Steven Gerrard: Destroyer of Worlds

In trademark running, pointing and shouting pose

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. 

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. 
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The Perfect Storm

Football, famously, has no end. A match is gone in an instant, a season soon forgotten and even an era fades. For its followers the lack of ultimate victory is its beauty, for its detractors its futility. No team will ever win, no match will lead to any final conclusion. In the absence of such closure, it is only natural that we point to the game itself: maybe football can never be won, but perhaps it can be perfected. So from Cruyff’s total football to Barcelona’s tiki-taka, via the catenaccio of Italy's extraordinary era, we search for greatness. We search for a sign that a team can play the game, and win, in a way that seems unstoppably, unrelentingly perfect. The ideal game of chess, the mathematical formula that guarantees domination. Yet whenever a team seems to verge on it, they are derided. When perfection appears attainable we yearn for the excitement and beauty of imperfection. The irony is that when a team nears the ideal, they immediately distance themselves from how we really want football to be: fundamentally and magnificently chaotic.

The Good Ship United II

Ander couldn't remember the last time he had seen land. Confined to his small cabin, he had grown restless in the windless seas, but beg as he might for an oar or the watch, he wasn't yet trusted with such a duty. Instead he spent his days buried in his books in the quarters, or occasionally playing cards with Juan on one of the benches which lined the deck above. He had made the mistake of begging the glowering captain to reconsider his uses once before, met only with a pregnant silence before Van Gaal had muttered “What a stupid question. Below decks with you”, and returned to pouring over his endless charts with his Dutch clique, whispering quietly in a strange and ugly tongue.