I managed to watch last Saturday’s Match of the Day without knowing the scores. It really is one of life’s enduring thrills. So the first time I’d seen or heard of Loum Tchaouna was when he picked up the ball in the 68th minute at Turf Moor, looked around a bit and thought: “Sod it, I’ll just whack it from here.” And how! What a brilliant way to introduce himself to my brain – which was perhaps not his ultimate goal; in this instance a goal was very much his ultimate goal.
By the time of this last-on-MOTD wonderstrike, I’d obviously spent the previous hour watching various other footballers at work – most of them pretty familiar. The odd one did require a cursory Google. Who is Eli Kroupi? Who are all these Chelsea players? Do they really have the same sized squad as all the other teams? If I was cloning footballers in a laboratory and slipping them into the Champions League squad, I’d call them Reggie Walsh.
