As Paul Pogba dances on-screen with rapper Stormz, the Technicolor floodwaters rise.
A bubbling froth made up by the unbridled drooling of Manchester United fans and the painful eye-watering of everyone else, as the elite midfielder’s awkward cavorting pierces through the cornea and withers the retina.
No relief can be found by scrolling further down the Twitter timeline, as neon images of #POGBACK and #REUNITED, endless cavalcades of grown men dabbing and that number – £89.3 million – are thrown up on the screen ad nauseam. This is football, is it?
At times it feels as if the marketing of this historic transfer might be more valuable to Manchester United than Pogba himself. Will the 50,000 retweets of Pogba’s welcome video be more useful to the United brand than Pogba’s first goal as a United player?
REUNITED: https://t.co/VFkDJ05zuf #POGBACK https://t.co/y68rpT0dob
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 8, 2016
Does the act of Manchester United making Pogba the world’s most expensive footballer carry more currency than the prospect of whether or not Pogba justifies his fee? And behind the jubilant dabbing, the slightly stomach-turning sight of Jose Mourinho smirking, and the frenzied scramble of Adidas, Chevrolet and Aon to share the spotlight, where does Mino Raiola stand?
Has anyone asked Alex Ferguson for his view, as irrelevant as it may be?
The grotesque reality that Manchester United have paid a world record fee to bring back a player they let go for virtually nothing four years ago has, as planned, been drowned out by the homecoming fanfare.
There appears to be no sheepishness, no red-faced heel-kicking, no tetchy glances at their now retired but still ever-present legendary manager, whose decision that 2012 departure was.
“I don’t think he showed us any respect at all, to be honest. I’m quite happy that if they [footballers] carry on that way, they’re probably better doing it away from us.” Ferguson said of Pogba at the time.
It barely needs pointing out what an almighty, farcical error it was to give up on the youngster; Pogba won the European Golden Boy award for his fine play over the next twelve months, and accepted the bauble in December 2013, on the day Manchester United lost the first of two consecutive home defeats under David Moyes.
But as William Gibson – an author whose cyberpunk visions aren’t totally disconnected from this conversation – put it, “time moves in one direction, memory in another”, so we’ll let this all be washed away by the fizzing, pink lemonade waters of the present.
This is a world where large portions of football are now consumed in seven-second Vines, or 60-frame GIFS, and where transfer rumours can be confirmed by people’s mums on Twitter; why should our perspectives operate on a level any less fleeting?
There is surely no point in pedantically holding up a finger and interjecting with anything that weighs too heavily on the mind.
We have already, it goes without saying, forgotten Pogba’s rather lacklustre Euro 2016.
Having struggled when Didier Deschamps changed the formation around him, from a 4-3-3 to a 4-2-3-1, Pogba’s failure to adapt, and France’s harrowing loss in the final, evidently did little to dampen the United deal that, at that time, would have already been in the works.
That latter formation is one also favoured by Mourinho, and one wonders now exactly what the Portuguese genius/enfant-terrible will do to accommodate his star signing.
Pogba is at his best when he is allowed to be mobile, taking full advantage of that leggy power-stride – a gait within which clear echoes of Patrick Viera can be heard – and his so-often devastating long-range shooting.
That means positional cover must be put in place behind Pogba, and willing hinge-passers must be placed around him. As it stands, Wayne Rooney’s place in the starting XI seems dicey at best.
As for Raiola – the man about whom Alex Ferguson said “There are one or two football agents I simply do not like – and Mino Raiola is one of them” – well, he has now negotiated not only the world’s most expensive deal with United, but deals for two more of his players with the club; Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Zlatan Ibrahimovic are also Raiola’s clients.
It is he, perhaps more than any other party involved, that benefits most from the hype-machine cranking into overdrive; every Tweet, every snapchat, every viral video adds more strength to his arm, as he pumps at the bellows, fanning an already raging fire.
He stands to make around £20 million from the Pogba deal alone.
There will be Twitter accounts for Pogba’s haircuts, and we’ll all indulge ourselves with a whirl on the carousel of his highlights this season, which will inevitably flip in, like some sublime slideshow.
But how much should we fear the effect of this julienne-ing of our minds by the blades of technologically-enhanced public relations?
It might be lovely to be ensconced in neon and glitter for a while, to allow it to block out the unflattering light of reality, but too much of it and we’ll choke.
Television is already far more important to the organisers of the Premier League than those filling the stands. Club kits are already bursting at the seams to fit in additional sponsorship branding.
As more effulgent, shimmering architecture is constructed garishly around it, don’t forget this is all resting on the corporeal thump of boot on ball.
The Sky Blues took the lead at home but couldn't hold on as the Mariners came back to claim a 2-1 win in the first leg of the semifinal.
A fresh punishment was imposed after the club failed to comply with profitability and sustainability rules during the three-year cycle to 2022-23.
The two spot kicks levelled the score on aggregate over the two legs, but Bayer Leverkusen then scored two late goals for a draw…
Just four teams remain in the hunt for the 2023/24 A-League Championship and the action will be intense in the opening legs of the…
Bayern Munich led 1-nil at the 87th minute mark until the Spaniard's two goals.
Alphonso Davies looked to have undone all his hard work of scoring the first goal when the ball went into his own net off…
