In this modern era of twitter, facebook, message boards and email, things spread….really fast! Sadly when people don’t get a joke, things can get a bit embarrassing, and that was the case with the recent Europa Cup tie between Aris Thessaloniki and Manchester City.
What was supposed to be a high class function to celebrate new connections between football clubs soon turned into a bit of a shocker for the Aris hierarchy. It was with great excitement that City Chief Exec Gary Cook was presented with a copy of the program for the first leg of the European tie.
It had to be impressive, it had to be a good product, it had to be worthy of such a big game in the Greek club’s history, they were playing the richest team in the world, it needed to build bridges with the East Manchester club……sadly however someone, somewhere, a now legendary person made what could be politely described as a bit of a cock up, a cock up of Baldrick proportions.
The mystery person had taken to the internet to find a picture of the City squad for the clubs programme. Easy? Sure, we are all aware of google image search, so the hapless soul sat and googled the words ‘Manchester City Squad 2011’ and to speed things up he probably saved the first image he came across and inserted it into the Programme.
Sadly however, upon viewing it, the face of Gary Cook dropped and contorted, there was a problem. The squad picture was heavily photo-shopped, it had done the rounds of the Internet 12 months previously at the height of City’s spending spree. The ‘squad’ in the image was 60 strong, something which would have been difficult to manage with the new 25 man squad rules! It included such stars as Wayne Rooney, Fernando Torres, Mesut Ozil , Didier Drogba, Lionel Messi and Wally amongst others.
Members of the City board took the error well and saw the funny side, but the Aris delegation were so shocked and embarrassed that they ordered all copies of the programme to be pulped, and much like the book ‘Bouncing Back’ by the legend that is Alan Partridge, it was no more! Sadly hardly any copies went on sale the night of the game and I think travelling City fans would have enjoyed the mistake, but in having them pulped, the few copies that did make it out are now collectors items and are already appearing on ebay.
Well we know the fate of the Programme’s, but what of the poor person that made the error and had them printed in the first place? Hopefully he has not been pulped along with his work!
As a bit of an extra tit-bit, some genius at Bolton was asked to write a story about the signing of Daniel Sturridge but managed in his or her wisdom to use a picture of Danny Welbeck along side it….good work there too!
Any other football pictorial cock ups? Lets hear them! @soccercityjoe on twitter
