Welcome to the very first Football Daily Christmas Awards. This is the bit where, in our old guise, we would bang on about becoming so jaded that we’d lost count of how many years we’d been churning out this old tat. Hmm, all of a sudden, the penny’s beginning to drop. So OK, here we are, refreshed and ready to go! Pour yourself a pint of wine, throw your boots up on the desk, decompress, de-depress, and sing along: ♫♪ It feels like the first time, it feels like the very first time … ♫♪♫
THE FIVER AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED EXIT
Poor old Luka Modric. A player of such balletic beauty and grace, he could barely have been more elegant had he tiptoed on to the pitch down a sweeping staircase in top hat and tails. An aesthete’s dream. His very last action in a World Cup match that really matters? To punt the ball straight at the nearby Alexis Mac Allister, and for it to come straight back up and into his startled face. A slapstick masterclass, and upon being immediately substituted it’s just as well everyone in the stadium gave the Astaire of the Adriatic the standing ovation he deserved.
THE WIMBLEDON 88 AWARD FOR PROGRESSIVE TACTICAL THINKING
We got what we got, though of course the real fairytale ending to Qatar 2022 would have been the Netherlands finally winning a World Cup, albeit only with the brand of totaal langebal that nearly did for Argentina in the quarters. Imagine the beatific look of total etevredenheid on the face of professional contrarian Louis van Gaal had it all panned out! Imagine the reaction of total ebelediging on Johan Cruyff’s affronted grid as he looked down from above! Fair’s fair, give St Johan a couple of minutes, and he’d surely have come round to all the deliberately provocative anti-beauty.
THE NETHERLANDS 74-22 AWARD FOR CONTRARY TACTICAL THINKING
… but Louis is a professional contrarian, and Dutch to boot. So despite coming back at Argentina with tactics that were more Reep than Rep, he couldn’t stop himself play-calling the most outrageous training-ground free-kick routine of all time. Totale vrije trap! It was executed perfectly by Koopmeiners and Weghorst, the assist-scorer stat of 2022 that most sounds either like a high-end department store in Rotterdam, a Groningen chocolaterie, or a Brel-influenced torch duo signed to the Philips label in 1968. No 1 with a totale kogel.
THE BEATLES AWARD FOR WANTING TO HOLD YOUR HAND (AND WHEN YOU TOUCH ME I FEEL HAPPY INSIDE)
Antonio Conte is 5ft 8in. Thomas Tuchel is 6ft 2. But you know exactly how it would have ended had somebody not broken them up.
THE JERRY LEE LEWIS MEMORIAL AWARD FOR BRISK DOWNWARD CAREER TRAJECTORY
Poor old Stevie G was just 14 minutes away from doing his old club Liverpool the mother, father and extended family of all solids. His Aston Villa team were two up at Manchester City, a contribution to the title race that would have given him at least a little closure for that slip. Three goals in 336 seconds later, City were ahead and certs for the title. Oops, there goes that redemption! Less than five months later, Stevie was sacked, after which a former subordinate took his old job at Rangers. Oh Stevie. So close yet so far, very far away.
THE TIM CANTERBURY AWARD FOR EXASPERATION IN AN OFFICE FULL OF CLOWNS
In his role as Rules Guy Alone in Andy’s Old Tactics Truck on BT and ITV, Peter Walton gets an awful lot of stick for always agreeing with whatever the referees have just done. Football Daily has occasionally joined this pile-on, for which we now feel a strong pang of remorse. That’s because we’ve suddenly realised that Peter is simply agreeing with referees because those referees are cognisant of, and are accordingly acting upon, the laws of the game. That was never more clearly illustrated when he attempted to explain the reasoning behind the award of Argentina’s stonewall penalty against Croatia in the Human Rights World Cup semi to a triptych of Gareth Keenans in the shape of Gary Neville, Roy Keane and Ian Wright. None of them were having it – furious old pros will be furious old pros – and Walton displayed remarkable composure in the face of a knowledge-lite salvo. Wait until they find out what Peter’s done with their stapler!
THE ALESSIA RUSSO AWARD FOR OTHER GREATEST MOMENT OF EURO 2022
All hail the magnificent torrent of up-in-your-grille abuse Jill Scott directed at Sydney Lohmann during England’s win over Germany in the Wembley final. “[Eff] off you [effing] pr1ck” may look flat on the page when compared to PG Wodehouse, but sometimes it’s all about the situation and delivery. In any case, her tinder-dry analysis of the incident was certainly Jeeves-esque: “The camera angle was very unfortunate.” Scott retired from England duty after the game, causing Lohmann to send her a video message in jest: “Good luck with your retirement, you [effing] pr1ck.” A good-natured back and forth between two friends, although for any curse-word-averse readers overcome by the vapours: role models, will somebody think of the children, moral panic, etc.
THE SCOTLAND AWARD FOR REGULAR WORLD CUP QUALIFICATION
Time was, Italy not making it to the finals was news.
