he phoned this morning.
“How’s it going?”
“I’m over it now.”
He loves France, has a house in Antibes, enjoys French football, and rates Gourcuff.
“Why isn’t Lloris playing for Arsenal?”
“Because Wenger doesn’t think goalkeeper is an important position.”
“Domenech was useless, he was beyond useless. France were shocking. They could put a decent team out. They should sack Domenech, get Hiddink. It was a typical Arsenal team. Nobody in the Didier Deschamps position. They needed a hard-tackling. authoritative midfield player there. He’s a compete idiot. It’s almost British in its ineptitude. It’s like Steve McClaren. It’s like that bloke from Watford -“
“Graham Taylor?”
“It’s like Graham Taylor, Howard Wilkinson. Clueless committee men who don’t have the humility to admit : I need some help. If I was Sarkozy, sat there with 80,000 French supporters, one nil up, you don’t go out and play like that ! Thierry Henry can’t keep his mouth shut. Making a referee’s decision all-important is a Sky Sports hype. For the rest of us, it’s : get on with it and shut up.”
“Raymond Williams explained it all long ago, the difference between popular culture and mass culture. Popular culture is a few people singing a song in a pub, in a theatre. Mass culture is where technology brings an event to millions and blows up a fragment of that event, and repeats it over and over and over, and thousands of viewers send in their opinion,” I said.
“It’s like X-Factor – that’s not a music show, it’s all about the back-story, the emotional melodrama. It’s not a music show, it’s an emotional show.”
“It’s like a real-life live soap opera,” I said, not admitting that I’ve never seen X-Factor.
“France were just shocking, they gave us nothing. But they’ve got super-talented players.”
“Never in the history of football has so much talent under-performed on that scale,” I said. “Pep Guardiola would sell Henry today if he could. It’s obvious he hates him. Pep would drive him to the airport “
But… enough already. A friend is coming for lunch and she is due about 12.30. Just time to have a shave and change into fresh clothes before Penny arrives.