What is the best thing?

My lad asked me what was my favourite thing about football. It's obviously goals. You'd have to be a hipster fool to say it wasn't goals. They're really good. I like headers in general, I love a good flick on, I'm all about a booming defensive header, but a headed goal is great - I especially like downward headers from crosses from the byline, where the winger took it right to the chalk before whipping it in. The absolute best goals are without question diving headers and it's my unproven theory that diving headers are less prevalent today than they once were.

That's possibly because one of my formative football memories was the 1987 FA Cup final. The picture below says it all.



Even though Andy Carroll is obviously not very good at modern football, nor is he very fashionable, I really like the fact he looks like he might launch himself, like a cannonball, like one of those bullets with an evil face from Mario and make contact with the ball at just the right time, flying horizontally, defying gravity, all momentum, suddenly finding a different dimension, literally playing a different level, a weird zone between your standard heights of kicking and conventional heading.

I like the way you can't actually defend against a diving header. You can't tackle it and usually it would be impossible to react with a counter diving header as the change in direction required to do it would be impossible to execute in the time available. They're like a glitch in a computer game, an unstoppable piece of magic that evokes some kind of buried generational memory of Dixie Dean or Len Shackleton, launching themselves at a rain soaked medicine ball, then crashing down on to the turf, before rising to shake hands like real men, perhaps allowing themselves a little skip in their step as the trot back for the kick off if they felt especially frisky.

The second best thing? That's obviously when an outfield player goes in goal. Substitute keepers was a terrible idea, denying us the chance to appreciate what it looks like when one of the players doesn't really know what they're doing. The outfield player in goal is absolutely the embodiment of the fan on the pitch. Your average supporter can probably run like a footballer, they can make out like they're following the ball, tracking back, doing that little sideways funny running jog they do, but when the ball comes near them, the result is panic. That's when the imposter gets found out. The outfield player turned keeper is the same, spitting on the gloves, clapping their hands, squatting on their haunches on the edge of the box, pointing, holding their gloves up to their mouth to amplify shouting - all of this is good. Yet when the opposition forward runs at them, they look like they'll fall over their own legs as they back pedal, when the corner swings in, they run out too far, or retreat under the crossbar and hope things just turn out ok. How can you not love the sight of a professional player, baffled, looking like a kid who turned up for the wrong exam, for a class he doesn't take but decided to give it a go anyway.

Who ever came up with the substitute goalie idea is a killjoy. Nothing less. It's like outlawing bowlers from batting in cricket or not having Formula One in the rain - there's a great joy in seeing a bit of incompetence and the fact it's not 'fair' or 'spoils the quality' is missing the point to the extent that I don't think whoever did that actually likes football at all.

I also really like long throws. I like they way they transform the mundanity of a throw in to an exciting moment. I like industrial, rough teams who upset everyone by being good at just two things and I like it when one of them is a long throw. I like the feeling of dread you get when another team turns up and everything seems to be going fine, they don't seem especially good, then you discover their full back can throw it 45 yards and you know that your cultured, classy passing side, with its balance of flair and industry is fucked. Largely because one lad can chuck it at the head of a big lad and your defence will melt and then your team will lose all ability to string passes together, all because they've got this one lad who can hurl a ball. It's deadly - it's rare enough that I assume teams don't actually practice against them that much. Corners are really over rated, they never caused anywhere near as much chaos as the strange catapult effect that a long throw practitioner achieves.

I really don't know why their aren't more players who can do long throws.

Same as I don't know why on earth teams do that short goal kick stuff. That just seems to be some sort of football homeopathy - it's based on some kind of belief, but I have no idea how it's supposed to actually work. How is giving the ball to the full back who is two yards next to the goal keeper going to help? Don't come at me with your 'ah, but it helps draw the other team on you see and stretches the midfield allowing your player to drop into the space' - it's nonsense, faddish rubbish with no actual basis in evidence. It should be swiftly outlawed to prevent its spread. It's one thing Pep doing it, with his incredible almost wizard like tactical nous of managing the best, richest team in each division, then amazingly winning stuff with them all whilst managing to wear clothes, but quite another when Barnsley do it.

