And so it begins again. This Thursday, the great and the greedy will gather in Monaco for the Champions League group stage draw, a ceremony that should take approximately three minutes, but will somehow be stretched out so far that you might gladly welcome death before another montage of last season’s highlights.
Just pull the balls out of the bag.
Gianni Infantino will be your ringmaster again, bounding onto the stage with the giddy enthusiasm of the sort of senior sales manager who wakes up every morning hoping today is the day someone decides to film a fly-on-the-wall documentary at his call centre. The wild eyes of a man who goes too far on a stag night and accidentally kills the stripper. His face white with fear. What did I do? Oh, sweet Jesus and God in heaven, what did I do?
Again and again, he will run you through the rules of the draw, painstakingly cultivated over the years to ensure maximum television revenue in every profitable region. There will be giant goldfish bowls for all eventualities, filled with varying selections of teams, some that clash, some that do not. But let’s go over the rules again. Yes? The rules are simple. Ha ha!
Just pull the balls out of the bag.
And then, when you think it’s all finished, out come the middle-aged former footballers to be paraded like downed pilots. They stare at the camera and say what they’ve been told to say while their eyes scream for a covert rescue mission. But there are no black helicopters and no-one is coming to save them. When they’ve told the world that the Champions League is great, that the Champions League rules supreme, that the benevolence and wisdom of the Champions League cannot be questioned, then they have to open the eggs.
Just pull the balls out of the bag.
These bastard eggs. Sealed so tight that arthritic fingers can’t ever hope to breach them. The awkward pause, the close up of shimmering fingers on polished plastic. The chuckles from the suited and snide in the front row. One man, a hero in his time, fights a losing battle. His hands sparkle with fresh sweat, his own body turning against him in his moment of humiliation. And then Gianni strides over and swipes it away, like a overbearing dad showing a reluctant child how to correctly wield a cricket bat. Like this, you see? Like this. And move your feet. Now try it again in front of everyone with Pot 2.
Just pull the balls out of the bag. That’s what they do at the Football Association. Two old pros in jumpers and ties, the steady hand of Chappers on the tiller, a velvet bag and a rack of balls painstakingly carved long before you were born. Those reassuring clunks and clicks. This isn’t the event. The football is the event. This is just admin.
I’m not a huge fan of the Champions League group stage anyway. It’s not a competition. It’s a cash trough where the big pigs grudgingly share a bit of swill with the little piglets before forcing their snouts down hard into the swirling brown gloop and holding them there until the bubbles stop. It’s purposely designed to minimise the risk of upsets and preserve the status quo, from the extended coefficient that protects them at the start to the promise that they’ll be able to ruin the Europa League at the end should they mess up. Don’t be fooled by the new ‘champions in pot one’ tweak. How often does a minnow win a title these days? The Champions League directs the same huge revenues to the same huge clubs over and over and over again until every league in Europe is ripped asunder by the gap between the rich and the poor and the bloated one percent can stand unopposed on golden pedestals, jettisoning hot streams of contempt over the edge to soak the rest of us below.
I do like the theme tune though.
Do you disagree? Do you welcome the unremitting surge of bullshit and glitter that washes over you again and again until you can no longer feel pain? Write to us: [email protected]
