Stormzy gets the Roy Keane seal of approval on his punditry debut

Niall McIntyre

“You’ve just got to let the man be great. You’ve got to let the goats be the goats.” – Stormzy.

Jamie Carragher said it himself on Monday Night Football and if you’re a United fan or a Liverpool fan or an Arsenal fan it doesn’t matter. Because every one of us can see that the guard changed on Monday night.

Luke Shaw covered his mouth when the camera panned to him mid-way through Man United’s 2-1 win over Liverpool. The aim was to disarm the lip-readers but as he sat there on the United bench, glumly and ironically and helplessly beside Harry Maguire, you didn’t need a lip-reader to tell you what he was thinking.

Because we were all thinking the same thing.

The circumstances and the emotions are different but only a few rows away from them, unbelievable as this might seem, the situation is the exact same. Cristiano Ronaldo was looking out on the Old Trafford pitch to see that, without him, his team were playing the best football they’d played in ages.

Sometimes two and two does make four – he might even have been thought that himself – but that’s where Stormzy comes into it.

On what was a brilliant Monday Night Football offering from Sky Sports, what with Cristiano Ronaldo nipping over to the boys during his warm-up, with Casemiro making his way over to shake the hand that shook the world (Roy Keane’s,) it was the English rapper Stormzy who drew the whole thing to a close.

They all want to shake the hand that shook the world pic.twitter.com/DeVBbDJlQE

— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) August 23, 2022

And in his hoodie and a pair of sliders, he left us with the point of the night.

Presenter Dave Jones asked the question that was on Shaw’s mind and Maguire’s mind but whatever about those two, it might even have been on Ronaldo’s mind too – ‘Could this be the last time we see him at Old Trafford?’

But Stormzy’s answer, as far Roy Keane could see anyway, was perfect.

“No, no no, do you know, when it’s Ronaldo, you can’t speak on him.

“You’ve just got to let the man be great. As much as there’s been a bit of a fuss, that’s a Goat. And You’ve got to let the goats be the goats.”

“Good answer,” responded the Cork man.

And there and then, with Stormzy and Roy Keane in front of us, the pair of them agreeing about football – if you think about it, we were surely looking at a duo living in a moment we thought we might never see.