Who made Jose Mourinho the arbiter of class?

We pulled into an old gas station somewhere in the Mojave desert. All flaking paint and windswept stucco, it looked like it belonged in a Steinbeck novel and not in 2005. I stepped out of the crisp cool air inside the Chrysler 300 into 110 degrees of summer desert heat. Sticking my credit card into the pump, I squinted out across the western plain as the dust was forming small hurricane funnels across the vast landscape.

I pulled the lever down to deliver the gas; it was silent apart from the sound of fuel being pumped into the huge automobile and the singing of the overhead wires. My hair streamed out sideways as I rested my weight on one hip, the sun burning my already mahogany tanned skin. As it so often does in America, it felt like I was in a movie and this was the opening widescreen shot of a lonely soul pumping gas out west, trying to escape himself and the life he’d left behind. I wiped the dust off my beat-up brown leather boots onto my calf, hitched up my torn old jeans and grinned to myself, feeling a long way from home. This was why you came here.

After filling the tank I went into the small office to buy some beer, picking up a six-pack of Pabst and taking it to the counter.

“We got a hot one today,” said the woman as I handed her a 20.

“Yeah, we don’t get days like this on Teesside,” I said as she fixed my change.

She gave me the leathery-skinned look of puzzlement. She must’ve been somewhere between 40 and 60 but somehow looked ageless. Maybe the desert does that to you.

“You Dutch?” she asked. I pocketed the change.

“Not quite. I’m from the northeast of England about 5,000 miles over that way.” I pointed to the east.

She broke into a wide smile, like this was the most exotic thing she’d ever heard. She folded her arms across her denim-shirted chest and nodded.

“Say some words for me.”

“Words? What sort of words?” I asked, laughing a little.

“Anything. I love your accent. It’s so classy.”

“Really? No-one would say that back home. I’m a writer, I’ve got no money and I’m from a run-down, unfashionable, out-of-the-way place. If I’m anything, it is not classy.”

She laughed. “Honey, class ain’t about money, it’s about manners, it’s how you behave,” she said, which struck me as an unusually wise thing for a gas station worker to say. She leaned into a door behind her. “Cindy! Come out here! We got an English guy here. He talks like the Queen of England.”

Cindy emerged. She was about 18 and mostly comprised of long legs and long blonde hair, with everything in between being covered by what looked to be little more than a handkerchief.

“Say something for Cindy, will ya?”

“Hello Cindy. I’m Johnny. All the way from the north east of England. It’s great being out here in the desert. It feels like the real America, to me.” I stood to attention and saluted like I was a soldier reporting for duty.

The kid looked at her mother and they both laughed like I was a monkey in a zoo doing something hilariously obscene with a banana.

I turned to go. “Well it’s been really nice to meet you both.” I turned back. “Have a nice life!”

Pleased that I had been such great entertainment for them I bid them adieu and walked out. As I did so I heard the mother say to her daughter, “damn, that guy has class”.

I got back into the car.

“The women in there think I’ve got class, whatever that means,” I said to my missus.

She rolled her eyes and snorted. “Yeah, well, they don’t know you, do they?”

Class. Class. Class. This came back to mind this morning when I was reading Jose Mourinho saying of Manchester City: “If you are a rich club you can buy all the top players but you cannot buy class.” Class. I had class. Or at least, in the Mojave desert I did. And I wondered again what on earth it really means. On the pitch City are class, United are not. But that’s not what he’s talking about, is he? Or is he? Who knows? I wonder if even he does.

We hear the word class used in football quite often. ‘Classy’ is often used as an ironic, disparaging term for someone that has behaved badly, in the acerbic “stay classy” sort of way. However, a great piece of skill can be described as “absolute class” and yet a player who does something reprehensible can be said to have “no class”. All of which leaves us no further forward in trying to work out what United’s manager meant.

In saying City can’t buy class, is he implying they are currently without this enigmatic quality and no amount of wealth can acquire it for them? It would seem so.

But this is mad. I mean, how can a club have this mythical thing called ‘class’? It is not an independent entity, rather it is the sum of its myriad parts. And though being able to buy class is oft said as a truism, as though it is something that can only be acquired through cultural osmosis, genetics, or by being gifted it by some class-rich elder, deeper thought reveals it actually makes very little sense at all.

If you’ve got class, what does that look like? Can anyone say? If, as Mourinho seems to be suggesting, United have class but City do not, how is that manifested? I don’t believe anyone can say how, because I don’t believe it exists as a real thing. It’s an imaginary stick to beat people with.

Perhaps it is thought to be about money. City, as the relative nouveau riche, are like the flash self-made man in the leopard skin underpants, compared to United’s nicely tailored sophisticate in a Paul Smith suit. We do like a bit of class-on-class snobbery in Britain, to say the least. Obviously it would be nonsense given United’s bloated balance sheet and their recent yearly failed attempts to buy their way to league success over and above doing it primarily by coaching, but even so, maybe that’s what he means.

However, if there is a rule book with a list of behaviour that reflects class and a list that isn’t, I’d like to see it, because Mourinho has a long litany of behaviour which would struggle to match up to it. I’m all for hiding in laundry baskets but I’m not sure it passes the class test. Nor does poking people in the eye, or being beastly to your medical staff.

All of which means the ‘class’ fight is one he will never win and ironically, by his own supposed (though wholly phoney) standards, pulling the ‘you can’t buy class’ lever is one of the least classy things you can do. Those women in the gas station didn’t know me, but they knew that money doesn’t buy you class; manners and the way you behave does. And that is surely at the root of all of Manchester United’s current problems.

John Nicholson