In 40 or 50 years’ time – perhaps a littler sooner, perhaps a little later – football historians will talk about this week as the moment the sport entered a new era in regards to its biggest superstars. No longer, they will say, was this Lionel Messi’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s world, for now it belonged to two greater giants. We heard them speak, we heard them muse, we heard them make fun of our teams and, finally, the glory was theirs. Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, praise be thy names.
Or maybe not if your own name is Mauricio Pochettino or Erik ten Hag, both of whom took umbrage at comments the pair made while working for Sky Sports. Pochettino hit back at Neville’s labelling of Chelsea as “blue billion-pound bottle jobs” during coverage of their loss to Liverpool in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final, hailing his team as “brave” after their 3-2 victory over Leeds in the FA Cup a few days later. Ten Hag went further and was more furious in his reaction to Carragher’s scathing assessment of Manchester United’s defending in their 2-1 loss to Fulham during Monday Night Football, accusing the former centre-back of being “very subjective” before United’s own FA Cup win, against Nottingham Forest. But, of course, you know this already because it has been front and centre of the discourse for days, confirming Neville’s and Carragher’s status as pundits like no other.
