BRENT A GOB: This week, Harry Brent’s going after people calling for a 2026 World Cup boycott due to Donald Trump, Premier League record breaker James Milner, and the death of the tackle
People calling for a boycott of the 2026 World Cup because of Donald Trump need a head examination.
They need one more urgently than Tottenham’s recruitment team do after splashing £60million on Xavi “if I wear cornrows no one will notice I’m rubbish” Simons. Hate Trump all you like, but spare me the sudden outbreak of moral enlightenment.
We’ve just had World Cups in Qatar and Russia – two hosts with bigger supervillain energy than Jose Mourinho and Gus Fring sharing a bunk bed. One was drowning in human rights controversies. The other had annexed Crimea and was auditioning for World War III.
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If a few MAGA policies get your knickers more twisted than they were in 2018 or 2022, you aren’t a principled good person™ – you’re a selective activist with the moral integrity of Ryan Giggs at a family barbecue.
Speaking of pearl-clutching, drug cartels have been firebombing Mexican cities this week. Mexico are co-hosting the World Cup. Where’s the boycott energy now? I’ll tell you where it is: doing exactly what Cole Palmer has done all season – disappearing when it matters.
I’m no Trump cheerleader. But this performative grandstanding from football’s virtue vanguard is exhausting. It’s more annoying, more performative and more transparently fake than – allegedly – a Manchester City financial statement. Allegedly.
Stat’s a joke
James Milner is now the Premier League’s all-time appearance holder and it’s the biggest case of an undeserved title since Gareth Southgate got knighted for losing a bunch of finals.
He’s like Jamie Redknapp on Sky Sports – he’s been around for decades without doing anything memorable. Seriously, ask anyone to name an iconic James Milner moment and they’ll go quieter than the Etihad Stadium on a Tuesday night.
Milner hasn’t broken the record – he’s quietly queue-jumped it. The man has been stat-padding with five minute cameos since Brighton were in League 1 and MySpace was still a thing.
I checked: in terms of actual minutes played, he’s 13th behind Sylvain Distin: a man whose career highlights consist entirely of “being quite tall in the mid-2000s”.
Calling Milner the record holder is daft. It’s like calling Liverpool fans the loudest in the league. It looks convincing on paper – then you measure it and it’s as inaccurate as Nicolas Jackson’s left foot.
Besides, Milner doesn’t exactly scream ‘immortal footballing icon,’ does he? He’s changed positions more times than Keir Starmer and has the charisma of a damp cabbage – an utterly forgettable, utterly replaceable Ed Davey of a footballer.
Make Tackling Great Again
Has anyone else noticed that footballers don’t tackle anymore? I mean, they do , but it’s about as rare as an insightful piece of punditry from Micah Richards.
This isn’t a misty-eyed plea for Brexitball, by the way. I’m not talking about “propa tackles,” “two-footers” or “getting stuck in.” I’m talking about bog-standard attempts to kick the ball when an opponent has it.
Just like Alexander Isak since moving to Merseyside, tackles have performed a major vanishing act. Nowadays, players just hover around opponents, like Chelsea scouts hovering around overpriced teenagers they can flip for sixty grand’s worth of profit in four years’ time.
It’s all angles and containment now. Lots of crouching. Lots of pointing. Lots of Jordan Hendersoning – which, for the uninitiated, is the art of looking busy while doing absolutely nothing.
It’s all just risk-averse bulls*** – the footballing equivalent of tapping random keys on your laptop when your boss walks past.
If I wanted to watch grown men go to such pathetic lengths to avoid meaningful human contact, I’d subscribe to Arsenal Fan TV. Put a foot in, you dweebs!