As I tipped City to win the Premier League at the start of the season, I'm looking forward to Roberto Mancini's mob vindicating my outside bet. Yet, as I'm an ornery swine, I'm already kind of hoping Mancini fails just to spite the fawning English media.
In short, it's been little more than sickening toadying. There's been girlish giggling at his scarf, comments about how handsome he is, how well dressed, how innovative.
Let's take the bloody scarf for a start. His Italianness doesn't automatically bless every clothing decision with style and class. He actually looks like a silly boy who has tied his scarf wonky just to annoy his mam, not some sort of fashion god. As far as I can tell, he's worn the same clothes since he arrived. I mean, please, tramps do that.
The other day I heard someone on ESPN drooling over his coat as though it was some sort of amazing, magic garment. Look, it's just a probably expensive coat. Anyone can buy one. Rich people tend to have expensive, well-made clothes. It's not made of spun gold. It's an ordinary dark overcoat. It doesn't do tricks. And yet to listen to them all banging on about his 'style', you'd think that he was a fashion god come to Eastlands straight from the catwalk.
And then we get to his hair. Look, it's not some sort of super-stylish haircut, right? It's a side parting, long at the back. It could easily become a mullet and it's got a slightly odd multicoloured look to it. I'm not bothered. He could wear a curly ginger wig for all I care, but why is Richard Keys sniggering coyly about it like a schoolboy who has seen into the girls' changing room.
It's our old friend National Stereotype at work here. (Note to weepy hyper PC hand-wringers; this is not the same as racism - countries are not races). The Italians may be rubbish in a war but they're a stylish mob. They put we humble, sackcloth-wearing Brits to shame. That's the stereotype. Mancini is being worshipped in a way that an identical British manager would never be.
It's certainly true that Italians makes some nice clothes and wear some nice clothes. It's also true that some don't, as anyone who has walked the streets of Cattolica will tell you. Britain has a long and proud history of radical, innovative fashion. We don't all look like we've just slept in a ditch. But this doesn't fit the narrative on Mancini.
Plenty of British managers wear smart clothes but they seem to get panned for it. If Mancini dressed like Phil Brown he'd be praised as a daring, stylish Italian stallion. Phil just gets slagged off because he's from South Shields. Souness, never a man to not appreciate his own appearance, wears killer suits on pundit duty without anyone mentioning anything.
I suspect this is actually all displaced Mourinho love. The media are quite open about how much they miss Mourinho. If you watch Woolly, Baldy, Snobby, Fatty, Hairy Skinny and Spanner on Sunday Supplement, there's an almost lovesick pining for Mourinho. They loved everything about him; his clothes, his attitude and his great quotes. They want Mancini to be Jose, but clearly, he's no Jose. He's just a regular bloke with a scarf on tied a bit wonky. So stop trying to make him into something he isn't.
And now we hear he wants to feed players pizza and wine - oooooh Roberto, you're sooooo clever. We love your original thinking. Doubtless, after another win, this will be portrayed as another brilliant, radical move. But can you imagine if an English manager did that, it'd be 'this is the old-fashioned attitude that holds British football back' all over the place.
God help us, anyone would think we'd never seen a chap from beyond these islands before - they treat him as if he's fabulously exotic. This fawning over Mancini is typical of the British media's reaction to foreigners generally, veering between awe at their fancy foreign ways and moaning that they're taking our jobs and diluting our proud British heritage. Currently, the dial is set to Brown Nose.
Mancini may turn out to be a big success or he may not. Either way, it'll be nothing to do with an overcoat, scarf, spats, cravat or crotchless panties, so please, shut your media meat holes about his appearance and concentrate on the football.
http://football365.com/john_nicholson/0 ... 79,00.html
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