Bob Mortimer hates opinions. The preface of his (excellent) autobiography, And Away … includes the important point that the book contains “very little opinion or advice”. And yet he loves football, a sport where it is almost impossible not to have an opinion. And he has a football-related podcast, Athletico Mince, where he is forced to give his two pence. “I have spent 50 years making sure I have no opinions,” he explained to Adam Buxton in 2018. “And then I signed up for a football opinion show, so I had to change that quite quickly.” Football will do that to you. Referees, managers, pundits and tea-timely emails are all paid to have an opinion. And thank goodness for that. It would be deathly boring if everything in the beautiful game was a statement of fact. If everyone agreed that Alejandro Garnacho’s volley was better than Wayne Rooney’s, or that José Mourinho is a better manager than Pep Guardiola, then the world, the pub, the pillow-talk – we presume – and the group chat would be a poorer place.
One of life’s great joys is reading the opinions of L’Équipe, especially after a PSG game. Following Newcastle’s visit to Paris, Big Website’s cousins from across the channel did not disappoint with their infamous ratings: Ousmane Dembélé was gifted a 6/10 despite wandering around the right wing with all the menace and inquiry of Geoff Shreeves at an Indian restaurant. Tino Livramento and Anthony Gordon, both excellent on the night, were only afforded 5/10, while Lewis Miley received a 4/10, despite the 17-year-old’s astounding display on his first Big Cup start. Opinions, even bad ones, are fun … sometimes.
There are, however, a few things in football that are not up for debate. We can all agree that Frank Lampard’s shot against Germany crossed the line, a binary decision. We can all agree that Arsenal’s fluorescent tiger-striped away kit belongs in a bin. And, like Eddie Howe, we can all agree that PSG should not have been awarded a penalty in injury time against Newcastle. The reasons why Livramento should not have been punished are many (the ball deflected first off the Newcastle defender’s chest, plus his proximity to Dembélé, and the fact that his arm was in a natural running position). There is probably a wider discussion about VAR being fit for purpose, whether decisions being correct are more important than sucking the fun out of the game, whether we should care at all about the plight of two teams backed by Saudi and Qatari wealth.
But two important consequences have emerged from the fiasco. The first is that the VAR, Tomasz Kwiatkowski, who recommended to review the on-field decision, has been stood down from Big Cup duties on Wednesday; as close to an admission of Uefa guilt that Howe and co will get. The second is that there was one Newcastle fan, Carl, who rang up TalkSport to say he had to turn his Christmas lights off after the match because it made him too miserable, while a second caller, Peter, had to fight back tears, his high-pitched north-east accent resembling a character that Mortimer would have been proud of. Absolutely electric festive entertainment. Opinions, even bad ones, are fun … sometimes.
Hands up if you think it was a penalty? Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images
