Thursday, August 19, 2021

LAUGHING AT ONESELF


In
1970 when decimilisation and Berni Inns were invented, for the good people of Britain, used as they were to dragging their tired bodies down to sooty pubs lying under dense banks of cigarette fog and paying for pints of mild with bits floating in them in shillings, the world probably seemed to be turning a little faster than they thought they could cope with. 

Things have changed a little since then, of course, and sports clothing firm Puma seem this week to be pedalling just that little bit harder than everyone else to recreate the feeling of dizzying speed our forbears must have been dazzled by in 1970.  

In time to come, historians will note that "City's astonishing 2021 third kit unveiling felt like one of those moments when society moved on and many people shouted hey, wait a sec, you're going too fast".

Puma are not going too fast. Their smartly trousered marketing executives will tell you they are going just fast enough to stay ahead of Bruder Adidas and the huge bad smell that is Nike. The immutable truth is that this is the next page of the adventure, whether old stick-in-the-muds like it or not. It was the same for everyone in 1970 when well-educated Mike Jagger (soon to rename himself Mick) started talking to tv hosts in a cockney accent that moved him quickly down the all-important social ladder. The world was moving fast, a little too fast and the rest of us were playing catch-up.

It has been quite a week at Manchester City, what with the announcement we will have edible coffee cups at the Etihad too, as well as transfer bids the size of banker's salaries being put in for any number of international-grade strikers, some of whom we have never heard of before and others who we wish we hadn't. It has been quite a wait for Harry Kane, but an even longer one for drinks recepticles that we can eat. Finally something is set to budge. 

In the 1985 close season, with City fans chomping at the tops of their Fanta tins after promotion the previous May in a match against Charlton Athletic that left many separated from friends and items of clothing by the end, the club's startling array of new recruits - including let it be said, nay shouted, Sammy McIlroy - appeared in frisky pre-season training mode wearing the previous season's away kit, plastered with a sticker announcing "Umbro Training". 

McIlroy's facial expression said it all. 

Sartorially inept in 1985 as well. 

This was how the late, great Peter Swales managed the budget. Fast forward four decades and still we are wearing strange clothes that others will see fit to laugh at. Feel free at this juncture to spare a kind thought too for our brothers and sisters at Fenerbahce, Valencia, Marseille, AC Milan and Monchengladbach, all of whom have also been left with their sartorial trousers around their ankles by the teenage design hotshots at PumaHouse.

Perhaps even more heart-warming than the club's evident willingness to hold on to their hard-won reputation for quirkiness is that, despite all the gales of propaganda about world class strikers, the opening day belly flop at Tottenham revealed the three-year wait for a proper left back to be an even more glaring hole in our pyjamas. With no striker to talk of and some other areas of the formation that hardly bore thinking about, it was a tear-inducing scene. The left side of defence in particular appeared to be laughing at us, rather than the more traditional other way around. There stood the by now indescribable Benjamin Mendy. To say the lad's display was erratic would have suggested there were also good things going on out there on his patch, but still, at least he was wearing a reasonably alright kit.

This led to some making an obvious link between the week's most eye-catching developments...

    

A bold move by Puma. Fair play. pic.twitter.com/IB02SnhRVI


With no space for, of all things, the club crest, it remains something of a masterstroke that Puma have managed to edge in their own logo top and centre, above everything else, a welcome reminder of what is important in these modern footballing times. Perhaps in times that come, we might mix the current thinking with some of City's previous Champions League change strips and create a kit that subscribes to none of the old rules at all and can be, at turns, a pyjama, an outfit for a night out in Morecambe or something to muck out the chickens in, if you are lucky enough to have any in these times of disease and instability. 

For a while, we were all beginning to take it, and by association, ourselves, a bit too seriously. So, thank you, City, and thank you, Puma, for reminding us what we are all really here for.  











 

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