HOW DIMITAR LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE SIMPLE LIFE
Dimitar Berbatov does not play football. He has not played football for four years. He has no interest in it. He is above it. Instead, he has wandered the streets of Manchester, just being Dimitar. It is more than enough. Existence is enough. Dimitar is enough. Sometimes he goes to a cafe and has a coffee. Sometimes he has a coffee and a cigarette. Sometimes he has a coffee and a cigarette and a think. Shall I have another cigarette after this cigarette, he wonders. Maybe, maybe. Should I ask the waitress to top up my coffee? Perhaps – but what is coffee? And why is waitress? There are no answers. There are no questions. So no coffee for Dimitar. Existence is enough. He lights another cigarette. Hmm, mouth's a bit dry with all this smoking, he notes. I could do with something to wash this fag down.
Dimitar is a performance artist. He is a serious man. He makes Eric Cantona look like Michael McIntyre. A couple of times during his stay in Manchester he has staged situationist happenings. On one occasion, he sauntered down a length of turf at the Old Trafford stadium and nonchalantly kicked a ball into a net against Blackeye Rovers. Another time, he hovered above the turf and guided a ball into a net against Liverpool. You would know these artistic stunts as "goals". Dimitar is aware they are known as "goals", too, but he also knows they are not goals. They are his interpretations of goals, via the medium of goals. Football fans may consider them goals if they wish, but they are pigs. To Dimitar, these goals, which are not goals, are studies of time, space, energy, humanity. They are his philosophic digressions, poems, novels. Full time score: Blackeye Rovers nil, Ekphrasis one.
But while Dimitar is reaching new levels of maturity and depth of expression in his work, he can be a bit moody, and some senior figures at Manchester United have been wondering whether he's been worth the investment. After all, for only an extra £4.5m, they could have got themselves a nice uncomplicated lad who'll smile all day if you give him a bottle of beer and pelt a ball at his head every now and then, like Liverpool did. All of which may explain why United are shovelling poor Dimitar out the door today. He was expected to go to Fiorentina in a £4m deal, but it seems he has instead decided to join Fulham, where he is having a medical right now. "Hopefully everything is good and that means we are doing the business," says Fulham boss Martin Jol, impatiently rattling a box of Swan Vestas in his pocket.
On the face of it, opting for the London club over the Serie A giants seems a strange decision by Berbatov. Fiorentina are based in Florence, amid the rolling hills of Tuscany. Paintings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Botticelli hang in the local galleries. The team wear metro$exual purple. Fulham are based in London, where people say "gertcha" and "fack", and were once owned by a comedian in a pork-pie hat. But remember: Berbatov has played under Jol before at Spurs. Also, people change. So with the big Dutch manager liking nothing more than the odd puff himself, perhaps Dimitar is looking forward to hanging out with Jol round the back of Craven Cottage after training, puffing away like schoolkids, providing they don't set any alarms off. Gertcha! chirps Dimitar, both thumbs aloft, a big, simple, Carrollesque grin plastered across his face. Fackin nice one!
Scott Murray
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 August 2012
