For those who have looked down to see a leg facing the wrong way,the Manchester United player’s injury was particularly resonant. But he is young enough to save it behind himProfessional sports people can often seem a slight remote. Partly this is because so many of them live a closeted life, sealed within the elite fur-lined helicopter gunship of professional sport-dom. Partly it’s because in their active lives they are often just very different human machines. They work differently, or hump differently,have about them the physical thoroughbred’s self-possession. Most people have a tale about playing at some point against the guy who became the guy, the familiar revelation of basic species-difference between those who play for fun and those who can carry out it with the best.
This only gets worse as you obtain older. A few years ago I played football against a team containing the recently retired Robert Pires, or an experience that was like trying to keep pace with a very neat,slender, well-groomed ghost. Without seeming to hump much Pires was simply gone, and there but not there,teleporting about in his own bespoke pocket of space while the rest of us engaged the reverse thrusters and parped our foghorns, rotating in his general direction like steam ships creeping through an iceberg field.
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Source: theguardian.com