Edwin Shielded From His Finest Hour

I remember a time a few years ago when we were all shaking our fists at the ill-gotten contractor Multiplex. You can expect a tin-pot cowboy builder to make a pig’s ear of your patio extension, but for a company who were given responsibility of rebuilding the most famous stadium in the world into a modern masterpiece it was a proper shambles. Hundreds of millions of pounds over budget, Wembley was eventually opened years after the projected opening date.

Yesterday, with hindsight, I was pining for Multiplex to have gone that little bit further in their uselessness and opted to have delayed the handover date even further down the line - so that Cardiff would've had the honour of hosting the 2007 FA Cup Final. The reason for this indulgence of cynicism is that the Community Shield would’ve made a far better debut for Wembley based on the entertainment on show.

It’s what Chelsea versus Manchester United would’ve been about – arguably the two greatest teams going head to head and demonstrating why they’re the mightiest in the land. Players were fresh and returning from a summer free from national duty (South American company excluded). It was clear back in May that the teams were nothing short of knackered after a grueling season.

There was less a stake on Sunday, not least from the embarrassment of losing. Without taking anything away from the Community Shield, the notion of having an oversized fifty pence piece missing from your trophy cabinet carries far less heartache than the dread of collecting a runners-up medal in the FA Cup Final. The upshot of this gravtation towards a more friendly match, not exactly a must-win game, gave us free-flowing football and a very well-worked goal from each team respectively. It reminded us of the good old curtain-raiser spectacle it was always intended to be.

The one problem I found, much to the chagrin of the red half of Wembley, was that the man of the match award was announced with four minutes of normal time to play. This wouldn’t have been a problem for the fact that extra time was never meant to be played, but the sight of Ashley Cole grinning as if someone had stuck a coathanger in his mouth as he clutched his man of the match award and large bottle of champers was just buttock-clenchingly wrong.

Part of supporting Chelsea has always been to respect your opponents, not least if said opposition put in a strong performance against the Blues and craft themselves a win. Manchester United applied a classy and entertaining performance and the draw in normal time was the fair result for both parties. The kudos to United came in the shoot-out, where they thoroughly deserved to win thanks to the man of the match that never was; Edwin Van Der Sar.

OK, so his rather elongated face reminds me of the ‘My Lovely Horse’ song sung on that episode of Father Ted even more so than fellow countryman Ruud Van Nistelrooy. And in his post-match interview I was caught off guard by his uncanny vocal similarly to Andy Pipkin of Little Britain. When it comes to saving penalties, though, he’s absolutely first class.

Saving three spot kicks out of three, Van Der Sar spread himself like a deployed parachute, a mass of cloth exploding outwards to cover what looked like half of the gaping goalmouth. What look liked flailing arms and legs stuck out at random was in fact a cold, calculated judgement of player movement in that fateful run-up. Somehow, he was able to guess exactly which way Messer’s Pizarro, Lampard and Wright-Phillips had chosen to place the ball, and parried each one perfectly. I tip my hat to you, sir, the heir to Schmeichael’s crown, and look forward to an exciting Premiership season.