The sole saving grace about last night’s coverage of the Euro Vase Final on BT Sport was the commentary of the excellent Ian Darke. Nothing else was worth watching or listening to. A dreary, generic female host whose name I didn’t catch, two studio pundits who I didn’t recognise and when the game between Seville and Roma actually begun, things got even worse. Steve McManaman, whose woeful co-commentaries make him second only to the wretched Jermaine Jenas in the crap co-commentator stakes, added literally nothing by way of analysis, telling us merely what we could already see. But if that was bad, you should have seen the game. Or maybe not.
I’m a big admirer of La Liga and it was hardly a surprise to see Seville back in the final yet again. They always are and they always win. Today they were up against Roma, managed by Jose Mourinho, who play like – well, a Mourinho team. Whilst the football is ghastly to watch, Mourinho is a constant source of entertainment, particularly if you take your brain out before the game, as I did. He is the King of Shithousing, of gamesmanship bordering on outright cheating and during a bitty, clunky match like this his tactics soon brought Seville down to his level.
Where Seville try to play football, Roma play the entire match with two double decker buses parked on the edge of their box, relying on the brilliance of Paolo Dybala to score a brilliant goal on the break, against the run of play, which of course he did. Once Dybala, who according to Mourinho barely had a chance of playing due to injury, departed in the second half, the game descended into a grim squabble, with both teams diving, feigning injury and hassling the officials. Penalties were inevitable and happily – and I say this very much in retrospect, because I got drawn in to the Good Old Jose narrative at the time – Roma lost.
The grief the officials got was appalling, although this was hardly unique to this game. We have all seen the likes of Klopp, Arteta and the like behaving badly in the Premier League. but this was abuse on steroids. I actually felt sorry for the English referee Anthony Taylor. Most of us in his position would probably have punched Mourinho’s lights out at the earliest opportunity.
Seville can be lovely to watch. Ivan Rakatic, formerly of Barcelona, rolled back the years for an hour until his 35 year old legs gave up on him, but his contribution was the exception. Roma ensured the game became a dogfight to the very end. It’s all Mourinho knows.
For all that, I stuck with it until the end. Quite why we bother with extra time these days, I don’t know. With the exception of the recent League One play off final where Sheffield Wednesday scored a glorious winner right at the death against Barnsley (I was especially pleased about that because it will have pissed off that little toad Joey Barton, but that’s another story) most games have essentially ended at 90 minutes, leaving two teams of knackered players to go through the motions until the inevitable spot kicks. Once it was over – and clearly Jose’s boys had not practiced their penalties very well: maybe they conserved all their efforts for spoiling, cheating and abusing officials? – I switched off. Both me and the telly.
Finals are often such a disappointment, aren’t they? Cup finals are rarely memorable, except for fans of the winning side, and last night was no exception. But there are things UEFA can do. They can take strong action against clubs whose fans chuck bottles and coins on the pitch, as happened frequently throughout the game. They can ask referees to simply yellow card players for dissent. If a referee is surrounded, than yellow card all the players involved. If managers abuse officials, make the bans substantial, instead of the joke one game ban Jurgen Klopp received. And if you are going to use VAR, then use it to call out diving and cheating, as well as dissent, in addition to offside and all the rest of it.
It’s hard not to like Mourinho in the sense that he’s a ‘character’ who is a bit different. And I am not going to pretend I wasn’t amused by some of his antics but in the cold light of day I know that the Euro Vase was a terrible game in large part to him and his team, as well as the grim football they play. Some things never change and Mourinho, in every sense, never changes.
