Football Scotland’s Latest Pro-Ibrox Puff Piece Is So Bad It’s Kind Of Funny.

A little moment of good humour tonight, a little piece from The Record’s sister paper Football Scotland, and which struck my funny bone earlier on. It’s a Sevco puff piece of course, the kind of thing these titles specialise in.

This one’s very title is rather amusing in and of itself; “Rangers youngster named in top 15 ‘most exciting teenagers’ with ‘much expected’ from him.”

This is the kind of headline you see every day, and my first thought was “who’s top 15? And the top 15 of what? In Scotland? Britain? Europe? (Chortle) The world?”

And here’s the funny part; this is from FourFourTwo magazine, and it does indeed have a youth player on the books at Ibrox, in 15th spot in the world’s most exciting youth talents list.

Except for one thing. He’s a Manchester Utd player, not theirs, and he’s only at their club for the next three months on loan.

And as if that wasn’t daft enough, the best was still to come.

“Rangers youngster Amad Diallo has been named in 15th place in the top 50 teenagers in world football. The Ivorian winger joined Rangers on loan in January and the move has been branded a ‘masterstroke’ by FourFourTwo as they named their list.”

Oh there is so much wrong with that paragraph that you really have to start from the front and work and work your way to the back to get it all.

First, of course, as we’ve established and as the writer promptly admits, he’s not their player.

And these lists are so arbitrary that it’s a wonder anyone bothers commenting on them.

Then you get to the statement that the loan move was branded a “masterstroke” by the magazine.

But actually, read on in the article and you’ll see that’s manifestly untrue.

Here’s what the magazine actually wrote … and the amazing thing is, they quote this in the article!

So they lied and then told the truth in the space of about five lines!

“Manchester United shelled out nearly £20m on Amad Diallo in response to missing out on Jadon Sancho, despite the fact the Ivorian couldn’t join the club until the following transfer window. It could have been a masterstroke of a deal.”

So not only did the writer present it out of context, he even twisted the words on top of that to get the meaning that he wanted.

Doesn’t the whole piece become a fictional article at that stage?

Because that’s two pieces of fiction for the price of one.

You want the cherry on the cake?

In the midst of all this stuff is the following quite brilliant paragraph about the 15th best youth player in the world.

“Diallo hit the ground running with a goal against Ross County but was then hooked at half time in the miserable defeat to Celtic and after a cameo against Hearts, he was an unused sub against Hibs.”

Uhuh. And that about sums it up.