(Vardy gonna Vardy)
[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football dork methodology
meant to establish a listing of players who have been most active for English
Premier League teams in their past 100 non-friendly matches. Essentially, it is
calculated by minutes played, but weighted towards most recent games. The end
result is a listing of the 25 players in a team’s recent history who have had
the largest hand on their metaphysical sporting trajectory. The English Premier
League was chosen because it is the highest level of football played in an
English speaking country, and I speak English. Also, it is what comes on TV
here in the USA, where I fucking live. Should I not fail in maintaining my
unpaid deadline, a new 25-Man Metaphysical Roster will appear on the 1st and
15th of every month.]
There are two supposedly disparate ends to this
Leicester City FC tale of the past 18 months, though I’d say they are very much
the same heart – them breaking the oligarchy of powerful clubs and winning the
English Premiership last season, and then them having a bunch of English
ruffians fighting police earlier this week in Madrid. The PL win was supposed
to be a huge feel-good story of underdog doing the impossible, a made-for-BBC
One story. But of course in this brave new foolish world of President Trump and
Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage and Brexit and Making America Great Again, that
the underdog is also all too often the drunken racialist. Thus, yes, Leicester
City winning the PL was a big chubby middle sausage finger in the face of the
Lords of Premier League-era corporate football branding (aka Modern Football),
but let us not lose sight of the reality that those big chubby middle sausage
fingers are attached to all the dark elements of the terrace culture the
creation of the seats only Premier League hoped to leave behind.
I’m torn, to be honest. Like, I was really glad
any one but the normal figures won the PL last season, and it was hard not to
enjoy the Foxes quick counter attack style… shit was like playing a video game
at times. But of course, I’m an antifa type of post-modern football fan (from
Amerikkka… sorry) so I’d like to keep the hooligans with full back St. George’s
cross tattoos from regaining a prominent role in public (lack of) discourse.
In terms of football, Leicester City has been an
enigma this season. In PL, they’ve underperformed when compared to last year,
and in fact got Claudio Ranieri sacked, which is pretty fucking ridiculous to
contemplate considering HE HELPED GUIDE THEM TO A PREMIER LEAGUE TITLE LAST
SEASON! But at the same time, they’re the only English club left in UEFA
Champions League play, and despite the rioting fans, only lost at Atletico
Madrid 0-1. They’ve actually got a striker’s chance still to somehow sneak into
the semifinals, which to be honest, would be as amazing as last season’s trophy
perhaps.
Anyways… here are the 25 men in top-to-bottom
order who have had the largest metaphysical presence on this club the past 100
non-friendly matches according to my self-deduced pseudo-scientific matrix of
minutes the fuck played, weighted towards now not then because ALL WE GOT IS
NOW BRUH, nobody knows that better than fucking royal blue slobber mouth Fox
fans who know this current run is likely it in terms of The Moment for
generations…
#1: ROBERT
HUTH – Rare East German who looks about East German as fuck, and
considering East Germany is no longer geopolitically active and hasn’t been for
the past 25 years. On top of this East German background, Huth is a central
defender – notorious position of natural born punishers. But Huth is also into
his 30s, almost a decade gone from being considered for the German National
team, which has had questionable love for East Germans anyways ever since
Ronald Reagan paid Jean-Claude Van Damme to spinkick down the wall. And yet, to
have a true underdog success story, you need some somewhat emotionless
appearing East German guy who is still about 50% industrial revolution in his
DNA to hold down a team’s back line of defense well enough those fancy boys up
front can run off and score the goals everybody youtubes all day long. A team
may sell a shitload of jerseys for guys like Vardy, but without the
stereotypical Huths of the world, there’s no room for a Vardy to find the open
space of degenerate hearts.
#2: WES
MORGAN – I’ve always enjoyed Wes Morgan because he is easily the best
Jamaican player on their national team, and in fact even fucked up the
beginning of that tournament in America last summer because he got too drunk
when Leicester City won for a few days. But he’s also quite the bruiser looking
dude, which fits the Jamaican National team look really well (as well as
Leicester City to be honest). CONCACAF play is always such a shitty clusterfuck
of Mexico being good but not as good as they should be because lolol they got nobody
to push them, and America being overrated by themselves and should be better
but also can’t be because they are too fucking white many times (culturally,
not literally, although sometimes that too), and then the rest of the nations
involved all kinda aren’t great but one or two of them will take these spells
of awesomeness where they contend to be better than America and have great
matches with Mexico. Jamaica has flirted with that during Morgan’s time, but
lol c’mon man, this is just CONCACAF.
