excellent newspaper headlines

'Swede 1, Beetroot 0.'

This is an amazing headline. It refers to the opening weekend of the Premier League wherein Sven-Goran Eriksson's team, Manchester City, beat their inter-city rivals, Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United.

To unpack it:
- Eriksson is Swedish, the former manager/coach of the English national team, who left that post after the World Cup last year. Man City is a solidly middle lower team in the first tier of English football, almost always eclipsed by the other Manchester team, United, who Beckham used to play for before he moved to Spain's Real Madrid (and thence on to the (cough) LA Galaxy, a painfully misnamed team if ever there was one). Eriksson is a bit of an enigma wrapped inside of a conundrum for the English -- he is very dry and clinical, but managed to do quite well with England -- a hopeless job, as the English football team is very very good but not great -- ie, good enough to consistently get to the last eight of international tournaments but not great enough to get beyond. But good enough to raise everyone's expectations and then dash them, every two years. This drives everyone crazy. Also, there was a big sex scandal involving Eriksson and a nubile young secretary at the FA, which was bewildering to everyone. Eriksson is not the kind of person you could ever imagine actually getting anyone in to bed. He looks a lot like Mr Burns.
- Alex Ferguson has managed United for approximately one hundred gajillion years. He was born into a working class Glasgow family and is known for giving players who mess up 'the hairdryer treatment' wherein he stands very close to you and yells so loudly that your hair is literally blown back. He used to chainsmoke and has given up; now he stands on the sidelines and chews gum so violently that you almost expect his jaw socket to give way from overuse and the lower half of his mouth to flop down onto the pitch. He gets very very red when he yells (which is all the time) and stands outside on cold days (which is all the time).

I'm reading a book called 'Watching the English,' by this social anthropologist named Kate Fox, and one of the many interesting observations she makes is about the cross-class English joy of wordplay. Both the broadsheets and the tabloids take great joy in their punny amusing headlines.

And, of course, root vegetables.