Having scored all four – count them, FOUR – goals in Chelsea’s 4-0 win against Sevilla, Olivier Giroud has staked a powerful claim to occasionally appear in the Chelsea first team. By Stamford Bridge standards, Giroud – at 34 and over a decade older than many of the younger players – should be in the bin.
GIROUD – IN THE BIN?
Those same younger players want their mums to buy them the latest trainers, smoke behind the bike sheds and call the frenchman, ‘Old Livier Giroud’. In briefings, as Uncle Frank discusses ‘being touch tight in the box’, the young players sit at the back giggling, joking about Mason Mount’s name having the word Mount in it and dreaming of touching girls’ boobies.
Whilst the Chelsea youngsters spend hours each day fantasising about having their first shave, Giroud has a big, manly beard. He resembles a lumberjack or Fidel Castro, or a lumberjack who works as a Fidel Castro look-a-like in his spare time.
There are constant age-gap fights over the pre-match music in the changing room. Giroud wants to hum along to classics like the Joe Loss Orchestra or Matt Munro. Meanwhile the street-trendy whippersnappers want loud music from cutting-edge bands like Coldplay or wild rockers like Ed Sheeran.
LOUD MUSIC – LOUDER HEADPHONES
And this is not the only division within the Chelsea camp. N’Golo Kante finds himself in No Man’s Land. Aged 29, he’s too young to get Giroud and too old to join the giggle gang. This is made worse by his height – or lack of it. Before he gets on the pitch and demonstrates his Duracell bunny running, he is regularly mistaken for a ball boy.
‘ON HIS OWN’ – BINGO SADSACK
And finally, to endear 36-year-old Thiago Silva, to the kindergarten crew, manager Frank Lampard, 42, has confessed that he only signed the veteran Brazilian so he could have someone to accompany him to Monday night bingo and to press his alarm button if he falls over in his sheltered accommodation.
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