#3: DANNY
DRINKWATER – I find Danny Drinkwater incredibly annoying, and his name
doesn’t fucking help at all. He sounds like an asshole from Black Books season
three.
#4: JAMIE
VARDY – Ah yes, the incredible Jamie Vardy, the drunken souse Englishman’s
favorite footballer, because he used to work in some shithole factory and came
up from the non-league levels and made it all the way to the top and yes, one
of us can still do it in this godforsaken (literally) non-white world! And yet
also Vardy is very obviously a drunken asshole who likely hates two-thirds of
the ethnicities on the earth, and many of the non-traditional sexual
orientations as well. It’s actually very obvious in those moments just after he
has broken away on a counter attack and gets fed the ball in open space and he
delivers as few have delivered as well as him in the past 18 months, and he
turns and in those thirty feet of steps after goal has been scored but before
he reaches the corner with the screaming sycophants, the look on his little smug
ass face shows it all – the condescension for the rest of the world, the
over-the-top self-importance, the pure shithead brain that has somehow still
managed to be successful thus is proud as a guy who just evaded the police
successfully. Fuckin’ Jamie Vardy. And the beautiful thing is, all the big
teams know all too well this guy couldn’t do shit in their crowded locker
rooms, and the inevitable failure would not justify the boost in jersey sales
that would happen momentarily (as all teams are supported by racial halfwits to
some extent), so he’ll stay at Leicester City and be a club hero forever, even
as he wastes away into oblivion. (His old club – Stocksbridge Park Steels –
have actually named their main stand after him already. Also, in the purest
Vardy bit of trivia, he once while still in non-league levels there at
Stocksbridge, got convicted of assault and literally played games with an
electronic tag.)
#5: KASPER
SCHMEICHEL – Schmeichel has been solid rock of a GK for Leicester during
this momentous run, and also in general. He’s the son of a famous Danish GK who
spent time minding the posts for Manchester United, so his stock is high. Of
course, this tends to be more curse than blessing in football, and surely the
young Kasper ending up at rival Manchester City during youth and then early
professional career did nothing to help lessen those curses. But finally, after
years of big club lack of love, being loaned here and there, he got signed by
Notts County in their then record transfer signing, at League Two level, and
finally was able to settle in to being his own self (to a certain extent). This
led to transitions to Leeds and then the Foxes, where he made his way back to
the Premier League, and becomes a rare instance of son of famous footballer not
bringing shame to the family legacy.
#6: CHRISTIAN
FUCHS – Austrian dude named Christian is not my bread-and-butter
demographic of footballer I like, and honestly I’ve watched more than a few
Leicester matches the past two seasons and don’t remember this fucker at all,
so I imagine he is that middle European blandness level enough to completely
disappear from observation, like wearing green lucha libre spandex in green
screen film room. I am guessing that is Fuchs.
#7: DANNY
SIMPSON – Danny Simpson was great the first two seasons of Footballers
Wives, but that third season where his child got kidnapped by the terrorist
organization and it split up his marriage, I don’t know, it was weird. And then
they got their kid back finally but then Danny Simpson was completely gone in
season four, without explanation.
#8: RIYAD
MAHREZ – I do not know why exactly, but I love the Algerian national team.
I mean, I love all African national teams in the World Cup, and specifically
will always root for them, but the past couple tournaments, at least the last
one, the Algerian team was such a fun one to watch. Thus, I love Mahrez, and
loved him last season, because he could so suddenly be so devastating. (In
fact, he did just such a thing against my beloved Swansea City Fuckfaces one
match.) But being he’s Algerian and not repugnant Jamie Vardy, I imagine Mahrez
will get sold before too much longer. But fuck man, Mahrez last season was so
great, good enough to take the white English shine off of Leicester City enough
to allow the media to run wild with multi-racial fantasies of footballing
utopia being realized.
#9: MARC
ALBRIGHTON – Ahh yes, the general inclusion of a paleface English winger on
prominent team because sure, they’re good enough to play at that level (I
guess), but boy oh boy, do all the drunks who still spend all the incremental
monies on team merchandise (and beer, and have St. George’s flags with LCFC on
it) love a guy like Albrighton. Thus guys like this will always have a place on
rosters, for as long as whiteness still exists.
