Mud and money

Day and night, night and day …relentlessly the football season slurps on through the January mud — mud and money, slurp, slurp — transfer ‘windows’, raucous headlines, phoney passions torn to tatters, ‘hot’ news stories cold and discarded in a blink. British professional football preens itself as pre-eminent in the culture, and broadcasting and the public prints clamorously whoop up the presumption, but I fancy most of us who happily call ourselves ‘fans’ are only ‘quite interested’ as opposed to being obsessed by the passing show. Although most of the leading players cannot with an innate and comfy ease kick the ball with either foot (once the prerequisite basic talent), for some time they have been ‘bigger’ than their clubs; now the club managers are ‘bigger’ than any player.