I can’t help feeling a Serg of love for one of those rare talents
THERE is something so incredibly annoying about a footballer who you just can’t help falling in love with. Season after season, they inflict unbearable pain through their performances against your team, yet you just can’t muster up any meaningful contempt for them.
The roll-call of players who we love to hate is so much longer, and easier to compile, but this list is much smaller. Every fan would have a different set of names based on the team they support but I’m sure there are some players who would pop up time and time again.
Near the top of mine is Gianfranco Zola who, at Chelsea, always had a smile on his face and magic in his feet. He was a little master, yet he played with the enthusiasm of someone who’d won a competition to play professional football for the day.
Dennis Bergkamp at Arsenal is another. With a technique stolen from heaven and a view of flying matched only by BA Baracus, you can truly say he always kept his feet on the ground.
How could I possibly muster an appreciable level of contempt for the mercurial DB10?
You’d have to travel many a bar to find an impassioned rant against the likes of Peter Crouch, Petr Cech, Dion Dublin or, another personal favourite, Neville Southall. As I said, insert your own names here.
Which brings me to my point. Sergio Aguero is absolutely one of those players I hate to love.
Soon-to-be five league titles, 181 top-flight goals and 17 of them in the 2013-14 season that saw my team Liverpool lose out on the title on the last day, yet if I saw him on the hard shoulder of the M1, I’d pull over to help him change his tyre. I might even pick him up a Ginsters pasty from the nearest service station and run it back down to him.
It’s a mixture of things, really.
He has a touch of the ‘old school’ professional about him, which us ‘football existed before the Premier League’ types love. Any time he steals the limelight, he tries to give it back as soon as humanly possible.
Also, he’s maybe not been given the amount of personal accolades that his undoubted class merits, so despite his success, there remains something of an ‘underdog’ status attached to him.
It’s only now, as he’s phoning the Manchester branch of Foxtons, that the universal tributes are coming in thick and fast for him.
When his choice of haircut is the main criticism I have, that tells a story in itself. Genuinely, though, he’s had a few absolute shockers over the years.
Interestingly, while Manchester City are undoubtedly a team that most love to hate, as the team on top inevitably are, within their modern-day ranks they have produced a glut of individual players who I just couldn’t leave off my ‘hate to love’ list.
Vincent Kompany, on and off the pitch, was cut from a different cloth. I’ve interviewed him post-match on a few occasions and he always left me feeling ‘listened to’, if that makes sense.
And don’t even get me started on David Silva. Even now, I get a little giddy just typing his name.
One thing that connects all three is that they were all there from the ‘beginning’ of the Man City revolution, and regardless of what colours we wear, I think we have a collective admiration for loyalty at any club.
As for where Sergio Aguero ends up next that is anyone’s guess. He has been linked with more clubs than Rory McIlroy.
I’m half expecting to read that Solihull Moors are planning an audacious swoop.
Wherever he turns up, I’m sure I will once again find myself cursing the admiration I just can’t help having for him.