Posts Tagged ‘wayne rooney’
Emergency Ward Wazza
I don’t know if I can go through all this again with Wayne Rooney. Last time round we gathered round super slow-motion footage of his limp. We questioned the structural integrity of his crutches. We loitered cravenly outside his Cheshire hospital waiting for a glimpse of the tourniquet. We tried to search for the emotional truth in his face. Which we found out was like reading a subtext into The Hungry Caterpillar.
It’s all too exhausting trying to discern the significance of the fact that Rooney was marched straight to specialist as opposed to waiting a few days. Apparently this is a good thing, if there had been extensive swelling to the ligaments then the procedure would have been delayed. But we may as well cut open Michael Owen and read his entrails for all the good that predicting is going to do. That might be all the little man is right for these days – at least we don’t have to worry about him for a change.
A Consonant Professional
Countdown champion Clarke Carlisle will fulfil a lifelong ambition by lining up for Burnley against Portsmouth on Saturday. Carlisle, better known as a man of letters and numbers, has long been interested in kicking stuff around a field and will get his chance at Turf Moor. “I can’t say it will be better than solving a conundrum, but it will be up there.”
Carlisle reveals that the production team on the show have already been taking the mickey out of him before his appearance whistling the Match of the Day theme and producing red cards when he fails the arithmetic challenge. When asked how he might face up to marking some of the Premiership’s most feared strikers such as Drogba and Rooney, Carlisle explained that nothing could be as daunting as “staring down Suzi Dent with a dictionary”.
Carlisle added that he was looking forward to disproving the public perception that all boffins are “malco-ordinated social deficients,” arguing that there are “plenty of people on the quiz circuit that can play a pass”. He was however bracing himself to be the target of a barrage of consonants and vowels mainly arranged into four-letter words.
The Incredible Wazza
Brazilian footballers tend to take a more cavalier approach to making the distinction between given names and nicknames. Hence a good proportion of the boys in yellow run around with something a little out of the ordinary written across their shoulders. This ranges from the amusingly prosaic like Fred, Jo or my personal favourite, Tim, to the scatalogically infantile such as Kaka and Dudu.
But sometimes the choice of moniker can represent an unfair advantage. During England’s one-sided friendly in Doha last week Givanildo Vieira de Souza was brought on to make his debut. Otherwise known as Hulk. The provenance of this sobriquet is disputed but what is certain is that it strikes fear into the heart of any opposition defence. Hulk is aptly named: muscular, stocky and a generally a nuisance. Particularly when he’s angry.
I’d argue that Fifa should introduce a law that entitled every international team to adopt this relaxed approach to the naming of squad members, but Wazza, Crouchy and JT don’t really share that same sense of menace.
