Penned prior to West Ham’s 4-1 demolition of Blackburn earlier today, Russell Brand’s latest Guardian column includes the muse, “they say societies get the government they deserve and perhaps we get the sport we deserve too; and as a West Ham fan that is a troubling idea.”
The club seems to be in some turmoil and it appears there is division between manager Alan Curbishley and the board. Not least one suspects as a result of the growing trend in top-flight football for superscouts, at West Ham there is a fella called Gianluca Nani who is tasked with finding and recruiting new players for the team. Now whether he works in conjunction with the incrementally castrated Curbishley or not it’s easy to envisage how such a relationship could cause tension.
The other week Nani, whose official title is “technical director” (need any techniques directed? Ooh, yes please, they’re all over the shop) brought in the Chilean striker Sebastián Pinto on loan from the Brazilian side Santos and Curbishley refused to play him in a friendly against QPR that took place “behind closed doors”. There’s a few things in this story worthy of note; firstly the whole “on loan” concept is bizarre, in a transient world such as ours everything is impermanent, the planet itself will one day implode so the notion of an eternal transfer is berserk.
Also borrowing people is perhaps more quirky than buying them – “oy, mister can I borrow your wife?” sounds macabre, as does “give us a go on your girlfriend Russ” which is what the video man used to shout when he’d pull up his van outside ours. I never let him of course, in spite of his pledge to give me the Star Wars trilogy free for one week as recompense. I’d already seen it and those videos were moody, plus Tracy was a schoolgirl.
And what kind of pervy Aleister Crowley football matches have to be played behind closed doors? What do they get up to in these clandestine contests? Play in the nude? Worship the devil? It’s difficult to imagine them doing anything more embarrassing than the performance they turned out so publicly and brazenly at Manchester City last Saturday. If that game had been conducted in private I wouldn’t now be harbouring the spectacle of Luis Boa Morte guiltily scampering like a fare evader on an InterCity train.