“I have never seen a man get so many massages. I’m sure he spent more time getting massages than he did training, guaranteed.”
That was Brede Hangeland’s experience of Dimitar Berbatov, as told to the Heia Football podcast in Norway, as reported by the English-speaking media last week. He was asked about his all-time laziest XI and answered accordingly.
It is the kind of impression you might actually expect a player like Dimitar Berbatov to have on teammates – especially the defenders he came up against in training. His nonchalant swagger meant he never really looked much like a top footballer – more like a stroppy rock star. With his demeanour on the pitch, stick a hat on his head and strap a guitar around his back and his trudge creates the rest of the image by itself.
But if you’re going to be lazy, you have to be very good indeed.
Last season, when Dimitri Payet was still West Ham’s wonder boy, there was a theory: Payet’s innate inability to work hard for his team was offset by his brilliance and the fact that his teammates saw it. They saw he could do more for them the more they did for him. So they did his dirty work, and he came up with the magic.
With hindsight, it’s easy to see how such a situation ended in tears rather than trophies.
Berbatov has similar tendencies, even if he is a very different player.
The gait and demeanour are part of a wider image from a player whose image was almost everything. He could be as frustrating as he was brilliant – and he could certainly be frustrating. Imagine how brilliant he could be, then.
As with every enigmatic genius on a football pitch, though, there is a touch of the tragic about Berbatov – he was chronically underrated, partly due to his lack of explosivity and partly because he was chronically under-bothered.
And if there is one goal to sum up the Bulgarian’s approach to football it is surely his lob for Monaco against Nice in Ligue 1 in 2014.
https://vine.co/v/M13WxqFl6hg
That goal wasn’t born out of skill, nor was it born out of seeing a keeper off his line. It wasn’t born out of magic, magnificence or even some makeshift necessity. It may well have become all of those things. But it was born out of laziness.
The cross from which the ball was cleared initially was hit with laziness, and the motion used to send the ball over the goalkeeper was the same as the cross: lethargic and lazy.
And yet it was perfect. The laziness, the nonchalance and the fact that he didn’t seem to care if it went in or not, he just didn’t want to have to put any more thought or effort into that action. And instead of thinking about it, he just sent it into the net.
No goal epitomises the surly Bulgarian more than that goal. It epitomises his entire attitude towards football – the laziness and the genius. This golden goal is a lazy lob.