INJURY TIME

A RIGHT ROYAL STUFF-UP

Will next season’s Premier Soccer League feature just 14 teams? We ask, because how in a Maponyane hamburger, can’t a decision be made about who qualifies for promotion? Isn’t that why you play matches? And why does the PSL’s Disciplinary Committee take so damn long to make its decisions? This whole affair regarding Royal AM and Sekhukhune United, which led to the postponement last week of the PSL’s promotion/relegation competition, has its origins in a match that took place in January. Now, instead of a clear decision being made on grass, between four lines and with some goals, it’s in a High Court, and you’re not allowed to kick a ball around in there and the referee wears a long black gown and dishes out punishment with a gavel, not yellow or red cards.

COKE VS ‘AGUA’

Capitalism is warped. The pandemic has shown that. Billionaires have gotten so wealthy that they’re shooting rockets into space so that they can go and live up there instead of on earth. There was another example of it this week, when a footballer, admittedly one of the most popular athletes on the planet, reportedly wiped R57 billion off the value of Coca-Cola. How’d he do that? By moving two Coke bottles out of sight of TV cameras at a press conference and uttering the word ‘agua,’ Portuguese for water. That’s it, that’s all it took. You’d think the company, the people asking for their money and society in general, might want to have a re-think, but nah, on we forge, to the moon and beyond.

RONALDO

Actually the whole ‘move the sponsor to the side’ affair at Euro 2020 (it’s 2021, but the marketing people couldn’t be bothered) has taken on a life of its own. A spokesperson for the tournament, in attempting to placate the companies which give them money, sheepishly claimed the players are “offered water, alongside CocaCola and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, on arrival at our press conferences”. It’s gone so far that the England manager, Gareth Southgate, was asked for his opinion and said he valued the role sponsors played, not just in giving money to big tournaments but more importantly the grassroots level of sports. (So that’s his Coke board membership wrapped up after his management days are over). However the UK tabloids, of course, tried to turn it into a ‘Southgate vs Ronaldo’ fight. Take The Daily Mirror, with one headline: ‘Gareth Southgate refusing to follow Cristiano Ronaldo’s lead by moving Coca-Cola bottles’. He’s not ‘refusing’ to do anything. He has his own opinion and expressed it sensibly. And that is fine without pretending that Gareth Southgate is defying Cristiano Ronaldo.

WE PREFER SINGLE MALT

Besides capitalism, has society now become so beholden to these big name athletes or celebrities that whatever they say, we do? Did people dump all their Coke and Heineken and head straight for the taps for ‘agua’? Has society forgotten to think for themselves? At Injury Times, we don’t care what you drink – we prefer wine or whiskey with our football. If distillers of Single Malt want to sponsor this section, we’re happy to accept offers and we won’t remove your products from in front of the cameras.

BLEACHED HAIR

From the Football365.com’s excellent Mediwatch, which highlights how so many in the UK have got it wrong over midfielder Phil Foden’s bleached hair-do. The Sun, for instance, writes that ‘Phil Foden dyes hair bleach blonde again in another nod to England hero Paul Gascoigne as Scotland Euro 2020 clash nears’. A reminder that Foden himself said “it was my own thing and people have turned it into something else”. He was almost four full years from even being born when Gascoigne played at Euro 96. But that is not about to stop The Sun flogging an incredibly dead horse as the paper writes further: ‘On the eve of England’s Euro 2020 clash with rivals Scotland, the Manchester City ace has taken inspiration from the legendary Paul Gascoigne.’

By the sixth paragraph, the penny finally drops: “Despite the similarities, Foden has insisted his new-look style was his ‘own thing’.” What a lovely ‘nod’ to Gascoigne that still isn’t.