I thought it was a pretty good night for football tonight.
Firstly, Liverpool defeated Swansea City in the League Cup (or whatever it’s called this year). I have loved Liverpool for many years, which befits someone who has only ever seen them play ‘live’ against Bristol Rovers and Bristol City. They are now, without any qualification, the club that floats my boat. The team that determines my mood and tonight my mood is good, although it wasn’t until Mario came on.
Everyone is an expert on Mario Balotelli. The consensus seems to be that he is as mad as a box of frogs and that Liverpool have made a terrible mistake paying £16m for him. He could not hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.
The BBC’s agenda, all evening, was that this had been a poor start to the season. No one bothered to mention that Liverpool were 7th in the Premier League, level on points with fifth placed Arsenal, only three points behind Manchester City who are third and four behind Southampton who are an astonishing second. Chelsea are on the verge of leaving the rest behind. All the men from Anfield had to do tonight was lose to Swansea and it would be crisis time. And they were losing until…
Balotelli came on with not long left and the Radio Five Live Extra’s commentators had the feeling of what was to come. The scene was set for him, but you couldn’t help thinking that they were also desperate to see him fail. And so it came to pass that Balotelli, finally, scored THAT goal and it was all square with minutes to go. And Liverpool’s crisis deepened still further when Dejan Lovren got a late, late winner. My god: the media will hate this one. They can’t write anything nice about Balotelli, can they?
So Brendan Rodgers stumbles from crisis to crisis, with his team a few points off the top four, in the group stages of the Champions League (albeit following a humiliation at the hands of Ronaldo and Real Madrid: they won’t be the last) and now in the quarter finals of the League Cup. Crisis? What crisis? Why, a media inspired crisis.
Secondly, Jose Mourinho.
I have mixed feelings about ‘the special one’. He can be a bully, he can be a downright bore. But my god the man can manage a football club. Chelsea are, in my view, near certainties to win the Premier League. No, let’s be more specific: absolute certainties to win the Premier League.
Tonight, they came to Shrewsbury and defeated a well up for it home side by 2-1. The weather was awful but Chelsea matched the lower league home team for effort and the rest followed. But there was something better than mere football.
You may have seen a lovely video in recent days featuring David Beckham who went to visit a young 11 year old lad called Lloyd Burton, a Shrewsbury fan, who is fighting brain cancer. It was beautifully classy.
Well, young Lloyd completed a wonderful painting by numbers portrait of the Chelsea manager before the League Cup game at the Shrews and Mourinho made the point of meeting him before the game and signing it. The picture will be auctioned off to raise money to improve Lloyd’s life.
I will not launch into polemic and question why on earth we need to have an auction for a sick little boy when we live in a rich country, but I have so much respect for those, like Beckham and Mourinho, who have shown such utter class. Yes, they are both fabulously rich but that’s not their fault. But they did not have to do what they did and because they did, it brings hope and belief to many more people. Mourinho did not make a fuss, no fancy speech, nor did he try to hog the limelight. He just did something really lovely for a dear little boy who now has a very serious illness.
I was cheering when Mario finally got his goal and cheering more at the final whistle, but tonight was all about Lloyd. Like all of you, I hate cancer. And I have news for cancer, or rather cancers, because there are lots of versions of the evil bastards. We’re coming to get you, through our donations, through science, through our NHS.
So well done to Jose Mourinho tonight. He really made my night, week, month. I am convinced by him now.
