A Real Thriller

AFTER we’d finished laughing at the punchline that was Arsenal’s season last week, BBM decided to turn our attention to the only competition which is no longer a formality (i.e. not the FA Cup or the Premier League).
We’re talking of course about the Champions League. Like being introduced to a large Spanish gentleman, this is the big one.
We all know the Champions League trophy is occasionally loaned out by the magnanimous Jose Mourinho to lesser managers just so he can test himself by trying to win it back the following season.
Because like football’s answer to Carol Vorderman, Mourinho is a master of mind games. Press conferences are his Countdown studio and instead of an audience of masturbating University students, Mourinho’s fanbase is an audience of masturbating British journalists whose pens jizz forth back page headlines at his merest word.
But before we push this metaphor too far (by suggesting that Ricardo Carvalho is the ‘Q’ to Mourinho’s ‘U’ for example’), we should turn our attention to the point of this article – namely that Mourinho finally managed to turn the previously composed-as-comatose Pep Guardiola and his Barca beautiful people into expletive-frothing maniacs last week.
Referring to a goal by Barcelona’s Pedro Rodriguez in the Copa del Rey which was disallowed for offside – a decision criticised by Guardiola but which video replays showed was a correct call by the referee, Mourinho said: “With the declaration of Pep the otherday, we are entering a new era with a third group [of coaches], which for the moment includes only him, who criticise the correct decision of the referee. This is something I have never seen in the world of football.”
And what was the always laid-back Pep’s response? Was it to do what he usually does and casually shrug off the criticism to instead talk, with a tear in his eye, about the sublime beauty of watching Lionel Messi run past some cones in training? Actually no. Instead he said: “He’s the fucking boss. He’s the fucking master and I can’t compete with him at any instant.” Touche.
Almost inevitably, the resulting Champions League El Clasico turned into El Fiasco with Barca players surrounding the referee if a Madrid player so much as thought about challenging for a fifty-fifty ball. Pepe was sent off. Mourinho was sent to the stands. Craig Foster was sent into orgasmic rapture as his beloved Barca scored twice.
And, apart from Mourinho going fruit-loop, that was it. The final tie in the El Clasico fourway has been rendered as meaningless as an average season at Coventry. But you can bet your ass BBM will be up at stupid o’clock to watch it.