Angel di Maria is a lucky man. He has risen from being an Argentinian slum-dog, working in the coal mine with his father when he was 10 years old, to becoming the most expensive footballer on these shores when arrived at the more modern slum that is Manchester. Ok, maybe its no longer the slum it was 30 years ago, but its fucking bleak up there. And according to Rory Smith in the Times, Angel will wear that revered number 7 shirt: “graced at Old Trafford by George Best, Eric Cantona and Christiano Ronaldo.” WHAT ABOUT DAVID BECKHAM????? Even Bryan Robson should be included in that exalted line-up too. Is Rory Smith an Anglophobe? Two England captains, two outstanding footballers, yet deemed unworthy for inclusion as Manc ‘superstars’. David Beckham, the most successful footballer of all time, the best known face in the world, a man who can be recognised universally by the merest hint of even a half of any of his 642 tattoos. Yet not worthy of inclusion into the list of nobility who wore ‘that shirt’. Which he wore from when he was a baby to when he was 50 years old and Alex Ferguson attacked him with a hairdryer.

Why do I care? Who gives a shit what happens ‘up there’?? I’m no Man United fan. And yet I do. Because the glamour and brilliance of that team has shone throughout the nation for my whole life. When they won the European Cup in 1968 (when it was worth winning) they played ‘for England’ and we loved them for it. And although I can resent Chelsea and Manchester City for winning the league through foreign investment, I can’t bring that level of resentment to United when they win it. Almost as if its their rightful place as it has been, again, for most of my life.

So you may think that despite what I said above, that I am some closet, hanging-on-the-shirttails-of-success (because I get none whatsoever from my team) Man U. fan. But I can’t be. Because when they lose it makes me happy.

Oh, what a bastard. How fickle. Yeah, get over it. Like you’re different?? The old schadenfreude kicks in as the newscaster reads “MK Dons 4, Manchester United 0” and I grin. OMG, they lost to not only a terrible, lower-league team, but the most hated team on the planet. If you don’t remember, the once great (hmmm) Wimbledon football club of Vinnie Jones fame, of crazy gang fame, got in financial woes, lost their ground to property developers and ended up half way to ‘up north’ in Milton Keynes. Such practices are acceptable in America, though not happily by the cities losing teams, but its not the British way. Our teams are ‘part of the community’ and are fated to live forever in the hell where they were born. Otherwise Tottenham would long ago have moved to somewhere nice and leafy and suburban, rather than living the life of royalty in a favela.

Yet Milton Keynes beat the Man United second 11. Or third 11. Doesn’t matter, that’s the team they chose. And if Luis van Gaal thinks that the sad and sorry Capital One Cup is unimportant and worthless, then he should speak to Man United fans as to how they feel to being not just beaten but totally trounced by a team whose collective worth wouldn’t keep the Mancs in bootlaces for a month. The fans who have to go to work today and face horrible grinning bastards like me.

This season is getting better and better,

Happy wednesday

A xxxx