Madness

”KOP ARE MAD ON BAD FAD’ declares the Sun. Eh? Come again?

Denis dreams of the day he will don the Old Gold

Well, it’s not the best – or most accurate – headline ever, we’ll give you that. And to be honest, it’s not much of a story. But these summer weeks are the dog days of football journalism, and the hack pack are sniffing around for any scraps that they can find.

The gist of this particularly poor piece of gristle is that the ‘KOP’ (not actually the Kop, of course, but the Liverpool FC management) are ‘MAD’ keen to sign a player with a criminal record.

The fact that they were previously in talks with Lee Bowyer, who has also been in trouble with the law, thus constitutes – in the fevered imagination of the Sun’s subs at least – a ‘BAD FAD’.

The bad boy in the Reds’ sights is Senegal star Khalilou Fadiga, who has been in jail (briefly) for hitting a fan – not much of an offence, really – and was arrested for stealing a cheap necklace before the World Cup.

He claimed that this was a prank, and the charges were dropped. In other words, the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, as Bobby Moore would have told you.

But if you thought that the Sun’s first headline was weird, how about this on page 52: ‘JOINING WOLVES IS A DREAM COME TRUE’.

What’s odd about that? Nothing, if, as you might suppose, it came from a young lad from the Wolverhampton area who has just been cherry-picked from the local non-league side. But it’s not the sort of thing you expect from a player who has spent the last 12 years as a Manchester United first-teamer, and is the most decorated player in the club’s illustrious history.

Denis Irwin has a European Cup winners’ medal, a European Cup-Winners Cup winners’ medal, seven Premiership medals, and two FA Cup winners’ medals – to name but a few of the honours he has picked up. Not only that but Sir Alex Ferguson declared himself ‘honoured to have had him on my staff’.

Yet as a lad in Ireland, young Denis dreamed of Molineux. Now he is living proof that if you work hard and live clean, then dreams really can come true. ‘

Posted: 24th, July 2002 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink