Wayngels and Demons: The mysterious case of Wayne Rooney to MLS

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Tactically Naive, our look back at the week in soccer. This week our sponsors are Chris Hughton’s hair, David Wagner’s glasses, and Rafa Benitez’s twinkly grin.

Renowned symbologist Lobert Rangdon sat on the plastic seat in the concrete stadium. He was back in Washington DC, and he was pre-eminently tired. He looked at his trademark Mickey Mouse™ watch, then up at the grassy pitch of grass. A mystery startlingly assailed him.

Famous footballer Wayne Rooney moved slowly across the grass in a pattern that seemed, to Rangdon, entirely inexplicable. His years of training and his many degrees from well-known universities had taught him that symbols could be found everywhere. Yet here, in the heart of Washington DC, where he had found the Lost Symbol just a few years before, he was baffled again.

He turned to his beautiful brunette companion, distinguished cryptographer Dr. Interchangeable Sex-Macguffin, and regarded her marzipan face with his well-paired eyes. “How much did you say he cost?” he queried earnestly.

She pushed at her Nokia 3210 with her elegant fingers. “About 12 million pounds all round.”

”Twelve. Interesting,” he breathed imposingly. “There were 12 tribes of Israel, of course. Is Rooney perhaps here to lead DC United out of the wilderness that is the bottom of the Eastern Conference, and into the promised lands of the playoffs? Or perhaps we need the other end of the Bible. Is he the woman that comes with the dragon, with 12 stars on their brow, here to save the faithful at the end times?”

He furrowed his illustrious forehead. “That would make Zlatan Ibrahimovic the dragon,” he deduced appropriately. “We can work with that.”

On the green field, the noted footballer kicked the round ball into the disappointing touchline, then waved his arms angrily at his colleagues.

”He’s wearing the number 10 on his shirt,” noticed Rangdon intelligently, adjusting his Harris Tweed jacket. “Ten is, of course, two fives. It is also the number two, twice, and the number three, twice. The law of fives is a key principle of Discordianism, and 23 one of their most highly-regarded numbers. Is Rooney here as part of some Eristian plot to bring chaos into the neat order of MLS?” He gripped his companion’s knee in panic, with a panicked grip. “Does this end in promotion and relegation?”

On the sunny pitch, the respected footballer kicked the spherical ball over the circumscribing crossbar, then rubbed his freckled hands on his steaming head.

”Ah, sod it,” uttered Rangdon adverbially. “He’s not very good, is he? It’s probably just the Freemasons again. Let’s get out of here.” They left comprehensively.

Mark Hughes called them the “dark arts”. But we think “shenanigans” is an excellent and underused word, so we’re going with shenanigans. “Shenanigans”. Say it out loud. Let it tumble out of your mouth, giddy and gleeful, rat-tat-a-tat. “Shenanigans!” Now apologise to your fellow commuters, you’re making them feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, Southampton’s preparations for their relegation 256-pointer against Swansea were disrupted when the Marriott Hotel cancelled their pre-game booking at short notice. Some guests were getting ill, apparently, and no chances could be taken. This left Southampton annoyed, as they had to stay further away, and suspicious, as they smelt not the plague rat, but the proverbial one. The rat of shenanigans. Say it again!

Nobody seemed to blame Swansea City (the football club) directly. But the implication of Hughes’ mutterings is that Swansea in a broader sense, the town and the community, were trying to sway the game. At least, the parts of the town that work at the Marriott.

Fans staying up all night outside hotel windows, singing and dancing, has long been a feature of football around the world. Here, the very hotel itself has been weaponised. The bureaucratic arsenal of the leisure industry, brought to bear in the service of winning a football game. Guerillas in the system. A community rising up against the cosseted professionals of the Premier League, using the only weapon they have: logistical inconvenience.

It didn’t work. Southampton won the game, virtually securing safety in the process, and then got to enjoy themselves with a comedy TripAdvisor review. And perhaps that’s for the best. As funny as non-linear warfare from the service industry sounds, a sudden proliferation of Basil Fawltys ahead of every big game would soon get tiresome. Still, nice to have a chance to use the word shenanigans again. One more time, nice and loud. “Shenanigans!”

No. No it did not.

Yes. That happened.

Yes! Yes they did. So Sunday wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.

Fun fact: the season after Herbert Chapman left Huddersfield Town for Arsenal, the Yorkshire club won their third title in a row, the first club to achieve such a hat-trick. This chant, therefore, may not have been entirely accurate.

Follow-up fun fact: the next club to achieve a hat-trick of titles? Arsenal. The first of which came under Chapman.

We’re getting pretty close, if you hadn’t noticed, and so it’s time to start looking at all the other stuff that goes on around the World Cup. A happening this big has its own gravity, and around it circle various satellite events hoping to capitalise on the world’s attention.

One worthy example is the Street Child World Cup, which kicked off on Friday. Homeless and street-connected children from 24 countries, including the USA and the UK, have come together in Moscow to take part in a festival of art, awareness-raising, and seven-a-side football. According to Andile, who represented South Africa in the 2010 competition, the game serves to break down social prejudice:

When people see us by the streets, they say that we are the street boys. But when they see us playing soccer, they say that we are not the street boys — they say that we are people like them.

The off-the-pitch festival culminates in a general assembly on May 17, when the participants will present their message to the world. As for the football, the finals are on Wednesday morning: Brazil take on Tanzania in the girls’ competition, and Pakistan face Uzbekistan in the boys’. The games will all be streamed on Facebook.

It’s also worth noting that England’s girls team have made it through to the third-place playoff, which seems likely to be the home of football’s strongest performance all summer. Best of luck to all involved.

Don’t know about you, but this column is very much looking forward to the next few years, as the footballing world comes together to investigate the question: “Is Justin Kluivert going to be really good?” Early signs are promising.

Well done to ...