HOLA, football fans! Your top turtleneck-wearing Catalonian here. Fresh from prowling the touchline with the symmetrical bald head that makes your wife quiet during Match of the Day.
I may have left Manchester City because it had nothing left to offer me, but I still live and breathe football. It is my wife, my mistress, my mistress’s sister, the one-night stand I stalk on Instagram.
For my next project I could probably coach anyone and win. Ideally I would face a Space Jam scenario, where I am abducted to manage a team of the greatest players from history against aliens for the fate of the universe, and I have prepared extensively for it.
No earthly management position could satisfy me. To continue earning pocket money I have agreed to work as a pundit, demeaning as it will be to sit next to Cro-Magnon Wayne Rooney. My presence will uplift the whole of television by example.
There is but one issue. I may be in possession of all of football’s major honours as player, coach and Catalan Jesus, but I never quite got to grips with the offside rule. This is why my players approach goal tentatively and sideways, like crabs.
That began to unravel when we bought the Norwegian and he expected the ball to be kicked toward him. I didn’t like that. Life was much easier when I could just write ‘pass to Messi’ on the Barca whiteboard in five languages and crack an Estrella.
But here goes. So, if the kitchen island in my colossal Cheshire mansion is the pitch, these jars of marinated anchovies represent the defence. And this tasteful ceramic salt pig is Phil Foden passing to this absurdly tall pepper grinder representing Haaland.
Then Haaland must have two, or is it three, jars of the fish between him and the Iberian ham in goal to be onside, no? But what if he’s level with these banderillas? Does that go to VAR, which in this situation is represented by the wheel of manchego in my pantry?
No, I still don’t get it, and now I’ve knocked a jar off the island and there’s glass and anchovies bloody everywhere. When does the cleaner come? Not until tomorrow? Where is her passion, her commitment? Does she not know I have divorced my wife?
This is a disaster. I’m going to end up on ITV with that moron Mark Pougatch. Still, better than managing Italy.
