WRITING AND READING
There’s a reason you’re here, and it definitely isn’t the reliable hilarity of the planet’s favourite tea-timely email. Rather, what probably brought you to this debilitating wilderness of facetious smuggery is that you are an extremely poorly individual, jonesing for yet another hit to satisfy your congenital, preternatural and incurable footballaholism. Because regardless of race, class or nationality, sex, sexuality or gender, people love football, more than they love almost anything else – even in Reading. Which is why what’s currently going on with Reading should be agitating all of us.
On Saturday, during their League One match against Port Vale, the game was first halted for three minutes after fans threw tennis balls on to the pitch – yes, that sounds very Berkshire but it works – then abandoned after 16 minutes, when fans invaded the pitch and refused to leave. It’s fair to assume that the majority of them generally spend the week looking forward to the game and do not want to do this. Rather, like the Manchester United fans whose protests forced the abandonment of a game against Liverpool in May 2021 – and those of numerous other clubs – people acted out of desperate fury, sick of watching a major chunk of their identity and heritage be vandalised with the apparent consent of the authorities responsible for safeguarding it.
Which brings us to Dai Yongge, Reading’s “owner”. Like all the best lads, Yongge was gifted even more of his fortune by his sister, Dai Xiu Li, formerly one of the richest women in the world – the family own a bunch of shopping malls and he’s now in charge – which tells us plenty about where a football club ranks in his priorities. The Yongges first bought a Chinese club, Shaanxi Chanba, moving it first to Guizhou and then Beijing, after which it folded. So they tried to buy Hull and failed, then acquired 75% of Reading with neither the Football League nor the Department for Culture, Media and Sport finding anything amiss – yet again.
And, yet again, both bodies failed in their duty of care, Yongge’s litany of achievements testament to their remarkable ability to repeat the same callous error without fear of reprisal. Reading have been deducted points three seasons in a row and relegated from the Championship, failed to pay players, staff and taxes on time and in full, been placed under transfer embargo and served with a winding-up order. Or in other words, the EFL – failing to protect Reading from Yongge – are now obliviously punishing them for its behaviour. So what happens next? Well, most likely what almost always happens next. Eventually, Yongge will leave and go about his rich man’s life like nothing happened, the EFL will do the same thing again like nothing happened and the DCMS will let them, leaving the fans to rebuild. Which they will, because regardless of race, class or nationality, sex, sexuality or gender, people love football, more than they love almost anything else – even in Reading.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Daniel from 5pm GMT for hot Afcon MBM coverage of Cameroon 2-1 Guinea, while Yara El-Shaboury will be on deck for updates from the Fifa Best gongs, starting at around 7pm.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They were on the list. Salman [Al-Faraj] told me he doesn’t want to play in the friendly games. I asked Sultan [Al-Ghannam] if he was happy to play and he told me he wasn’t happy. Players don’t decide if they play or not, I decide! Nawaf [Al-Aqidi] told me he’d come but the day after, in Riyadh, he said he didn’t want to come” – Roberto Mancini quickly realises why he is being paid the big bucks to manage Saudi Arabia as a number of fresh and funky squad members decide to abandon the Asian Cup unless they’re going to play.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I noticed that at the end of Friday’s Football Daily (full email edition) you mentioned that letters prizes would be back again this week. So on the off-chance that nobody else would bother writing to you and given that there’s a good chance that I might forget come Monday, I thought that I’d just write in now to say what a wonderful, if curtailed, weekend of Premier League football that was. Despite the VAR decisions” – Elaine Shaw.
It’s not just those in the rarefied atmosphere of the Premier League who have to suffer this ongoing abomination around the rescheduling of matches for TV (Friday’s Football Daily). OK, we’re partly to blame for choosing to live where we do in the remoteness of deepest, darkest East Anglia, and support a team who (to put it mildly) haven’t got a clue what they are doing this season. But, thanks to the Premier League’s mid-season break and the need to fill a Friday night slot, Hull hosted Norwich on Friday night, with an 8pm kick-off to boot. While on said soap box, someone needs to sort out the wonderful fixture computer which always seems to give Norwich long-distance midweek trips to Middlesbrough/Newcastle/Cardiff/Wigan et al depending on which division we’re in. Those programmers have obviously never tried to travel from or to Norwich at a reasonable time on any day because, believe me, it can be incredibly difficult” – John Scent.
‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ doesn’t quite capture how one-sided Sunday’s Spanish Super Cup final was. It was more like Vini, Vini, Vini” – Peter Oh.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … John Scent, who lands a copy of The Africa Cup of Nations: The History of an Underappreciated Tournament, published by Pitch Publishing. Visit their football book store here.
This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
