THERE’S a team of free agents floating around out there who would stand a decent chance of winning a European trophy.
Keylor Navas in goals. Sergio Ramos, Mats Hummels, Joel Matip and Serge Aurier as a back four.
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Ivan Perisic, Adrien Rabiot, Dele Alli and Davy Klaassen in midfield, then take your pick up top between Memphis Depay, Anthony Martial and Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting.
Count the caps between them, the World Cups and Champions Leagues, the domestic titles, the cups.
Check out the sheer footballing status.
Now ask yourself, where would the boy Duk fit into this team?
Driving the bus? Bringing them tie-ups? Because he sure as hell wouldn’t be pushing any of them for a starting place.
Yet this same Duk — who’s never won a thing, never even scored an international goal — decided back in the summer that he was too big for the club he DOES have, and stopped turning up for work.
Dress up his situation at Aberdeen any way you like, give him as much leeway as you like, but that’s what happened.
Someone filled his head with nonsense about how many big names wanted to sign him.
He took a gamble on forcing the board’s hand on the basis that he wasn’t for coming back.
Now that his plan’s backfired almost as spectacularly as Dave Cormack’s last few managerial appointments, though?
Now that the window’s slammed shut on his grasping fingers?
He’s awfully sorry. He’s knows he did wrong. He’s ready to work for the team.
It’s an act of faux contrition that has convinced the club to issue a statement confirming they have accepted his apology, and believe he’s ready to help them reach their aims for the season.
Aye, right. And Ryan Jack’s making the half-time draw at the next home game.
So let’s get real about how this will really pan out.
The sports science guys will put him on the scales, which will say No Coach Parties Please.
They will recommend a full pre-season before he kicks a ball.
That will be six weeks, which takes him to November, in time for the last international break of the year, at which point he’ll maybe be fit enough, mentally as well as physically, to actually earn his wages.
Then it will be January, he’ll be down to the last six months of his contract, and he’ll be free to talk to any of that endless queue of suitors about a bumper free move.
If ever a situation summed up everything that’s rank rotten about the transfer system, the contract system, and the sense of self-importance instilled in some players by outside influences, that of Luis Henriques de Barros ‘Duk’ Lopes is surely it.
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After all, this is a frontman whose last club goals came in a 3-3 draw at home to Motherwell last February.
Before that, he’d previously hit the net against Eintracht Frankfurt in December. In all, he scored just seven times in 50 appearances last season.
Now, if Duk had Bojan Miovski’s record of 26 goals in 53 appearances, then maybe, just maybe, you could have cut him a little slack for thinking the sun shone out of his own backside.
But that’s the thing, Miovski never once came across as the big man with Aberdeen.
Everyone knew he’d be leaving in the window. No one would have blamed him for swanning about while he waited for the limo to the airport.
Yet I watched him spend 90 minutes on the bench at rainy East Kilbride for a Premier Sports Cup group tie he could probably have seen far enough.
A few nights after that, he played the second half at home to Airdrie, then the following Monday did the full shift in their opening league win away to St Johnstone.
Come that weekend, a £6.8million move to Girona done and dusted, new gaffer Jimmy Thelin brought him on for the final moments of a 3-1 victory over St Mirren so he could say his goodbyes to the Red Army.
The tears Miovski shed that day spoke volumes not only for what the club meant him, and how much he appreciated the platform they have given him.
But also for just how much his team-mates and a stadium full of fans appreciated what he’d put in right to the end.
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Moments like these don’t come for free, you have to earn them. And that’s what the boy Duk simply doesn’t get.
He thinks he can come away from a half-a**** campaign, pop off somewhere sunny and block all calls that start 01224 — then come back when no one offers him a gig in La Liga and still somehow expect open arms and a pipe band.
Sorry, but if the good people of Pittodrie let him away with that, they are letting themselves down.
Not least because for him to get back in, someone who’s bust a gut all summer to be part of Thelin’s plans needs to drop out.
If it was me, I’d be running the chancer’s apology through a shredder.
Then thinking of a word that almost rhymes with his nickname — and telling him to take a flying one.
RON YEATS was the first man in Liverpool’s history to try on the all-red kit Bill Shankly said would make them feared worldwide.
He was the first man in Liverpool’s history to walk up Wembley’s steps and receive the FA Cup.
He was the last man to captain them in the old Second Division, and two years later, skippered them to their first league title since 1947.
It’s no exaggeration to say Yeats was the rock on which the foundations of a dynasty were built, the signing who — maybe more than any other — epitomised everything Shankly put in place for those who followed.
“Come and meet my new centre-half,” his new boss told reporters the day he arrived from Dundee United in 1961.
“He’s in the dressing room, go in and walk around him . . .”
For most of the decade that followed, everything Liverpool achieved was built around this giant who was hewn from Aberdeen granite, had the rough edges chipped off him at Tannadice, and was then elevated to Mount Rushmore-like status on Merseyside.
Yeats was the opposite of what today’s centre-back is encouraged to be.
Let’s just say he’d have punched a keeper who passed square to him inside their own box to ‘invite the press’.
His pride and joy came from just keeping the ball as far away from that box as humanly possible, then standing back and admiring the entertainers as they did the business up the other end.
And while to many modern tactical ‘experts’ that might seem like neanderthal football, what else is defending about but ensuring your team doesn’t lose goals?
That’s the bit of the game we’ve forgotten.
Every week in life, so many teams now take such ridiculous risks that cost them dearly, all in the name of being seen as intelligent and positive.
Well, as I’m sure Ron Yeats would have told them, there’s nothing clever about giving the other lot tap-ins.
The true defensive geniuses are the ones who come away with the most clean sheets.
In that respect, Yeats was a footballing Einstein.
He died on Friday, aged 86, after suffering from the curse of the old-school centre-half which is Alzheimer’s Disease.
But he’ll be an eternal part of Liverpool FC. A genuine cornerstone of one of the game’s greatest success stories.
THERE can be no more thankless task in football than playing for San Marino.
Or, as those who DO play for them see it, no greater labour of love.
This is a nation who, before this past week, had lost 193 and won just the ONE of their 205 full international matches.
In its ranks stands a player in Matteo Vitaioli who made his debut just after that lone success, a friendly against Liechtenstein way back in 2004.
It was the first of 95 caps so far which have included one 11-0 defeat, two 10-0s, a 9-0, five 8-0s and three 7-0s.
But last Thursday, at the 95th attempt, he was part of a side which recorded their first-ever competitive victory — once more, against Liechtenstein.
What a feeling that must have been for 34-year-old graphic designer Vitaioli, who describes playing for his country as “a dream with no limits”.
That level of belief in what might one day be possible is remarkable.
It must have taken the sense of achievement they all felt the other night right off the scale.
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Now, just imagine if they made it two in a row against Moldova on Tuesday…
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