FOOTBALL: REINVENTED (AGAIN) AS ART

Funny old thing, Football. For instance, continental artists. You’ve got to admire ‘em.

Fiddling about

After all, it’s no coincidence that these isles haven’t produced any artists (apart from Beryl Cook, obviously, and even she’s gone and died now). It’s far too cold here to have any perspective, and anyway we’d rather spend our cash on bacon sarnies than paint and a succession of amusing berets. But over on the continent, well, whether it’s a paint brush or a football they’re fiddling about with, art is the result.

Bogies

I mean look at that Ronaldo fellow. I can’t pretend I’m blind to his effete nature – too much Brylcreem, even by my standards, but my golly, that young lad can flick a ball as easily as the rest of us flick our bogies, sat on the sofa with a half of mild of a Saturday night. Magnificent.

Stripey blue pants

Even the French are at it. That Wibbly might look like a minor character from Asterix the Gaul - probably one of the weedy traitorous ones who got thumped by the big lad in the stripey blue pants - but his weaving, driving runs are the stuff of the Left Bank as much as the left flank, mes braves. Good old Wibbly. And I haven’t even mentioned the Spaniards; a right bunch of Goyas, they are.

Masters

Most of all, though, the Young Dutch Masters. I mean, it’s football for football’s sake, isn’t it? All a bit different from our lot. The only art England know about is the one with a silent ‘F’.

Toot-toot,