It’s Wednesday afternoon (UK time) and I find myself interviewing Tony Hadley on TalkSport about his upcoming big band tour. We play a bit of Spandau Ballet, chat about the classics and his career – hanging out with Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. In as much as you can deduce in a 10-minute chat on Zoom, Tony seems like an absolute gent.
We do always try to bring it back to sport – Tony is an Arsenal fan, there’s a bit of Arteta, Leeds at the weekend. Tony brings up Billy Bremner and suggests that my co-host Charlie Baker and I are too young to remember him playing. We are, and how wonderful to be called young.
Right at the end I go for a slightly cumbersome question/joke about Manchester City. Maybe he’s been waiting for this hardball question about the charges. I’ve got to add to all the big band songs we’re doing … at the end we do a Christmas catalogue which is great fun as well.” What a sidestep.
It’s quarter to midnight in Melbourne, I’m in my shed looking at Tony Hadley on a little box on my laptop asking what he thinks City’s punishment might be. Quick, put a call in to Boy George. Simon Le Bon has things to say, but they are embargoed until Drive Time.
Perhaps this is Enzo Maresca’s best strategy. The City manager’s only way out of answering difficult questions is to organise a 20-date big band tour of the UK so he can do the Hadley pivot and talk about how he really brings the house down with his spectacular Christmas medley. It would certainly add to the monotony of every Premier League manager giving us their prepared “I’m a football man and all I’m interested in is football – I’ve got enough things to worry about at Coventry/Leeds/Bournemouth, etc.” But such is the magnitude of the story that even these press conferences are interesting.
For the first time since filming players walking off a bus in big headphones became part of the spectacle, I am interested in seeing players walking off a bus in big headphones on Sunday afternoon. We couldn’t ask for a more perfect place or a perfect time for this game to take place. The side City have pipped to the title by a point or two three times since the cheating began.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
