Manchester City are in the U.S for their preseason expedition. They are scheduled to take on Los Angeles Galaxy later today in a tour friendly, and David Beckham has been quite ‘rapturous’ in welcoming the local rivals of Manchester United – the team he supported as a boy and then went on to become one of the club’s all-time greats.
David Beckham has proclaimed, rather gregariously, that Manchester City are never going to match up to United. His claim, which has been echoed by personnel associated with Manchester United in the past, alludes to the historical grandeur correlated with the team from Old Trafford. Such exclamations are typical demonstrations of the pride (read arrogance) from the red-half of Manchester, as a part of their collective endeavor to downplay the upsurge of their “Noisy Neighbours”.
“They are never going to be Manchester United” Beckham revealed with the air of a physicist elucidating a breakthrough in the String Theory. Well, Yes David, just like Manchester United are never going to be Shrewsbury Town or just like Lyon are never going to be Plabennec. Every club has its own identity and to discriminate clubs as ‘hallowed’ and ‘desecrated’ on the basis of past glory is to manifest egotism of the lowliest kind.
If the bulk of the trophy cabinet is the sole yardstick of ‘respect’, then we should all respectfully jump aboard the Barcelona bandwagon – because seriously their trophy room (we should really start calling it a mansion) is swelling at a rate of knots! Granted, success commands deference and esteem, just like United’s dominance in the English game and Barca’s hegemony over Spain and Europe. But it does not give an inalienable license to the club and its members of screaming bloody murder if another club starts gaining a pinch or two of reverence of their own.
Xavi Hernandez’ recent comment about the Cesc Fabregas transfer deadlock read, “He (Fabregas) is suffering at Arsenal.” The Spanish playmaker is undoubtedly the classiest midfielder of modern times, but my word that was a low blow! How a preeminent footballer like him, can have the audacity to come up with such grime is beyond comprehension. Well here’s the deal Xavi, if you’re that fretful about poor little Cesc’s nourishment and sustenance, how about you and your Catalonian chums donate a week’s wages to your Director so that he can come up with a bid that is acceptable to Arsenal F.C? Till then why don’t we zip up and learn to behave…
This was the recent brand of absurdity. Now let’s have a look at the long standing more bizarre kind. Manchester United and Liverpool, the paleontologists of English Football, have been blameworthy of lecturing about Homo habilis and how the two clubs were conquering everything as man was busy discovering fire. While United’s success has also overlapped with the nanotechnology era, Liverpool’s claim of being the most virtuous club on the basis of antediluvian accomplishments is droll!
The last time Liverpool won the league ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’ were still looming over Communist Russia. If one were to use past glory to define the stature of a club, then Nottingham Forest would still be one of the grand daddies in England. Also, if a club that achieved a distinction in the past, claims to have definitive bragging rights then the rest of the English clubs might just as well stop participating in the Champions League – because hey, Man Utd will always be the first British team to win the European Cup!
Football, or any other sport for that matter, is about evolution (no, we are not going back to Homo habilis again) and change of guard. There’s domination, then the configuration of a status quo followed by its dissolution and then the cycle repeats itself. Competition makes the sport enthralling and while Manchester United have been reigning supreme over the English throne for the past couple of decades, the fact does not entail that other clubs can’t propel themselves towards eminence.
To be fair a decade ago, when Beckham was an integral cog in the United machine, comments pertaining to counter-weighing the two Manchester clubs would have been implausible, peculiar and not to mention – imaginary. The fact that the two clubs are even being mentioned in the same bracket is the logical corollary of City’s revival as a football authority.
Manchester City’s triumph in last year’s F.A Cup was their first piece of silverware for thirty five years, and they qualified for the Champions League to boot. Even since the incursion of the magnates from the Middle East, and the resources that accompanied them – City have been on the ascendancy.
Although the Carlos Tevez transfer saga is giving the Fabregas soap opera a run for its money in terms of sheer tediousness, Manchester City’s prospects for the coming season look bright regardless of the Argentinean staying or absconding.
They have a tactically astute manager, who knows how to compete at the highest level, to guide a consummate array of footballers – which would surely be augmented with more quality before the transfer window closes. There’s a new kid on the block, a rather affluent one, and he is making the older inhabitants twitchy and jittery.
Clarke’s epic Open triumph
As the golf pundits collectively wax lyrical about the youth’s surge in the game, Darren Clarke’s astounding victory at Royal St. Georges last Sunday rang a timely alarm – the old guard still know how to club the ball around. In what was an action packed event at Sandwich, Clarke rolled back the years to grab his first major title in golf. Most experts were prognosticating a Northern Irish champion at St. Georges but the man in question was half the age of Darren Clarke.
Rory McIlroy could not repeat his U.S Open exploits and looked off-color throughout the event. Northern Ireland is being trumpeted as the new hub of golf, as Clarke follows compatriots Graeme McDowell and McIlroy as recent major champions. The 42-year old veteran shrugged off final day challenges from Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, to finish one-under par for the day and five-under for the championship.
Four-time major champion, Mickelson had the ideal opportunity to ameliorate his abysmal record in the Open Champions and for the front nine holes he played probably the best links golf of his life. But the cataclysm at the 11th ruptured his momentum. One feels Phil Mickelson might replay that gilt-edged putt at the 11th for many sleepless nights to come.
However his embrace with Clarke following the latter’s victory was one of the most memorable golfing moments of all-time, and the reason why Mickelson is the probably the most adored man on the tour. Darren Clarke’s conquest of the Claret Jug is another wonderful tale in the golfing folklore, and an example of how the British Championships have a tendency to unveil unheralded Champions.
That makes 12 different major champions in the past 12 events – things do not get more competitive than this.