[dropcap]I[/dropcap]sn’t it exciting? Never mind the ludicrous amount of money that it is costing Manchester United to buy a midfielder. Never mind that he was, until four years ago, a Manchester United player who was allowed to leave for Juventus for around £800K. Never mind even that he wanted to go to Real Madrid who, having set the two previous world record transfer fees when buying Cristiano Ronaldo and then Gareth Bale, decided they couldn’t afford him.
Mino Raiola, Pogba’s Mister 15%, on hearing the news that Real Madrid wouldn’t be buying his client, immediately set about convincing Pogba that United was always the place to go and he would never have entertained Madrid anyway.
So, how has the news been reported by Britain’s premier sports channel? The way it always is, with massive amounts of nothing filling in the gaps between the repeated reports about him being “on the way”. Sky can produce dramas far better than anything ever seen from the BBC in it’s heyday.
Television’s answer to The Sun had us all glued to the TV for at least five minutes until we realised that we were just watching a not-very-novel way of showing live repeats. Take a news item, preferably a good one which will attract viewers, and repeat the headline for it every fifteen minutes until it changes or until a better item comes along. Add to this interviews with the likes of Gary Neville, (welcome back!), and repeat them, also on an hourly basis and there you have it! The secret to making billions as a TV mogul.
The first essential is to have a reporter camp outside Carrington where Pogba would be arriving for his medical. This reporter was asked, every thirty minutes or so, whether or not there had been any developments.
At the time of asking, as far as everybody knew, Pogba was on a plane to Manchester, so quite what was going to develop while that was the case is questionable. The reporter, however, stuck doggedly to his task and, when asked the inevitable “development” question managed to answer in the affirmative. The problem was that it was always the same answer. “Yes, there have been developments, we now understand that Pogba is on his way to Manchester”.
He got away with this answer on at least three occasions, probably because there had actually been no developments but he didn’t like to admit that he had been standing there doing nothing for three hours!
The next newsworthy item, to Sky at least, was Manchester Airport tweeting that a plane had touched down carrying a special passenger. This could have been virtually anybody but Sky immediately leapt on this scrap of information and assumed it had to be Pogba.
They immediately showed footage of a plane landing and issued forth that it “could be the one Paul Pogba is on”. You have to admire the way they grasp the mettle and, leaving no stone unturned, search for the truth in every conceivable way, no matter how stupid or childish it appears to everybody who lives in the real world.
Now we just have to wait for the next instalment as Jose Mourinho has said that he would quite like a new centre half. How many weeks can Sky drag that one out for? We’ll just have to wait and see.