Messi-Brough Here We Come

 Okay, it's been a while. But at least I've been more in the public eye than the Prime Minister. I've been on a holiday in North Wales. The tent was real and actually used. The weather was less wet than the green grass would suggest. The waterfalls were many and bleeding beautiful and the wifi was as reliable as a policy statement on schools by the Education Secretary. 

I return to find that Twitter seems more obsessed with whether wobbling-jowled Tories can sing Rule Britannia at that toe-curling tradition that is Last Night At The Proms, rather than the fact that the Government seems to have a never-ending spaff of funds to splurge out on their nearest pals in the glorified Etonian wank-circle they call public policy these days.

But this is a sports blog, and sport has ducked in and out of the showers to bring us some interesting cricket and some fascinating footie. I copped on to some wifi for long enough to watch the Champs League final which, hyped up as some carnival of carefree kickaboutery, turned out to be predictably dull. 

Of all the glorified superstars of world football I find Neymar to be my least favourite. He spends a Grealishly long time falling on the floor during matches. Yes, he's got all the tricks and flicks but I want to slap the lad and just tell him to get the f**k on with it. Indeed, shorn of all the intensity of a full stadium, the pratfalls and rolling around look even more desperate and, well, cheaty. 

More to the point, is anyone else utterly fed up with the replaying of penalty shouts where some pundit uses the well-worn phrase there was contact - as if the defender in question is less a footballer and more a 1970's predatory politician in a typing pool. Since when was touching a striker a criminal offence? Truly the modern game has entirely embraced the dishonour of going down like a sack of spuds. He's entitled to go down. You hear that a lot. It's like me getting a bloke arrest for theft cos he was standing next to my car. FFS. 

Far more entertaining was Bayern's annihilation of Barcelona. Mas que un club? The whole thing's imploding and Lionel Messi is off. If they let him. Which they must. Unless 17 years of faithful service count for nowt. 

Any road, we've had a whip-round in the Blue Bell, £62.13 so far, and we reckon Lionel'd do okay at the Riverside. Warnock and Messi? It's a perfect combination - like ice-cream and gravel - or Trump and Truth. 

Seriously though - actually I'm quite serious so maybe I mean... Realistically though, it would be bloody wonderful if he had a couple of seasons in the Premier League. I know Lineker and Piers Morgan have a tedious fake-Twitter spat over whether Messi or Ronaldo is the best ever - it's like disagreeing about what you favourite colour is and I wish they'd just shut the fuck up about it - but Messi is the one I like watching most. 

And I really wouldn't care which monstrous moneybags of a team grabbed him. Except that I'd love him to pop up somewhere that's just struggling a bit: Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Newcastle even. The sort of place that would quite simply form itself into a giant hand and spend the next nine months pinching itself with glee. It'd be like Juninho popping up at Boro but times about seventy thousand. 

I'm sure the lad has bills to pay and places to be, and maybe Saturday night down the Bigg Market isn't exactly what he had in mind, but dreams, my friends, dreams are all we have right now. 

Meantime, I've enjoyed the cricket, despite the fact there's been days when it felt like the bubble they've been played in was nothing less than a sophisticated carwash. Of most interest, beyond Zac Crawley's ludicrous 267 and Jos Buttler's return to batting form being coupled with the occasional indication he couldn't catch a hazelnut in a laundry basket, has been the never-diminishing greatness of James Anderson. 

Sometimes you have to get a cricket ball in your hand to understand how what he does is so utterly remarkable. It's like watching Ronnie O'Sullivan knock in a 147 and then missing the reds off your break-off shot when you get down the snooker club. Anderson's control, the way he sets up batsmen with forensic cunning, the fact that his averages go up and up even as he approaches 40, suggests that there's no reason why he can't carry on snarling and grumping his way to 700 victims in a couple of years. 

In a year where sport has felt remote, detached, (and, when Neymar rolls around and Liverpool players jump up and down on a podium in celebration in front of no one, it has felt downright absurd) just watching a master of his craft in action makes life a little - no, a lot - more bearable. 

I might add that it's good to see a highly competent Englishman at a time when those leading us are entirely inept too.