THE MOLTON BROWN AWARD FOR PREMIUM SKINCARE
Frank Lampard’s voice can rarely be heard these days during post-match pressers over the furious washing of hands. But the cleaner the hands, the more pH-balanced purchase you can get while throwing players under the bus. A masterclass in dermatological deflection, from the five-goal thumping at Spurs to the twin defeats at Bournemouth, via humiliations against Leicester and Crystal Palace and everything in between. Beep beep! Hope that suspension passes the MOT! At least he kept Everton up, though reports that the club’s famous nil satis nisi optimum motto (“Nothing but the best is good enough”) is to be replaced with problemata, quae hic coram me erant, fixa pernoctare non possunt (“Issues that were there before me don’t take care of themselves overnight”) remain unconfirmed for now.
THE FIREWALL FC AWARD FOR UNFORTUNATE LINGUISTIC JUXTAPOSITION
Southend United, for selling the naming rights of their West Stand to a local firm of estate agents called Gilbert and Rose. Mind how you parse that, chaps, and we’d send that via the subs bench before getting the signwriters in, if we were you.
THE NYTOL-FIFA AWARD FOR SLEEPING LIKE BABIES
This prestigious award is yet again shared by the more entrenched supporters of compunction-lite powerhouses Manchester City, Chelsea, PSG and Newcastle United. Mind you, there’s a decent chance they’ll all have to budge up next year to make room for some Manchester United and Liverpool counterparts, seeing as both clubs, along with their freeholds atop the moral high ground, are now up for sale and vulnerable to folk wielding big bags of the old petro-pennies. Masterclasses in legacy-club cognitive dissonance coming right up! And on that subject …
THE QATAR 22 ATTENDEE / VIEWER / READER / REPORTER AWARD FOR MENTAL CONFLICT AND GENERAL BELIEF-ACTION DISCREPANCIES
This one goes to everyone on that party bus with fixed grins and dead eyes, insisting they were lost in the carefree celebration of a successful season. Oh Jürgen, we get what you were trying to achieve! Really we do. But the subsequent Fulham, United, Everton, Napoli, Brighton, Arsenal, Forest and Leeds results suggest your gambit to pick everyone up after that nightmarish last week didn’t quite cut through.
THE SAM BANKMAN-FRIED AWARD FOR FREE-JAZZ FINANCIAL IMPROV
Barcelona: mes que un shower. Good luck in Big Vase, having bet the farm on going deep into Big Cup! At least all the games are guaranteed to be on TV. For the next 25 years. If they survive that long.
THE CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOUR FOR CRYING
José Mourinho cried upon winning Tin Pot with Roma. There’s nowt wrong with that at all; in fact it’s to be commended. Let it all out, José, just like Football Daily plans to do yet again while watching the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. Even so, it’s mildly amusing to speculate what José 2004 would have felt about such a display. Contempt? Yes, contempt, almost certainly. Contempt about getting so emotional after winning a third-rate pot, that is. Not the townsfolk helping George Bailey out of a hole. We’re sure he’d have been in bits about that, just like us.
THE SUELLA BRAVERMAN AWARD FOR LEVEL-HEADED POLITICAL POSITIONS
Peter Shilton, the bizarro-world Neville Southall, had already this year gone out of his way to have a pint with Nigel Farage on GB News and announce that he’d never take the knee. Now he’s spent a recent evening berating a “Megan Markel” on social media and accusing her of “playing every card including the race card”. Aside from the fact that the Grauniad having an opportunity to pick apart your spelling is probably time to take a long look at yourself, these aren’t great optics. But why the hate, Shilts? Who or what hurt you? We can only surmise that he’s never got over that ball looping towards his penalty box in the Azteca. Every time he closes his eyes, he never gets to it first! God damn the Hand of Meg.
THE BARRY DAVIES AWARD FOR HAVING TO SAY THAT’S MAGNIFICENT
It’s such a shame, because ITV’s lead commentator’s name lends itself to a magnificent slogan that most self-promoting broadcasters would kill for: “If it comes out of Sam Matterface’s face, it matters!” But it doesn’t. The line berating poor Harry Kane for that career-defining penalty miss against France – “We needed Gary Lineker, but we got Chris Waddle” – was spectacularly unsympathetic and ill-judged, and yet also probably one of his better ones. Harry and Chris aren’t the only ones who wish the bar was set a little higher. ITV still beat BBC, though, thanks to a combination of Roy Keane’s barely suppressed apoplexies, and Ally McCoist’s actual apoplexy upon witnessing South Korea’s defending against Brazil, during which he reverted to an accent so thick that Stanley Baxter would have struggled to decipher all of the patter. Magnificent. He really is.
BUMPER ONE-OFF FESTIVE TV & RADIO SPECIAL: ALL THE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR PERIOD
Right, aye. You are joking, aren’t you?
MAIL! MAIL! MAIL!
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