I've written before about the uselessness of most football managers' and players' press conferences, unless they involve Jose Mourinho or Harry Redknapp. Every Friday, before the weekend league matches, or before an international, the manager and a couple of players are told to take turns sitting in front of the press to answer questions like:
So what kind of match are you expecting?
Are you going to miss so and so who's out injured?
What do think about the rumours of so and so joining such and such a team?
What do you think of Brexit and how it will affect the transfer market?
And the reporters write their reports with the same old standard replies:
We are going to play as a team.
It doesn't matter who we are playing, we take every game seriously.
We want to be better every week and challenge for trophies.
We will wait and see what happens.
About the rumoured transfer or Brexit?
About everything, it's useless speculating and I don't want to comment right now. Don't want to or can't?
Ok, lads, I think we're out of time.
But all these comically terrible press conferences pale into comical insignificance compared to the gong show (or shows) of the Floyd Mayweather/Conor MacGregor roadshow going on right now. The boxer and the fighter paid to beat people up for entertainment in the sport (?) I will not mention are putting on press conferences for suckers who don't realize that they are falling for the act that will net each of these guys $200m each. They're press conferences on steroids, steroids so far off the scale of banned substances that WADA wouldn't even have a classification for them. I haven't watched any, even for the purpose of research, couldn't bring myself to. Hearing about them on the news was painful enough.
Amidst all the faked politeness (footballers) and manufactured drama there is one sports manager who lets is be known that he has no time for yet another day of dumb questions that he is obliged to answer. He doesn't mope, he doesn't pull a Mourinho sulk. He just has fun with it. And his answers that make fun of the ridiculous questions are the entertainment. Ladies and gentlemen : John Gibbons, manager of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. He takes saying it as it is to a new level of honesty, his level which he sets.
No comments:
Post a Comment