With apologies to the Bible, the best line about donkeys came from a boxer. Lovemore N’dou was his name and he was a fine fighter — a world champion. A smart man, too, but let’s keep to donkeys and how he applied them to a bout he was working towards in 2009.
The opponent was Ricky Hatton’s younger brother Matthew and this is what N’dou offered up: ‘If you are running a stable of racehorses and you keep a donkey in that stable as well, feeding it carrots, eventually that donkey thinks it is a racehorse. It’s only when you put that donkey on a racetrack that it gets exposed.’
Brilliant, withering and hopelessly wrong — the fight was drawn. Turns out Hatton was no donkey and N’dou had made an ass of himself.
So let’s talk about the Europa League final and snugger fits for the label: Manchester United and Tottenham. By virtue of their wins on successive Thursdays, we will have ourselves a proper donkey derby in Bilbao on May 21.
Fancy donkeys, for sure. The kind that eat carrots in nice stables, but donkeys all the same. Cataloguing their donkey moments this season would involve too much time on dusty roads, so for fresh context here is a long sequence of numbers: 3, 9, 4, 3, 8, 4, 19, 14, 7, 12, 21, 5, 15, 5, 6, 8, 15, 8, 6, 8, 6, 9, 13, 18, 5, 31.
To explain, those are the combined placings of Europa League/UEFA Cup finalists in their domestic leagues come the end of the relevant season, starting with the year 2000. The 31 at the end there? You see where this is going.
We are in for a proper donkey derby in Bilbao when Tottenham take on Manchester United
The two teams will face off in the Europa League final after they won their respective semi-final ties this week
The two teams could yet improve on their current league positions, but neither can finish higher than 12th
Surrendering to optimism, United and Spurs might yet improve from 15th and 16th in the Premier League, but neither can do better than 12th, meaning their best outcomes would still be rock bottom. And not just since 2000, but all the way to 1971 when this grand, fading competition originated — worse than Bayer Leverkusen (eighth) and Espanyol (15th) in 1988.
Whichever way we cut it, United and Tottenham will be dead last. Historically bad. Donkeys for the ages, living the occasional Thursday as racehorses. The two teams aren’t very good? You might say we rode a donkey along a mountain pass to reach the obvious.
But, if you’ll indulge a touch of bias for recency and parochialism, when was the last time the humble Europa League had it better with its cast for a final? By better, I mean more intriguing, for the marriage of two clubs’ profiles and the urgency of their needs. The jeopardy. The escape from the messes they have made in their stables. The sheer sense of importance to them and to a trophy that is disappearing further into other UEFA shadows each season?
If we were to be boring about it, we would be lured to United’s poor PSR situation and the imperative of Champions League football next season to stave off further years of decline. But that conversation would be dull. It also leans too heavily on our vogue of forever seeing today through its implications for tomorrow.
Far more interesting is Ruben Amorim and the unanswered mystery of whether he is the guy who can be the change they require.
To date, I see a manager who is so wedded to ideology, and so inconsistent in achieving good results, that mitigations for his surroundings have lost some credibility. Near enough every week since leaving Sporting he has spoken like a man realising too late that he opened a chest of cursed gold, but United’s shambling hierarchy, too, have looked shortchanged.
On balance, though, he has offered enough glimpses of promise that a trophy will shift the thinking. In La Liga, no one has put two goals on Athletic Bilbao at San Mames this season, let alone three, as Amorim’s United did without reply in the first leg of their semi-final. No one has achieved a double on them, either, but United saw to that on Thursday.
Their manager’s progress can only be measured in those instalments and the resurgence of deadwood like Casemiro. Their donkey limps but it has four legs — a win fixes the limp. But what of Ange Postecoglou? That’s trickier and this column has gone into that debate in the recent past. Even a first trophy since 2008 might not be enough to sway Daniel Levy.
Still – when was the last time the Europa League had a more intriguing cast for its final?
Winning the trophy will provide an escape from the messes the two clubs have made this term
It still remains to be seen whether Ruben Amorim is the person to bring the change to United that they require
The dilemma for Levy is whether wins against Qarabag, Ferencvaros, AZ, Hoffenheim, IF Elfsborg, Eintracht Frankfurt and Bodo/Glimt really weigh more than all those defeats and the repetition of the failings that generated them, over and again for a full year.
If he lives for the moment, the Spurs chairman will see past it, but that isn’t the way of the game. Romance? Postecoglou might be football’s greatest romantic of all and Levy the least.
It’s a fascinating dynamic and a fascinating decision would follow a Spurs win. At its heart would sit a question: what is the true value of a trophy?
Is it merely part of a progress chain? Or can it be enough on its own, justifying an extra season of loyalty? We know that owners and fans will probably approach that lectern from opposite sides; just as we know a win for Amorim will be privately celebrated within United’s brains-trust predominantly as an aversion of financial challenges.
But what a magnificent final of loaded scenarios and what sublime timing, coming as a tonic to a flat-lining Premier League finale and in a week when Arsene Wenger spoke for many in his view of the Europa League.
Specifically, he doesn’t believe the winner of this competition should gain admission to the bigger show next season. That being the show where Barcelona and Internazionale played out an all-time classic across two legs. The show where the other semi-final contained the favourites to win the final.
Put like that, he isn’t wrong. It’s the most right he’s been in years, actually.
But never underestimate the beauty of a pair of well-matched racers, even if no one, Lovemore N’dou included, could fail to identify United and Tottenham for what they are these days.
The Europa League has never known donkeys quite like them in their final. Perversely, they are also precisely what the old pot needs.
Even winning the trophy may not be enough to convince Daniel Levy to keep Ange Postecoglou on board
The winner will enter next season’s Champions League – something Arsene Wenger does not believe should happen
The Europa League has never known donkeys quite like United and Spurs, but never underestimate the beauty of a pair of well-matched racers
Arteta owns Arsenal’s striker failure
There are areas where Mikel Arteta warrants a pass — losing a Champions League semi-final against the most impressive side in Europe is not a recognised sign of the apocalypse.
Even at Arsenal. Same goes for finishing second a few too many times in the Premier League. But there is a curious desire to detach the manager from the absurd failure to recruit a proper striker. That being the same manager whose power at his club is bettered only by Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and whose influence stretched to an involvement in appointing Andrea Berta as sporting director, notionally his boss.
Where some coaches can hide behind their club on transfer errors, Arteta is out in the open.
Mikel Arteta is out in the open when it comes to Arsenal’s failure to sign a striker recently
Liverpool, meanwhile, have the chance to sell Trent Alexander-Arnold to Real Madrid early for a small fee
Trent deal a no-brainer
Now that Trent Alexander-Arnold has announced he’s off, Liverpool have a say in the when: start of June for a low fee from Real Madrid or start of July for nothing. That’s pretty straightforward, right?
More so when it’s viewed from another angle: helping Real Madrid to win the Club World Cup and its £100million prize means reducing the chances of Manchester City or Chelsea landing the same bounty for their own ends. That should shift it from straightforward to no-brainer.
