The very good news for Bristol Rovers fans is that their new loan signing Gabriel Osho was signed by someone slightly more important than manager Graham Coughlan, The player tweeted as much earlier on when he confirmed that he was “thankful to God for the opportunity”. Personally, I have my doubts as to whether Rickie Lambert was actually involved in the deal.
The giving thanks to God is a big thing for footballers. Mo Salah is always thanking Allah every time he scores a goal and Lionel Messi always looks skywards when he scores, I’d like to know whose side God is on.
In my little world, God is not on anyone’s side because he doesn’t really exist but in the unlikely event he did, why would he be on anyone’s side and how would we influence games?
Would he be engaged in some kind of supernatural blow football to change the flight of the ball, or creating little holes in the ground so it’s easy to miskick the ball? Or does he use real Godly magic to make someone run faster?
God would also have to support a particular team, wouldn’t he, and how would he go about choosing it? He could be a glory hunting God who supported Barcelona or a God who preferred the plucky underdog and instead got behind a little heard of non league club.
And what if Messi misses an open goal? This must surely have happened once or twice before, so does he look up the heavens and give the middle finger to the celestial dictator? And how does God feel if Salah ‘goes down easily’ in the box to ‘earn’ a penalty because he feels contact? In which case, is Allah turning a blind eye to what I refer to as cheating, simply because he rather fancies the Egyptian king as a footballer?
Personally, I don’t think God has anything to do with football, or anything else for that matter. And I certainly wouldn’t look favourably on a God who actually set about making one team win against another, using his supernatural powers, but denying them to another because they were supported by the devil. Like Bristol City or Manchester United, for example.
I just hope that Gabriel Osho can show off his non-supernatural skills at Bristol Rovers and keep them in League One.
