A massive attack takes one massive effort...
WHEN Richard Keys and Andy Gray were presenting the football on Sky Sports, and they were introducing a game that was even more massive than the other massive, massive games — a game that usually featured Manchester United and Liverpool — Keysy would sometimes turn to Graysy and he would ask him solemnly: “How big is this?”
And in tones which were suitably laden with awe, given the gargantuan nature of the event which was about to unfold, Graysy would try to find the language which would somehow contain all the vastness of the occasion, though the line which has stayed with me is one uttered by Keysy himself — he looked straight into the camera, beaming it down the bottle, and he said in a hushed tone: “It’s enormous.”
So mesmerisingly huge was it, in Keysy it had induced this air of humility, this sense of his own smallness in relation to everything that was about to take place — yes he could have used many, many words as he strove to encapsulate the magnitude of what was happening, but so overwhelmed was he by it all, he could find just two words, softly spoken: “It’s enormous.”
Today Man United are playing Liverpool, and such is the enormity of it, even the word “enormous” itself, uttered with profound sincerity by Keysy, would be so far away from conveying the size of this thing, its very inadequacy would be of enormous proportions.
United have the opportunity of damaging Liverpool’s chance of winning the league, which is a sign of how far they have fallen, as that used to be Liverpool’s big thrill in these games.
But did I say “big”? I’m sorry, when two empires meet in this way, to decide what can with some justification be called the future of the human race, “big” can never be in that conversation. “Big” is very small indeed.
And I could be here like Keysy trying to nail it for you, trying to beam it down the bottle like he did, those words which might communicate even a hint of the incalculable largeness which we are about to experience this afternoon.
But I have to tell you: there are no words.