Mel Machin, who isn't the Barnsley manager anymore but who, for the purposes of the narrative, you will have to believe still is. The picture above will help you picture the action that follows to some extent. You will have to imagine Mel's facial expressions other than this one, which will do for the first part of the action, but which you'll later be invited to imagine are more emotional and expressive of his inner existential angst. 

I am willing to bet, if you stopped the game and asked every single Barnsley player, 'why?' they'd not have an answer. I'd like to then see the Barnsley manager (who hasn't been Mel Machin for some considerable time, but lets just say it is as I can't be arsed looking up to see if they've still got that exotic lad who had a scrap with Joey Barton) brought on to the pitch, stood in the centre circle and then the referee given a microphone, the floodlights dimmed and a single spotlight illuminating the sports coated manager. The crowd would fall silent as the referee asks

"Mel Machin, former Barnsley manager in real life, current Barnsley manager in this hypothetical situation - I want to ask you one question and one question only...(pause)... that one question is ...(second pause)... 'why the fuck are you telling your team to do that shit passing it to the full back at a goal kick thing?'

Mel Machin would shuffle, his hands in his early 90s Umbro sports jacket (he has to trawl ebay to get them, it's costing him the earth) - he'd look down at his fat late 80s style club tie and his grey slip on faux leather shoes he sometimes wears when he goes and plays a game of snooker and thinks to himself 'I'm tired - I've been managing Barnsley in this imaginary world for about 25 years, maybe more and I just don't have an answer any more...' before mumbling

"I dunno, I just thought... I... Look... I dunno - I just saw Man City doing it ok? I just saw it and I said to the lads to do it, they just nodded and carried on chewing gum and flicking each other ears and stuff and I don't have a footballing reason why! - Is that what you wanted? Me to say that? Me to admit I just did it because other people do? Is that was this? All a set up to have a go at me? To laugh at the incongruity of funny old alliterative named yesterday's reletively minor footnote in football management history Mel Machin? Eh?"

Mel Machin's Mel Machin face would be red, his voice rising, his anger at having to explain, week after week after week, the same things, the same problems, the same frustrations. He's tired. Tired of football and tired of trotting out the same cliche's and tired of having the hope kicked out him every year. Mel Machin just lets go...

"I did because I thought it would look good! OK? I fucking did it because of that. Ok? Like when I played the left winger on the right and the right winger on the left, even though it made no fucking sense to do it, because they're both shit and the only thing they can actually do is cross with their left and right foot respectively and swapping them over just made them even shitter - like that. It was the same thing. I did it because other than putting a big man and a little man up front and twatting it at them, I'm out of fucking ideas, because fucking football is chaos and luck and mostly just gnarly lads kicking shit out of each other and Pep and Poch look so fucking cool, chewing their gum and talking philosophy and being all cute and enigmatic and I bet they don't have to break up a fight because Daz has done a shit in Stevie's boot again, or do a corporate meeting with the matchball sponsors who are a fucking cut price carpet company and feign some kind of interest. I bet they don't. I bet they get fucking airlines and diamond salesmen and fucking spies and the queen and that lad that played Harry Potter, not Des's Carpet discount warehouse and cowboy fucking builders... I did what I did cos for once in my life, I wanted to feel a bit continental. I just thought I could live like that for a few minutes. Like I was innovating, Like I was ON THE CUSP OF THE NEW. LIKE I WAS FEELING THE FRONTIER OF TIME PASSING THROUGH ME, LIKE I WAS THE WIND OF FUCKING CHANGE, Ok? IS THAT OK? Happy now?"

That's what we have to stop. We have to stop Mel Machin trying to be someone else and just ensure he's happy with who is. Even if he's imaginary (or at least, this portion of his career is an imaginary fork in the space time continuum).

After all, we might all be a figment of someone's imagination. How would we even know?