Liverpool’s MTV audition, Chelsea’s confetti cannon, and Man Utd’s cosmic mulch

The American scouts have been circling like voracious clipboard-toting hyenas - all glinting fangs and beady eyes - biding their time, waiting for the knees to buckle and the prior commitments to peter out. With his diligently-coiffed hair and his grin like a halogen floodlight, departing Liverpool forward Roberto Firmino is their muse du jour; the man in their plans with the perma-tan.

But these talent spotters are no bespectacled anoraks in monogrammed, well, anoraks. No, no, they are hip and happening iced latte junkie showrunners with 12-step skincare routines and names like Cody and Corey and Juniper Berry. Football, you see, is old hat. It’s done, darling. Played out. Finito. What the people really, truly want is the sweet, anaesthetising embrace of REALITY TELEVISION. And by ‘REALITY TELEVISION’, we of course mean ‘PRE-SCRIPTED MELODRAMA WATCHED ON A LAPTOP’. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, though.

Anyways, this is where Roberto comes in. Forget the MLS, it’s MTV that are after him. The once-vital entertainment juggernaut are planning a Jersey Shore spin-off in Missouri (what do you mean it’s landlocked?!) and they think that the Brazilian has just the right look to add a little bit of foreign exoticism. And yeah, sure, if he wants to play some soccer for nearby newly-founded St. Louis City SC, then fine. As long as he wears a contractually-obligated padded balaclava to protect his money-maker. Goooooooooo [insert club nickname here once one is agreed upon]!

Elsewhere, Levi Colwill is in demand. The Chelsea defender has been christened the ‘Next John Terry’ by some (hopefully for footballing reasons) and has impressed immensely during a loan spell with Brighton and Hove Albion this season. Of course, part of the reason that Terry’s early career was such a brazen success was that he didn’t have to wade through half-a-billion-pounds’ worth of dross in his search for regular first team opportunities.

Now obviously, if you’re good enough, you’re good enough, but you suspect that this Chelsea squad wouldn’t know ‘good enough’ if it gatecrashed their dressing room wielding a confetti cannon and a plank of wood with a nail hammered through one end of it. As such, Colwill could seek the assurance of more minutes further afield, with Tottenham, Manchester City, and Liverpool all too happy to indulge him. Be warned though, dear Levi, one of those could be a trap. At what point do we start putting Kalvin Phillips’ face on milk cartons?

And finally, talks remain ongoing between Manchester United and David de Gea over a new contract. The goalkeeper is content at Old Trafford, but the club want him to take a significant pay cut. Disagreement has ensued; sun rise, sun set. Life is but a hamster wheel on a carousel and one day every scrap of paper on which these deals are written, the money they so blithely promise, and, hey, even our very bones themselves will be nothing but dust and cosmic mulch, scattered amongst the stars by the tails of comets like pollen spores spilling from a bumblebee’s undercarriage. None of it matters, we are fleeting specks, everything is sound. Embrace a cheery, pin-headed nilhilism; watch MTV.