Listen up fellow Mancs. My daughter's fiance (who lives in Missouri) sent me this example of American polemic.
Ordure is defined in the Chambers Online Dictionary as follows: “1. Excrement; dung. 2. Something morally offensive; filth.”
Beau Dure, meanwhile, is a columnist for American national paper USA Today.
Yet unless this is the first known outbreak of irony in the continental United States, the latter’s recent musings on Manchester United’s just-announced pre-season tour of America put one in mind of the former.
“Manchester United. World's biggest soccer club,” Beau begins, reasonably enough, before continuing: “All wimps. Cowards. Pretty boys taking the easy road like a champion boxer ducking the top contender.”
The reason? By playing Celtic, Barcelona, Juventus and Mexican side Americas in Los Angeles, Seattle and Philadelphia next summer, United are apparently not introducing the Shermans to a handful of the world’s elite clubs (and one from Scotland) but “ducking Major League Soccer opposition” like the Los Angeles Galaxy and the New England Revolution.
Why the reticence to line up against such top-quality outfits? In Beau’s world, this is because “Ruud van Nistelrooy knows he can't put any shots past Kevin Hartman and Adin Brown. These aren't the second-rate Scandinavian goalkeepers he faces in England, where the only star keeper is former MLS player Brad Friedel. And the Neville brothers would rather shank the ball into the third row 20 times a game than try to contain Carlos Ruiz or Taylor Twellman in a preseason game.”
And naturally there’s a wider conspiracy at work. “Can you imagine the headlines if Manchester United made a Beatles-style landing in New York and then lost to the MetroStars? Manchester United can. Perhaps they figure it'll be easier to explain a loss to a mysterious Mexican team than a loss to (gasp) a bunch of Americans.
And so they duck.”
Good to see that two wins in the World Cup finals haven’t gone to their heads, isn’t it?