Two types of people in this world: those who, rightly, spent their childhood hating Manchester United, fuck you Manchester United, Manchester United a faceless machine designed to do nothing but win, Manchester United so despicable because they are so unquestionably but anonymously Good, Manchester United doing power moves like buying Jaap Stam, the scariest non-war criminal in history, for £10.6m; like buying the Premier League’s two most in-form strikers and combining them somehow to even greater and more devastating effect; replacing them, spent and used, with £19 million worth of Ruud van Nistelrooy, then just winning again, Manchester United the perfect plane in motion, the parts being replaced but the function remaining the same, win win win, win, win again, then win, all in brilliant red, Manchester United the Stormtroopers, the baddies, Manchester United force-choking you down to a 1-0 win. And the other kind of people are the people who support Manchester United, who are all – necessarily – tainted with a little streak of evil. Manchester United fans wear bobble hats and say “BOB ON” and pretend to like the Happy Mondays and ecstasy. Manchester United fans look at you blankly when you say, “Remember Gary Pallister?” Manchester United fans only enjoy winning, and even then they do it so much it’s almost joyless, Manchester United fans all now essentially Ron Jeremy, the tired old remains of Ron Jeremy, an old stretched whoopee cushion drops on a bag of pine needles, Ron Jeremy shuddering to one final nerveless orgasm, Ron Jeremy just drooping and sad now, Ron Jeremy knackered, Ron Jeremy just sitting heavily in a big bath, sighing into a bath, and dying, instantly, his lifeforce spent and used, one last cigar sizzling in the bathwater. That is essentially a portrait of all Manchester United fans winning the FA Cup last year. That is an accurate description.
Although, hold on though, woah there, what the fuck:
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(Here is a link to the tweet in question if the above video does not embed. You need to watch it.)
I don’t think it is an overreaction to say this is the most important 45 seconds that have ever happened to this planet, and as such we need to break it down, we need to enter the Break It Down Zone™:
THE STORMZY X POGBA ADIDAS-SPONSORED BREAK IT DOWN ZONE™
What we are seeing here, undoubtedly, is the return of Bad Bastard Manchester United, and as a fan of both football, glamour and drama: this is very notable for me. United being reborn as the baddies has been brewing for a summer, now – they recruited Mourinho, the most Bad Bastard manager, and got in Zlatan on a free, and though Zlatan is a pure and true being made of light and ego he’s also glossy and bombastic in that old United way, that too-big-to-be-real way, that unassailably brilliant way – but now they have dropped a world record £89m fee on Paul Pogba and decided to announce it like this, I mean like this, and now they are back, United are no longer the domain of David ‘Scots Man, 56, Scared of His Own Reflection’ Moyes and Louis ‘Our Angriest Dinnerlady Had to Take Our PE Class For Two Years Because of Budget Constraints At the School’ van Gaal, they are now the three biggest characters in world football, Pogba, Ibrahimovic and Mourinho, united like three witches over a bubbling marsh-top pot of corporate money, United are the baddies, now, again, nobody can take that away from them;
Point two is there any other phone on earth with more peng tings on it that Stormzy’s? I do not think so. I do not think it is possible. Stormzy must now be approaching the maximum amount of peng tings allowed. Stormzy close to dangerous with this peng tings. I feel like if you taped a thermometer to your iPhone, and a thermometer to Stormzy’s iPhone – despite the two machines being ostensibly the same hardware – his would run some ten to fifteen degrees hotter than yours, just with the sheer number of peng tings on it. One glance from a mortal man at the WhatsApp saved images folder on Stormzy’s iPhone would surely kill him. Only Stormzy, his body enduring so many peng tings now that it has built up some form of resistance, only Stormzy can break into that radioactive bunker of pengness and swipe around inside it;
Third and most importantly, and because I have watched the above just so many times now, and I have ruled that this is the coolest thing that has ever happened. This is the absolute coolest thing that has ever happened. There are moments, early on, before Stormzy starts yelling about Nick Jonas and everyone just starts pounding the fuck out of their chests with their flat palms, where you worry this isn’t the coolest thing to ever happen – you go, ‘actually, is this awful?’, like how Pogba, one of the most remarkable athletes currently alive, somehow conspiring to look sort of skinny and a touch wonky in some worth-more-than-your-house-is denim, a couple of dance moves not quite landing, not quite cool enough, and like could he not have just held a shirt up while standing on a balcony over Carrington like everyone else, what the fuck man – but then it becomes the coolest thing that ever happened, then Stormzy turns around and he’s wearing a ‘POGBA’ shirt, and it suddenly feels Significant: you realise that this is exactly what he said it was at the start of proceedings – “two young kings” – just two absolutely at-the-top-of-their-game 23-year-olds just kinging about in a warehouse studio wearing the fuck out of a load of adidas, If you could bottle the energy of this video you would never have to eat again. You wouldn’t piss. Pogba the most expensive footballer on earth now, a record unlikely to be surpassed for half a decade at least, fresh off the back of an insanely grandiose Chevrolet motorcade from the airport to sign his contract, Pogba arriving in Manchester like some high space emperor landing on a planet he is about to conquer, somehow fitting in the shoot for this in there somewhere in between, and Stormzy, not even an album out, but so cool without it that all he essentially needs to do is rub his hands together and sneer and it’s better than 90% of the musical output of this country, currently, good god damn, I cannot get over this video. I just cannot get over it at all. I hate Manchester United so much and yet this is the coolest goddamn thing that has ever happened.
Joyfully, this video now ushers the overdue relaunch of megafootball, and I for one am glad of it. Listen, we had fun having Leicester as champions, yeah – it was very heartwarming, wasn’t it, they were very plucky, they turned kick-and-rush into a high art, good on them, Good Old Jamie Vardy, Good Old England’s James ‘Jamie’ Vardy, With His Cast, Good Old Leicester, God Don’t They Love Crisps – but we need Bad Bastards again. We need Manchester United to take one pinch of their global turnover and we need them to buy the absolute best, so-good-they-are-terrifying players, and we need them to just bulldoze their way to the league title. Manchester United are like the baddies in Space Jam now, and they are gloating about that fact. Never has a transfer to a team I do not support been so thrilling as this one. Never has their been a transfer like this. I hate Manchester United again. It’s brilliant.
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