Gods loves a tryer and I love Emile Heskey. Heskey played up front for Liverpool during a rather painful period in my adolescence(anyone who has ever owned a football jersey can relate) when your clubs faults were YOUR faults. Actually, fuck adolescence, when my dads on his deathbed my bro and I will still be giving him stick about being from Donegal-the only Northern county to experiment(unsuccesfully) with that ‘fancy short passing shite’.
Anyway, I’m going off the point. Heskey was shite, the butt and inspiration of a thousand jibes. He couldn’t hit a barn door with a tractor. Milk turned faster and wasn’t quite so thick. Remember David Blaine? Even he got in on it: “Who can spend years in a box without doing anything? Emile Heskey!”. During Houlliers reign, Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey summed up Liverpudlian mediocrity-but he hung in there.
Heskey, who scored less often than some centrebacks, managed to play premiership football almost every week-and for an alright team too! It wasn’t raw talent that got him there, not by a long shot, but pure selfless honesty, guts and hard work(or what must’ve been one hell of an agent)(or the fact that Gerard Houllier was the craziest mutha to ever be left in charge of a premiership football team-seriously, Jimmy Traore?)). In retrospect, it was fantastic-at the time-I turned away every time he touched the ball. His time at Liverpool is best described with figures: in the year 2000 he signed for 11million, in 2004 he was sold for 3. A star striker he most certainly was not.
But again, he hung in there. Heskey is still playing premiership football week in week out, albeit for Wigan. Dwight Yorke and Aunty Cole aren’t. Roy Keane and Patrick Viera aren’t. Gus Poyet and Dennis Wise aren’t. Heskeys still around, and scoring. He’s scored 2 goals in six days, pretty impressive, bringing his total goal tally for the season to (cough) 4. To put that in perspective Ronaldo is around 36 and Adebayore is around 24.
But the big man still gets his game and if you were to ask me straight up if it was pissing rain, in a mud bath, in a relegation battle against someone like Bolton, one nil down with two minutes left and I had to choose between playing Christiano Ronaldo and Emile Heskey I’d pick Heskey.
Why? 2 reasons. 1) I’m an idiot, and a romantic (2) Heskey doesn’t give up, he’s a survivor- guys like Ronaldo will never work as hard as him when the going gets tough
Another thing I like about Heskey is his loyalty. He was part of a consortium that bailed out a bankrupt Leicester a few years ago. He donated a six figure sum to the club that brought him through at youth level-how many people would do that? Thats real class
I’m gonna print this out and use it to get signatures when I start up the “Emile Heskey Appreciation Society”. I’ll be in the foyer of DIT Aungiers st. next September if anyones interested in joining
