Yan saves the day as footie fails to deliver
FOR REASONS that don’t need explaining, my Sundays have changed dramatically in recent times and have become completely unrecognisable to what I had been used to.
No shivering on the sidelines taking notes in the lashing rain and howling wind, no small talk with managers and spectators before, after and during games, and no painstaking gathering of results and the like until some ungodly hour of the morning.
Instead I now get to do something which I rarely have the opportunity to do in normal times – sit in front of the television watching all sorts of sport at my leisure.
Having said that, I would rather have been anywhere, at any game, at any level than viewing the borefest that was the Liverpool versus Manchester United match.
In hindsight, we really should have known it was going to be a scoreless stalemate and an insufferable damp squib, as these glamour clashes tend to be.
After all, 0-0 has been a common enough scoreline when these two red giants have met in recent seasons, and with the hosts unbeaten at Anfield in the league since Adam was a boy and United on an impressive run away from home, it’s no real surprise that they cancelled each other out and bored us all silly.
However, keeping admirable records intact doesn’t excuse the absolute rubbish on show.
Liverpool dominated possession, without ever looking likely to score, while United supporters should view it as a missed opportunity, as a win was definitely there for them had they been brave enough to go for the jugular against a makeshift defence.
It really was such utter dross that the only ones that could have been remotely happy afterwards were anybody associated with Manchester City.
On recent evidence, with Liverpool suffering a serious slump and Man United too cautious to really take the bull by the horns, and with the also-rans like Spurs, Leicester and Chelsea simply not good enough, it looks like Pep Guardiola’s side will be given a free ride to regain the title.
On current form and with City building up a head of steam after a slow start, I just can’t see it going any other way, although if Liverpool can get their act together they may manage to make them at least break a sweat.
Thankfully, after enduring 90plus minutes of sub-par action from the two most decorated teams in the English game, the Masters snooker saved the day as 20-year-old Yan Bingtao came of age to overcome veteran John Higgins 10-8 in a classic final, bagging himself a cool £250,000 in the process.
The Chinese player became the youngest to win the title since 1995, when a fresh-faced 19-yearold Ronnie O’Sullivan also beat Higgins in the decider.
Having won all his previous matches in the tournament 6-5, Yan, who was making his debut at the event, certainly did it the hard way and he showed that composure which served him so well throughout the week again as he fought back from 7-5 down to topple the experienced Scot, who is a two-time winner of the triple crown event.
Yan’s girlfriend Ada acted as a translator for him as he basked in his Masters success, with the delighted cueman attempting to articulate just what his breakthrough success meant to him in his first language.
That said, a lot of post-match interviews across all sports may as well be in Chinese for what little you’d learn from them, as generally players spout out tired clichés for fear of saying the wrong thing.
All the impressive Yan will care about was the fact that he was able to do all the talking that was needed on the table, and he did that with real style and grit.
If he shows the same sort of composure as he did at the Masters over the past week, lifting trophies on the Sunday evening could become his new normal.