Big BerahiNO to new Defoe
WHEN Saido Berahino joined Stoke in January, club legend Denis Smith and current striker Peter Crouch both said they believed he could be the new Jermain Defoe.
It’s a comparison that’s been around since Berahino burst on to the scene at West Brom in 2014 and he certainly took the praise on board, saying a year later: “If I can keep West Brom in the Premier League, I’m pretty sure the fans wouldn’t mind me pushing on and going on to bigger things”.
He was 21 at the time, scoring regularly for club and England Under-21s. He didn’t move on to bigger things after helping to keep them up, instead he lost the plot when a move to Spurs fell through and he hasn’t scored a Premier League goal for 13 months.
He did eventually get his move. To Stoke. Although as they currently sit seven points behind West Brom it’s debatable whether that counts as “bigger things”.
In the meantime the promise that took him to the verge of a full England call-up nose-dived, which is arguably one of the reasons Defoe has been called out of international retirement, aged 34.
The message to any young talent earning rave comparisons with someone like Defoe is ignore your agent, work hard, and don’t begin to think a few goals makes you bigger than a Premier League club when you haven’t even been capped by your country. If you’re truly worthy of “bigger things” they’ll come.
SOME people defended the tirade of dated anti-German drivel that left the mouths of many England fans in Dortmund as “just a bit of banter”.
That singing about RAF bombers, in a city flattened by them, and ditties like “Have you ever seen a German win a war?” is harmless fun, only picked up by the PC-Gone Mad brigade.
Well, if singing provocative chants about sensitive historical subjects is merely friendly patter, I’m sure those same England fans will gather in Saint Petersburg and Moscow squares next year, chanting “Where were you in World War One?” and “Where’s your Soviet Union gone?” then stand around to explain to local youths that it’s only humorous bonding.
Because our banter boys are so, so brave.