Arsenal and Villa ‘dreams’ are ‘left shattered’ in very real Champions League blow
The Daily Mail are absolutely appalled over The Vile Chants about Phil Foden’s mum – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – while Arsenal and Aston Villa have their dreams shattered and Jude Bellingham kicks out.
Your Cake, And How To Both Have It And Eat It
Sometimes you have to just marvel at the cake-and-eat-it cynicism of modern journalism. It’s a million miles away from being a football-only problem, but football’s tribalism and spite render it well capable of delivering among the biggest and most disingenuous takings of p*ss.
At the Mail Online, for instance, they are simply so sickened and appalled by what tabloidese law requires must be called ‘The Vile Chants’ aimed at Phil Foden’s mum during the Manchester Derby that they’ve had absolutely no choice but to document those chants and also compile a list of other despicable things that have been chanted that they list here just so you too can be appalled and fascinated by them.
Football’s most vile chants: Phil Foden’s mum called a ‘s**g’, Posh Spice’s ’embarrassing’ X-rated taunt and Cheryl Cole ‘threesome’ insult
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: does absolutely everything really have to be #content? Is any of this actually good for any of us?
Maybe it’s just Mediawatch being a grumpy Gus, but one word in the Mail intro has tipped us over the edge, from rolling our eyes at the transparent feigning of disgust at all the vileness while simultaneously revelling in it for the clicks to actual sweary rage. See if you can spot it.
The vile chant directed at Phil Foden’s mother by Manchester United supporters is, sadly, just the latest example of a stomach-churning trend marring the game.
Yeah. It’s that ‘sadly’ isn’t it. They are just so sad about the fact that, sadly they now sadly have no choice whatsoever but to sadly go into detail about the chants while also sadly listing several other examples – many of them sadly by sheer unfortunate happenstance involving enormously famous and click-generating people inside football and out – while sadly shaking their heads at the terribleness of it all.
And that’s before we even start on this headline elsewhere on the Mail football homepage, with the sheer gossiping-over-the-garden-fence Karenness of its headline.
The mum who ‘made everything possible’ for Phil Foden – but must now endure vile chants after living a VERY colourful life
Here the Mail gleefully double-down, dog-whistling their readers in one breath while once again reiterating how terrible all this unpleasantness is with the next. Often in the same paragraph.
There’s an undeniable but vaguely despicable craft to it. Something wickedly clever about being able to lurch from this kind of nudge-nudge paragraph…
Few parents in world football have experienced a more colourful life than Claire Rowlands, the supportive mother-of-five who made ‘everything possible’ for one of the Premier League’s best talents – Manchester City star Phil Foden.
…to this one…
But within her family she is the nurturing pillar of strength for football star Foden and his four siblings Callum, Kenzi, Lois and Avayah, who were raised together on a Greater Manchester council estate.
From paragraphs like this…
From having rows with neighbours over her ‘Disneyland-style’ fireworks display in the garden of her £3.5million Cheshire mansion to getting kicked out of a Welsh nightclub and put in handcuffs, she has regularly found herself in the public eye.
…to this…
Claire Rowlands, 44, disgracefully became the subject of vile chants from Manchester United fans during Sunday’s limp 0-0 stalemate at Old Trafford, as Foden was targeted by sections of the home support who abhorrently labelled her a ‘s**g’ before his substitution in the 58th minute.
Rarely has cake been so gleefully possessed and gluttonously consumed.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Bad news for Arsenal and Aston Villa fans, whose Champions League ‘dreams’ have been ‘left shattered’ by the news that Daily Mirror football writers don’t expect them to reach the Champions League final.
That is indeed a crushing, shattering of dreams for all those Arsenal and Aston Villa fans who thought they were clear favourites against Real Madrid and PSG in the quarter-finals.
A fresh angle
On the face of it, this should be an easy time for football content types. The Champions League quarter-final first legs this week pit some of the biggest and most popular teams in the world against each other.
But anyone can knock up some football-based Arsenal v Real Madrid content. How to stand out from the crowd?
The Daily Star know just how to do it, and proudly bring us what is, in their view, the single biggest football story in the world this bright Tuesday morning.
DATE WITH DESTINY! ‘I’m Arsenal’s biggest female fan and go to games to get laid – Gooners need me’
One fan who says men think she’s ‘too hot’ to be a football expert is looking to score as Arsenal face Real Madrid
The only real surprise here is that the accompanying story contains only four photographs. Maybe the Star are losing their touch after all.
Get your kicks
We take that back. The Daily Star are in fact at the very peak of their powers based on this ingenious piece of headline trickery.
Jude Bellingham ‘kicks his own team-mate’ as Real Madrid ace throws a wobbly
First of all, just an absolutely wonderful use of ‘thrown a wobbly’ to take us back to our difficult high school years.
But what’s this about kicking his own team-mate? You’ve probably already seen this story reported less mischievously elsewhere, because it’s definitely a story. Bellingham booted the VAR monitor really quite hard after Real Madrid’s damaging 2-1 defeat to Valencia.
And all you need to do then is find one wag on X Formerly Known As Twitter pointing out that Real have benefited from some VAR decisions and thus ‘Bellingham is out here kicking his team-mate after a loss’ and BOOM – you’ve got headline gold and it’s barely even cheating.