UK Edition
Football fans, like Qu’ranic scholars, Tarot readers and dictionary users, are engaged in a constant search for meaning. Take the transfer of Nemanja Matic from Chelsea to Manchester United this week. Something for everyone there: what does it mean for United’s title chances? What does it mean for Paul Pogba’s chances of playing further forward? What does it mean for Antonio Conte’s power struggle with the Chelsea board?
There is one aspect of the Matic move, however, that appears rather less contentious. On the face of things, all this means only one thing for Marouane Fellaini. An offer from Galatasaray is on the table; the queue of United fans volunteering to drive him there themselves would stretch all the way back to Manchester.
To which there is really only one possible response: will you never learn? We have, after all, heard this song many times before: the arrivals of Pogba, Ander Herrera, Daley Blind, Morgan Schneiderlin and Bastian Schweinsteiger were all interpreted as the death knell for Fellaini’s United career. Yet through resentment and ridicule, new managers and new brooms, Fellaini is still standing: elbows out, eyes bulging, chest pointed to the sky in salutation.
And yet, you suspect that even if Fellaini stays at Old Trafford a lifetime, some United fans will never truly be won over. “Flush a fortune down the pan with the Fellaini bog brush!” read a famous spoof advert in the former United fanzine Red Issue. Alas, Fellaini seems fated to be one of those players with one foot permanently in the door and one permanently out: coincidentally, a neat reflection of his tackling style.
There are, I think, two main reasons for this. One is stylistic. Fellaini does not fit into any of our existing references of what a world-class footballer should be. His movements are awkward, his shape discomfiting and unfamiliar, his role still spectacularly undefined. Midfield marauder? Penalty-box battering ram? Channel-grappler? Defensive troll?
It always amuses me when people talk about “replacing” Fellaini, as if his unique profile of skills were in any way replaceable. Who would you replace him with? A laboratory accident? Some genetic cocktail splicing together the head of Andy Carroll, the chest of Mark Hughes, the gait of Carlton Palmer, the first touch of Diana Ross and the limbs of the Italia 90 mascot?
The second reason for Fellaini’s unpopularity is that for all his development as a player, Fellaini remains the strongest and closest link to the misery of the David Moyes era, a bookmark to a page most United fans would rather were deleted from their browsing history. And so in a team of galloping global superstars, Fellaini seems somehow out of place, an exile at his own club, the bottle of strange foreign spirit that sits unused at the back of the drinks cabinet for years and which you can bring yourself neither to drink nor to throw out.
What is true is that Matic’s arrival is certainly the closest United have come to weaning themselves off the addictive musk of Fellaini-ball. And let us be frank here: Fellaini as a footballer is neither staggeringly good nor staggeringly bad. But he is versatile, tactically disciplined, relentlessly physical. And as we discovered again this week, indispensable.
“It is easier for Galatasaray to get me than Marouane,” snapped Jose Mourinho when asked again about Fellaini’s future. “Forget it. He’s too important to me.” Mourinho knows. And deep down, you know it too. Fellaini will still be there when you and I are long gone, the earth has fried to a cinder and Mourinho is a doddering pensioner writing angry letters to Goals on Sunday in green ink. Fellaini is denim jeans. Fellaini is the common cold. Fellaini is Sloop John B. You will never, never, never, never be rid of him.
Think Nemanja Matic spells the end of Marouane Fellaini's Man Utd career? Think again