There’s no such thing as a fairytale in brutal, brilliant world of sport – ask Pep Guardiola & imploding Man City giants
SOMETHING odd happens if you do an internet search on what occurred in the sporting year.
The first two things that came up for me were, 2024 in review: The sports business year in deals and Annual Review of Football Finance 2024. So when you ask Google a question about sport, the first thing on its mind is money.
Unsettling, if you ask me, although it does point to something beautiful — that TV people have cottoned on to the fact sport is the only thing they can rely upon to bring the world together, watching the same thing at the same time, riding the same emotional rollercoaster.
They love this because they can sell the advertising space around it. We love it because, well, we just love it.
Year after year, sport delivers in ways we knew it would, and in ways we could never have imagined. Take Luke Littler.
Who’d have thought 2024 would begin with an extraordinary teenager dominating the back, and front, pages.
Think about it. How many times in your life does sport have you shaking your head in disbelief, muttering something to yourself like, “Wow. Incredible”?
Littler’s story has been a sporting fairytale, except that’s not quite right.
Referring to sports stories as fairytales is too much of a cliche.
Also, it wasn’t quite a fairytale, was it?
In a proper fairytale, the 16-year-old prodigy would have turned up, shocked every opponent winning every round, and gone on to win the title.
But no, this is sport, so there’s not necessarily a neat tying up of the tale. He finished second.
Dose of defeat
Still brilliant, incredible, inspiring and moving. But not quite a fairytale.
It was like Cinderella finding the slipper fitted but also that she couldn’t immediately marry the prince, as he already had a girlfriend, and had to sort that out first.
Her day would surely come, as Littler’s did in a triumphant year for him that is likely to end for him as dramatically as it started.
It’s the kinks in the sporting stories which make the magic.
While almost every film or TV series ends up with the good guys winning, in sport you can never be quite sure. And here lies the magic.
There are those saying Pep is now a diminished figure. But I don’t see it like that
I wouldn’t blame Manchester City fans for not much enjoying the mysterious magic of sport just now.
This time last year they were enjoying another brisk stroll towards yet another Premier League title.
And as recently as two months ago we all thought we were in for more of the same this season. But this is sport, and sport doesn’t work like that.
It’s now one win in 13 games for City. Unthinkable.
Two months ago, Manchester City failing to beat Everton at home would have been unthinkable in itself. Headline news.
But tellingly, the morning after their draw on Boxing Day it barely merited mention in the sports bulletins. Just another bad day for struggling City.
There are those saying Pep is now a diminished figure. But I don’t see it like that.
He’s gone right up in my estimation. As a winner, I found him angry, irascible and generally hard to like.
A serious dose of defeat has made him much more appealing.
He’s been humble and intelligent. Rather than railing at the world blaming everyone else, he’s been almost alarmingly candid about the extent to which he blames himself and what he sees as his own shortcomings.
After the draw against Everton, he said simply: “Life is not easy. Sport is not easy.”
I loved that. He’s right. Sport, like life, can be beautiful and it can be terrible.
It’s rarely a fairytale after all. In the heady days of summer we had the Euros and England’s not uneventful march to the final.
It’s funny, but in my mind it’s all reduced down to a handful of key moments. Jude Bellingham’s overhead kick vs Slovakia; the look on Ollie Watkins’ face after his winner against the Dutch.
And then in the final, Spain’s winner which definitely looked offside but definitely wasn’t, and then the goalmouth scramble at the other end right at the death.
If it had gone in, all might have been different. But it didn’t. Same old.
And before long Gareth was on his way. Enough said. Next time.
As for performance of the tournament, I’m going to have to give it to Ronaldo.
And here I mean “performance” in the sense that a toddler having a tantrum might be said to be “putting in a performance”.
No disrespect to the great man — he’s a hardworking genius who deserves every bit of success he’s had.
But his man-child performance in Portugal’s round of 16 Euros knockout match against Slovenia will live long in the memory — taking every free kick, missing a penalty, the tears, the inevitable triumph.
It was a one-man show for the ages. By the way, on VAR, is it just me or has it got a bit better?
We’re certainly talking about it less, but that might be more to do with us getting bored of moaning and the fight draining out of us.
The jury remains out. Let’s see what 2025 brings.
In F1, good things have been happening. It was great to see Lewis win again at Silverstone.
Things get daft
But also refreshing to see so many new young drivers making their way, and so many fans brought to the sport by the Netflix documentary, Drive To Survive.
When TV captures the drama of sport so brilliantly, it’s a fabulous thing.
But it has to be that way round — because if sport starts delivering drama for the purposes of television, it could devalue everything.
I’m not saying this is what was behind, say, George Russell’s spat with Max Verstappen, but I did start to wonder.
We can’t have these brilliant fly-on-the-wall series turning into sports versions of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
In sport we don’t need to confect drama. There’s plenty there already to be getting on with.
Pick your 2024 golden moments. I’ll go for Keely Hodgkinson in the 800m and Bryony Page on the trampoline
Sport must be king; the requirements of TV must come second.
When TV starts calling all the shots, things get daft.
Take the Olympics. An absolute triumph, sandwiched between the most absurdly overblown made-for-television opening and closing ceremonies.
Good job that the sport which came in between was so unrelentingly brilliant.
Pick your golden moments. I’ll go for Keely Hodgkinson in the 800m, Bryony Page on the trampoline and the GB women in the quadruple sculls.
They trailed the Dutch for 1,950 metres but beat them to gold on the very final stroke. Awesome.
In 2024 we saw some legends of their sports bow out.
It’s always moving to see athletes we first saw as kids come to dominate their worlds before finally, tearfully — for us as well as them — bowing out. Rafa Nadal and Andy Murray left tennis. Jimmy Anderson played his last cricket for England.
Mark Cavendish finished cycling in triumph. With their bodies in various states of disrepair, they called it a day.
But what shone out from each of this quartet was something which years of elite competition often knocks out of sportsmen and women — their sheer love for their sports.
This is rarer than you might think. With some athletes (see Ronaldo above) you get the feeling they’re in it as much for love of themselves as for the love of the game.
And I’ve met many retired footballers who, while still fans of the game, can’t think of much worse than having to get out there and play again, week in, week out.
But with Nadal, Murray, Anderson and Cavendish, you sensed that if their bodies allowed it, they’d carry on for ever.
If only they could. But others will come to fill their shoes.
More fairytales will (almost) be written.
This next sporting year will, one way or another, put us through the mill all over again. Bring it on. Can’t wait.