ON THE COUCH:Didi caps a lively old day as entertaining Argentina leave the 3Ds swooning, writes MARY HANNIGAN
BY TEA-TIME we were well and truly up and running, eight goals in the first two games of the day and some deliciously Kamikaze defending. We had, to be honest, been a little disheartened by the last few days, and while we can’t be certain of plain sailing from here on in, yesterday was a very lovely boost. In that sense we’re the Enda Kenny of World Cup couches.
While some of our best friends would be Swiss and Uruguayan if we knew any one from Switzerland and Uruguay, Spain’s failure to glisten and South Africa’s trouncing on Wednesday had left us feeling particularly morose.
We were fairly hopeful, though, that Diego and Co would provide a flavoursome pick-me-up yesterday, and they did too. Bless their white cotton high-performance socks. Not even the fact that we’d replaced Gonzalo Higuain (hat-trick) with Carlos Tevez (three goals less, taken off after 75 minutes) in that Fantasy team of ours could dampen our spirits. We were banjaxed any way.
Argentina also left The 3Ds, Darragh, Denis and Didi (that’d be Messrs Maloney, Hamann and Irwin) swooning, although the moment yet another D, the Demichelis fella, had a little afternoon nap, allowing Lee Chung-Yong to pounce on the Sleeping Beauty’s error and score, left them a bit concerned about defensive frailties.
But, that itsy-bitsy quibble aside, Argentina were perfect. Maybe Maradona actually knows what he’s doing? “Any second now he’ll name Ossie Ardiles in his team,” said BBC’s Colin Murray, begging to differ, but soon enough that script might need to be shredded. Unless he plays Alfredo Di Stefano in the hole behind the front two against the Greeks. Then we’d worry.
Greece v Nigeria. “After 90 seconds I said ‘this is a minger’,” said a buoyant Alan Hansen at half-time, leaving a clearly puzzled Emmanuel Adebayor wondering if that was a good or a bad thing. “The first 30 minutes were so bad it was untrue, but the next 60 were watchable,” Alan gushed on, like a BP Oil leak.
(Note to Emmanuel: if you want a safe return to Manchester City stop calling United ‘Manchester’. That class of talk will make you as loved as Gary Neville in the blue half of the city.)
Jimmy Magee hardly more enthusiastic early in the game, perhaps pining for Clones on a rain-sodden Sunday afternoon. Free to Nigeria. A bank of defenders and attackers lined up in the penalty area. “They’re like a crowd in the station waiting for the last train to Clarksville,” said Jimmy, sensing there was no light at the end of this particular group match tunnel. “I’m feelin’ low, oh, no, no, no,” he hummed to himself, until: Gooooal!!!
But then a self-destruct button appeared from nowhere and Sani Kaita just couldn’t resist pushing it. Jimmy had some sympathy for the fella, noting the Greek lad, Vasileios Torosidis, he half kicked “went down like he was working for WWE”. That’s World Wrestling Entertainment, not Wibbly Wobbly Enda.
“Torosidis is not fatally wounded, nor will he have to go to AE,” Jimmy sighed, but he accepted, in a roundabout kind of way, that Kaita had been less than smart. “There have been a few of those buildings around Ireland, way up on hills. There’s one outside Kells, and it’s called a folly. Well, that was folly there by Kaita.” Truly, only Jimmy could link a Nigerian red card with a tourist attraction in Co Meath.
It was around the 70th minute that Jimmy started praising our Fantasy goalkeeper, Nigeria’s Vincent Enyeama, hailing him as the tournament’s finest. This prompted us to fret. One minute later . . . seriously, don’t want to talk about it.
“The star of the day was as vulnerable as the rest of us,” said Jimmy, trying to offer some consolation. Enyeama, then, proved to be human, a bit like that poor divil of a commentator on Serbian telly who announced that goalkeeper Robert Enke would be unavailable for Germany’s game against the Serbs today because “he is injured”. That’d be the same Robert Enke who committed suicide last year.
It was a lively old day, our highlight coming when The 3Ds looked ahead to the France v Mexico game. We would have emptied our savings account and handed the coins to RTÉ just to be allowed see the moment they persuaded Didi to become more Irish than the Irish themselves by donning a sombrero. His unamused discomfort was pure, unadulterated, comedy gold.