#10: SHINJI
OKAZAKI – Okazaki seems like a fun guy. He has a nice smile and looks like
he’d be a great guy to go on a long car ride with.
#11: ANDY
KING – Solid Welsh midfielder who looks a lot like someone ran a newgen in
Football Manager of Jamie Vardy, but with less eccentricity, thus he ended up a
MF instead of striker. King spent some youth academy time at the Chelsea
Academy but finished his youth career at Leicester City, so this is the only
A-level team he’s known, for over a decade now – a fairly amazing achievement
at that level of “let’s go sign some new guys”, although the Foxes were not
always at Premier League level in that period. King might be a little more
buried in the depth charts now, but he’s long been a high level role player on
this team, and was psychologically and in terms of having big games, a big part
in them making the jump from Championship level to PL. I love stories like
that, even if those guys always end up getting sold to Aston Villa or Norwich
City.
#12: DANIEL
AMARTEY – Young Ghanaian defensive midfielder who moved to Leicester City
during January transfer season of last year, as cover during their final run to
glory. After Kante left, Amartey took on more of a starting role, though he’s
not the same level of player as Kante. That type of shit is sad, because
ignorant fuckers will see two sort-of African players with similar but
different roles, and then think lesser of Amartey because he’s not as amazing
as Kante. But Amartey’s pretty fucking decent defensive midfielder. But
whatever man, it’s football, and passions run way higher than sensibility.
#13: DEMARIA
GRAY – Young potential star for the team, who has played extensively for
England in the U-levels of national team competition. Joined the Foxes last
January 2016, and along with Benjamin Chilwell, makes up the young hope for the
future for LCFC, once their Cinderella fairy tale comes crashing back to busted
pumpkins and scampering rats.
#14: N’GOLO
KANTE – Kante came over from his native nation’s Ligue One before last
season, and was instrumental in Leicester City’s impossible title run. You
often here that metaphor of a team working “like a well-oiled machine.” For
that metaphor to become reality, someone in the middle generally has to work as
a production manager, and feed everything forward or backward without really
calling everybody awareness to it too strongly, so that nobody fucks up the
efficiency. That was Kante last season for the Foxes. And of course after a run
like that, they were gonna cash in on a player or two. N’Golo Kante became that
man, transferring to Chelsea for huge fee, and essentially doing the same damn
thing he did last year for Chelsea this year. It is no coincidence he will
likely be Premier League champion two years in a row. I’d prefer him to Pogba
were I a wealthy zine magnate who had parlayed immense paypal payments into
owning a Premiership team.
#15: ISLAM
SLIMANI – As having previously mentioned my affection for the Algerian team
of recent years, you can imagine how much I love me some Islam Slimani. As I
continue to work the fuck out of my instantly obsolete copy of Football Manager
2015, Slimani is one of my first go-to transfers. So I was pretty excited he
was coming to the Premier League, especially with him joining Mahrez and Vardy.
In FM sub-culture (lolol), one can engineer these thematic concepts to teams,
and the union of two Algerian Muslims with a raucous Englishman feels very
engineered thematically. However, Slimani has mostly played a fill-in role for
one or the other, and Leicester has never gone full bore chaos attack mode with
all three at once. I mean, this makes sense I guess, but you also just kinda
want to see a team be like “fuck it” sometime, and there’s no better trio to
make you think fuck it than those three. (Also, I imagine there are some
uncomfortable interactions between those three, and likely this entire locker
room, more so than most teams full of internationals from everywhere.)
#16: WILFRED
NDIDI – Young Nigerian who developed in Lagos, learning the game both up
front on attack as well as falling back as defender. Made the move to Europe to
join Genk in Belgium (insert King Leopold references here), where he did well
over course of a few seasons, settling into classic African MF role that
fluctuates forward or backward as necessary. Genk sold him to Leicester City
this past December transfer window, and Ndidi has worked to help correct the
loss of N’Golo Kante. It’s worked partially, as Leicester has settled down and
is not so embroiled in relegation zone flirting now. (Of course, they dumped
Ranieri along the way.)
