Clichy Of The Month

It’s football time again, the month when your mother ritually claims that the season seems to start earlier every year.

And welcome back Gael Clichy, the Arsenal full-back. Co-commentators – they’re the ones who have turned the art of Motson into a pub conversation with their inane streams of consciousness – often go a little too far in trying to be cosmopolitan, and render his name as Cliché. (Commentators – they’re the ones who do the meticulous research – don’t make this mistake.) Which means, conversely, that a clapped-out, hackneyed phrase or image must be a clichy. So here are a few clichys to kick off another season of hope and despair.

A manager joining a club is obliged by law to be photographed high up in a stand holding aloft the scarf of his new employer. The only manager granted exemption from this requirement is José Mourinho. This is purely on the grounds that it is impossible to pose with both hands in your pockets, smouldering, whilst simultaneously performing the scarf action. After this photocall the manager is absolved from ever wearing the scarf again. If, however, he is Roberto Mancini, he will fail to take it off at all, compounding this faux-pas by knotting his neckwear like a teenager’s school tie for maximum twat effect.

A different law applies to new players, but only very important ones. The big-money signing is legally bound to hold up a shirt bearing his name, to indicate to all and sundry that he is now playing for that club. In a variation of this theme, player and manager have special dispensation to share the shirt-stretching duties, each taking one shoulder of the garment and grinning.

The latest influx of players from foreign shores will bring a fair number whose names, like Cliché’s, are open to interpretation. Asked for the correct pronunciation (“So, Dirk Kuyt, is it Kite, Kout or Koit?”) the new player will invariably respond that it doesn’t matter. Which seems a whimsical approach to take to your own identity.

And finally, looking forward to the end of the season, where does everyone in football hope his team will be when spring arrives? At the top of the league? Of course not. Merely ‘there or thereabouts’ will be perfectly acceptable. But if, by January, the team is neither there nor thereabouts the important new player will issue a ‘rallying cry’ to his team-mates, and demand an infusion of expensive new talent to enable the club to ‘push on’. If this is not forthcoming he may make a ‘come and get me plea’ for other ‘big clubs’ to offer him alternative shirt-waving opportunities.

So, clichy time again. Why not vote for your favourite clichy and win a flight to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup?