Shakespeare - but not Craig, the former Leicester City manager

Shakespeare- but not Craig, the former Leicester City manager.

Football management can, as we all know, be a cruel business. One minute everything is hunky dory and roses around cottages and then it comes back to bite you when you should have known that something was amiss and the results wouldn't come down in your favour. Last week Craig Shakespeare was sacked by Leicester City, somewhat deludedly you felt, by a chairman convinced that  the Premier League title could be won every season. This was clearly a case of wishful thinking.

 When Claudio Ranieri was given the old heave ho by Leicester last season, some of us thought they had indeed lost the plot. Ranieri, after all, was the man who'd achieved the impossible dream of winning the Premier League title. Then Shakespeare arrived and even the most discerning of Leicester fans thought that Macbeth had paid a visit to the King Power Stadium. It would have been nice to know who were the heroes and villains in this plot. Suffice it to say that no witches spells were cast over the Midlands club and dear old Banquo had nothing to do with Leicester's temporary blip in form.

This seems the perfect opportunity to imagine what the great Bard would have thought of today's Premier League football had he been alive today. For a start the offside rule would have been some garbled language and law that Shakespeare would have found completely incomprehensible. The Arsenal back four of Tony Adams, Steve Bould, Nigel Winterburn and Lee Dixon would probably have driven Shakespeare mad. What was all that histrionic waving and gesturing about when quite obviously all that was needed was a good old fashioned helping of poetic verse? But then Shakespeare never met George Graham and marbled halls would have made an excellent Shakespearean location.

What, for instance, would Shakespeare have made of goal line technology, players surrounding referees when dubious goals are scored, the half time break, those goal posts and crossbars? And there is something about those nets that may have been lost in even the Bard's understanding of sport. Why are there two nets at opposite ends of a football pitch when the whole story could have been summed up much more succinctly with a classic quote and soliloquy or two on stage?

Then you'd have to explain to our great playwright that the only reason a football match lasts for 90 minutes is because an hour and half is long enough to resolve some tribal argument. You suspect that one of Britain's finest of story tellers would simply have been perplexed by all that diving, ducking, tackling and, every so often that wretched gamesmanship on the pitch where players seem to pay a flattering homage to Othello.

Now of course we all know about the FA Cup third round at the beginning of January. Here Shakespeare would have had a field day. The FA Cup third round is an obvious reference to Romeo and Juliet. It could hardly be anything else. The romance and passion is somehow integral to the whole narrative but no football club ever suffered a tragic fate at the end of it all although non League Sutton United did once beat the high flying old First Division side Coventry in 1989. Some dreams do indeed come true.

Suddenly complications would set in. How to explain the meaning of the high pressing game, the tracking back of forwards to defend their goal in a mini crisis, the finer nuances of probing and scheming, hunting in packs, putting the ball into the mixer, the art of the perfectly placed tackle, the stopper or sweeper or the fluid formations and the diamond formations? The Bard, you feel sure, may well have needed time to take in too much information and besides England's greatest of story tellers certainly didn't need any sponsorship or advertising.

Football remains essentially the simple and most easily understood of all sports but the feeling is that the Stratford-on- Avon wordsmith may well have been at a complete loss when wrestling with the mazy complexities of 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, even 5-4-3-2-1 because 4-2-4 didn't make any sense and besides the wing backs weren't supporting the inside rights and outside lefts while those strikers were lying far too deep. Phraseology was always Shakespeare's strongest asset but even the most complicated of words would have needed proper explanation for the great man.

What, you suspect, would Shakespearean have made of all those furious and irate football managers on the touchline constantly punching their fists  while jumping up and down like one of those 1970s space hoppers that the kids once so adored. The purists have always regarded football as a logical extension of the theatre anyway. But how would our William have reacted to the likes of Jose Mourinho with those impassioned rants, that moody and morose body language, the barely concealed contempt that the Portugese maestro can hardly hold back?

There was of course Sir Alex Ferguson and this is one subject matter Shakespeare may well have gone into chapter and verse about. For 90 minutes of almost every Manchester United match Ferguson was a one man chewing gum machine, forever rolling gum in his mouth and slowly descending into a world of gnawing anxiety and red faced anger. You suspect that even Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to find an appropriate role for Ferguson in any of his plays. He would undoubtedly have been enormously fascinated by Ferguson's changing expressions and pained facial mannerisms. To be or not to be may well have been the Fergie mantra. How desperately frustrating football could be for Ferguson.

On Wednesday football would have offered more than adequate material for the Bard. Slaven Bilic stood on a Wembley touchline watching his West Ham side sinking lower and lower into a deep, dark pit of hellish agony. For almost the entire first half  Bilic once again watched his West Ham team being completely embarrassed by a Tottenham team who had taken Liverpool apart last Sunday. The Carabao Cup may well be backed by a Thai energy drinks company but it was West Ham who looked drained of energy and far more in need of something distinctly stronger.

But then as if Shakespeare had come back to life for just one more time Bilic emerged for the second half visibly more sure of himself and full of the joys of autumn. Suddenly a great literary genius had worked a miracle on the West Ham manager. The slumped shoulders and the bent back were no longer in evidence and Shakespeare had turned Bilic into Puck from A Midnight Summer's Dream. The transformation was now complete and when Angelo Ogbonna scored West Ham's winning third goal against Spurs, Bilic must have felt a kindly tap on his shoulder from many centuries ago. It isn't often that Premier League footballers can find salvation in a writer from Stratford Upon Avon.

So it is that we remember the legend of Shakespeare and take our imagination back to the present day. Football managers and referees would have been a sitting target for the man who so revolutionised the world of English literature. They fold their arms with that very judgmental look on their faces, glaring and sneering their disapproval, always frowning and squinting in the bright autumnal sun light, then letting off steam like the proverbial pressure cooker. If only Shakespeare had met Craig in the middle of a Leicester car park. Richard the Third would have been such an apt title for a play about Leicester managers. Besides this will be Leicester's third manager in just over a year.