#17: AHMED
MUSA – Sat a training thing this week with a Nigerian dude from Boston, and
we bonded over football (soccer), but of course his favorite teams were
“Chelsea and Barcelona” but I did talk about how watching the Super Eagles at
’94 World Cup was part of what made me fall in love with football (soccer) and
give up football (American football). I say all this because Ahmed Musa is
prominent player on the Nigerian national team, so this tangent was relevant. I
also won the Premier League a couple times in fake Football Manager world with
FC Halifax and Musa was a solid role player for me.
#18:
BENJAMIN CHILWELL – Besides the “cool name bro” aspect, young player (20)
who came up through Leicester’s youth academy, and made his Premier League
debut just this past December. But he’s already wearing that #3 jersey, so
obviously they got hopes for the young man.
#19: MARCIN
WASILEWSKI – I’ve spent this past week in Wisconsin, doing some bullshit
training to make myself more exploitable at work, thus I’ve been exposed to
large demographic of American-filtered Polish-German hybrid people. They are
weird, and freak me out, even though this is where my maternal grandparents met
and came from (generally speaking, in Chicago, not Wisconsin). Polish people
are a weird fucking people – not bad necessarily, but also not great. I can’t
imagine a true deep DNA Polish person being anything other than GK or defender
or some brutalistic goal-scorer. I imagine metaphysically there are far more
red cards than goals in true Polish leagues. This may not be true, but it’s
what feels right to me (and I am 25% Polish, though it is buried behind
blackberry bushes and a broken down ’69 Chevelle Supersport). Anyways,
Wasilewski is a central defender, of course, and probably scares the fuck out
of people. I imagine a lot of fights Vardy picks, Wasilewski finishes.
#20: RON-ROBERT
ZIELER – Double-named German back-up GK for Leicester, who played for a few
years for Hannover ’96 after having come up through Manchester United youth
academy and been background fodder in their club at adult level. It’s kind of
weird – the guy played every game for five seasons in Bundesliga, you’d think
he’d be coming back to the Premier League for a certain amount of action, but
he’s mostly been in when Schmeichel has been injured. Not to psycho-analyze,
but after failed first professional experience as not-good-enough-for-Manchester
United, that had to feed his return to England to some extent, and perhaps
going to a fat sausage middle finger club like Leicester City (after winning
last season) played into that.
#21: YOHAN
BENALOUANE – French-Tunisian dude who has had a strange run during
Leicester’s strange run to title. Benalouane was loaned to Fiorentina in Italy
last year in January transfer window, thus he was absent from their final push
to the PL title. He was injured too though, so never played a game in Italy. He
came back to Leicester, but has mostly been used on the reserve team this
season. He seems to be dogged by shit not working out, which has included
missing his Tunisian team game against Chad due to missing a required
vaccination. He has also refused to play for Tunisia a couple of times, even
though he had to submit a transfer from French team being he played for them
once at the U-21 level. Also he sued Fiorentina for his time being injured
there, and generally has this long history of disgruntled shenanigans.
#22: LEONARDO
ULLOA – Argentine striker who was already buried into fill-in minutes even
before LCFC got Islam Slimani, he’s been almost made obsolete. He was connected
to a lot of transfer talk in the January window (including Swansea, who really
could’ve used him the past few weeks), and I doubt he’ll make it through
another transfer window without leaving.
#23: JEFFERY
SCHLUPP – German dude (of Ghanaian lineage) who would fucking run up and
down the wings all fucking day, every fucking game. This is what he did for
Leicester City for the better part of seven years. This season, with the influx
of new players (including Slimani) found him more buried in depth, thus he
moved to Crystal Palace in January, where he has gone back to traditional role
of motherfucking flying.
#24: NAMPALYS
MENDY – Came to Leicester City from Nice this past summer, at the time
their record transfer fee signing. However, that was short-lived honor, as they
broke it a couple days later Ahmed Musa, then broke that a few days later
signing Islam Slimani. Similarly, he has received a metaphysical burial with
the Foxes, which likely may get worse, as he was a former player for Claudio
Ranieri in France for Monaco (which technically is not in France). Now, with
Ranieri gone, and Mendy not settled, who knows what happens.
#25: LUIS
HERNANDEZ – Spanish defender who played sparingly for the Foxes first half
of this season, but never really settled into role. He quickly was dumped back
to Spain, joining Malaga in past transfer window, where he appears to be more
settled already.
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