Neil Humphreys: Thanks for the comedy, Luiz
After Covid-19 tears, the EPL sends in the clown
David Luiz transcends football. He's a karma chameleon with a funny haircut.
The occasional Arsenal defender is whatever the world needs him to be. In the early hours of yesterday morning, we needed a clown.
We just didn't know it at the time.
Until Luiz delivered his comedy class, we had gathered nervously. Football was back and none of us were entirely sure how we felt about it.
OK, football was already back. From South Korea to Germany, grown men had been touching elbows in restrained goal celebrations for weeks. But for many, football is the English Premier League.
And what we witnessed at the Etihad wasn't quite the EPL or football. It was the same, but different, often upliftingly so.
Before Manchester City and Arsenal kicked off, the players and staff gathered in an empty stadium and bowed their heads for the lives lost to Covid-19.
More than 40,000 died in the UK, thousands more worldwide, including Pep Guardiola's mother. Poignantly, beautifully, Manchester's heavens opened right on cue, hiding the tears in the rain.
But there was nothing for the lump in the throat when the players suddenly dropped a knee and emphasised the message on their jerseys. Black lives matter.
Football can get things infuriatingly wrong when it comes to international politics, frequently putting cash before conscience, but this gesture had never felt more right.
The funereal tone of the occasion threatened to overwhelm the match, as if the trivial act of kicking a ball around might seem crass or insensitive.
But Luiz was waiting on the bench, perhaps sensing that his otherworldly skills were about to be called upon.
Like the uncle who cracks the first joke at a family wake to bring a touch of levity to proceedings, the Brazilian was ready.
Luckily, Luiz still plays for a side that has been judiciously called "in transition". Everyone else just calls Arsenal "rubbish".
When Pablo Mari became one of several injured Gunners to resemble a fallen tree, Luiz rose from his soaked seat, eager to do his duty.
Not a hair was in place. Indeed Luiz's hairstyle seems to be in keeping with his general thought process: Plenty of wavy lines, but nothing quite connects.
On the stroke of half-time, the centre-back steeled himself to make a routine clearance as Kevin de Bruyne's infield ball spun towards him.
BLOB OF BUTTER
And then the karma chameleon remembered his greater purpose. He shape-shifted into a blob of butter.
He raised a thigh, as if preparing to launch into a retro MC Hammer dance for older fans watching at home. The ball cannoned off his leg and into the path of a City forward.
But it wasn't just any City forward. Luiz is far too methodical in his clowning to be so random.
His thigh pass had to find Raheem Sterling, the outstanding voice of a younger, multi-racial generation demanding equality for all.
Sterling's work throughout the lockdown has been both exemplary and humbling. Scoring the first goal of Project Restart was the very least that he deserved.
And as the ball looped onto his boot, the camera caught Luiz's horrified face, perfectly frozen in time.
He looked like a man with erratic bowel movements who had just realised that he was never going to find a toilet.
And the strangest thing happened. I laughed.
Hopefully, you did, too.
I laughed so much I had to rewind the footage to check the scene had played out exactly as the giggling brain had insisted.
The slippery thigh-trap, the ballooning ball, the wide-eyed look of terror, it really was a minor masterpiece of buffoonery and a chance to exhale.
We were back. We were home. The home looks and feels different, but there was a welcome sense of deja vu in Luiz's daftness.
The game needed something off the wall to calm nerves and perhaps even ease one's guilt in watching sport during a pandemic. So karma sent in the clown.
Naturally, the incorrigible showstopper couldn't help himself.
Early in the second half, Luiz found himself the wrong side of Riyad Mahrez's time zone, so he turned into a demented butcher and grabbed as many body parts as he could until the referee awarded a penalty and sent him off, paving the way for City to win 3-0.
He sacrificed himself so others could laugh at him. And we did.
His calamitous performance was a reminder of what the game will always provide, whatever the circumstances: comedy, madness, incompetence, fury, joy and the odd glimpse of genius.
The strange, muted game was hardly a classic, but Luiz gave us a bit of a laugh.
And that'll do nicely for now.
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