Football Daily | Mikel Arteta and the need to understand that ‘mistakes happen’

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Newcastle’s win at St James’ Park wasn’t the only Big Statement made by a Premier League football club this weekend. The day after the game, the club they’d beaten issued a Big Statement of their own, backing their manager who had gone on an impassioned and slightly unhinged post-match rant after seeing Anthony Gordon’s winner survive three separate VAR checks before being allowed to stand and calling for an end to the kind of “retrospective analysis” to which most of their statement was devoted. As entitled and pompous as it was pitiful, it was obviously lapped up by Gooners on various Social Media Disgraces but greeted with a mixture of rolled eyes, bemused bafflement and ridicule by folk who don’t sleep in Gunnersaurus-branded jimmy-jams.

Fluminense won the Copa Libertadores on Saturday in dramatic fashion, edging out Argentina’s Boca Juniors in extra time thanks to a belter of a goal by a player named John Kennedy. Don’t ask what football can do for you, ask what you can do for football. This game had it all. A legendary venue (the Maracanã), a seething crowd, fans in tears, players in tears, three cracking goals, two red cards, at least one clear penalty shout, eye-popping tussles, and a slap to the face. But what I found most exhilarating of all was the ages of the bulk of the Fluminense starting XI: Goalkeeper Fabio (43 years old), left back Marcelo (35) of Real Madrid fame, centre-back Felipe Melo (40), right back Samuel Xavier (33), attacking midfielder Ganso (34), winger Keno (34), and centre forward German Cano (35). Age before beauty!” – Peter Oh.

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