Squid Game live at Bilbao and Wembley
... welcome to the million-pound matches you cannot afford to lose
Squid Game returns to our screens for its chilling season finale earlier than expected this week. Three last gruesome episodes exploring the lengths that humans will go in order to gain untold wealth.
Prize money in the Championship Play-Off final is up to £220 million now, qualification for the Champions League via the Europa League or the Race for 5th is valued at £100 million.
These are not races that anyone can afford to lose.
There is also a major trophy on offer in northern Spain on Wednesday but Manchester United have already taken a decision not to parade it. Never mind the silverware, just deposit the gold in our bank account as soon as possible please.
The Europa League and Play-Off finals share one curious thing between them. The prize for success is an escape from the competition you have just won.
People queue to buy lottery tickets in the hope that they may never have to queue for anything ever again. The players in Bilbao and at Wembley are playing to try to put their dark pasts behind them and flee to the sunlit uplands of the Champions and Premier Leagues. They should be careful what they wish for.
Success in elite sport is usually a reward for clear headway, a sign of concrete progress along an upward curve. But which of the teams competing for promotion or Champions League spots in the coming days are significantly better than they were a year ago?
Sunderland definitely. Forest probably. Newcastle and Sheffield Uniteds maybe.
Among the many mixed messages that Ruben Amorim is randomly sending out is that Manchester United need Champions League football in order to recruit and improve but are not nearly ready to compete on Europe’s main stage. It’s almost as if he is trying to prepare United fans for yet more defeats ahead.
Winning the Europa League final might be like winning a competition to swim with the sharks. This is not Arsene Wenger questioning United’s right to jump into the deep end but more a poolside warning not to get out of your depth. They have reached this final on the back of the heroics of Bruno and Harry and Casemiro. Their future hasn’t begun to catch up with their past yet. Could a future in the Champions League actually hinder that process?
The rewards, both in terms of income and uplift, are too tempting to pass on. The same is true for Spurs. Just the very sound of the Champions League anthem echoing around their super stadiums will be motivation enough come kick off on Wednesday. If victory in a final between 16th and 17th might have a slightly hollow ring to it that doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t be enjoyed.
There is still something special about a hole-in-one even if it comes in the middle of a round of 100. If you’re driving off in the sponsors’ Aston Martin, you’re not going to shed too many tears about missing the cut.
The tears for the beaten team in Bilbao will be real, though. There will be no gallant losers in this final, no silver lining decorating the black cloud that hangs over fans that have lost count of the number of defeats they’ve had to endure and lost patience with those responsible for them. The victors will do well to look hard at those tossing away their losers’ medals and think how it might have been them contemplating a season without any European football.
It's the size of the prize in the ‘Red Light, Green Light’ games coming the way of these football reality game contestants that makes them so compelling. The size of the prize and the emptiness of defeat. As in Squid Game, some won’t survive it.
Much as you might wince at the idea of Patrick Dorgu or Djed Spence lining up against Lamine Yamal and Desire Doue next season, a passport to the big league is a ticket to ride with opportunity and aspiration. It’s the kindly ‘thank you for coming, we’ll keep your details’ that is awaiting United or Spurs that is the real jeopardy in Bilbao. The long walk back down into the cells. It’s a horrible final to lose.
Defeat next Saturday at Wembley will be even worse. Sunderland and Sheffield United are two of the 4 best-supported clubs in the Championship. Both have spent more of their proud histories in the top-flight than in the divisions below. Each have suffered enough in modern times not to entertain any divine right to a seat at the top table but promotion would represent a return to the level where they feel as though they belong. Only one can get there.
One of the things that has struck me during my initial research for commentating on the Final is how many of the players involved are thought likely to play in the Premier League next season with or without their current employers. They are also two of the 3 youngest teams in the second tier and so talents like Jobe Bellingham, Michael Cooper and Chris Rigg are being circled by the big birds of prey already.
For Chris Wilder or Regis Le Bris to be able to continue the work they studiously began last year, they simply must win at Wembley. Defeat will expose their best assets to be stripped away, their best loan signings returned, their team-building to begin all over again… and in a Championship toned by the financial muscle of Birmingham City and Wrexham next season. Loyalty cards can soon run out. Ask Rob Edwards, ask Russell Martin.
The numbers at stake are ball-park figures dreamt up by marketeers and media men but, with a new television deal kicking in next season, it’s a particularly juicy year to get back into the Premier League. An extended Champions League offers twice the rewards of the Europa League even if you don’t make it past the first phase. It won’t build you a new Hill Dickinson home but you can show your face at the summer auctions without Jorge Mendes laughing in it.
These do-or-die spring showdowns are creations of the same weird imaginations that dream up Beast Games and Celebrity Traitors to grow our bingeing appetites for feasts of extreme human emotions and endeavour. In Squid Game, they are not real. Not yet.
In football, they are as real as it gets. Sunderland booked their place at Wembley with a goal in the 122nd minute of their semi-final, United scored in the 120th and 121st minute of their European quarter-final.
If one or both of this week’s finals go further still into the Player 456 world of a penalty-shoot-out, imagine the dizzy value of one swing of a footballer’s leg.
As a commentator on both games, I’ll be searching for the words to somehow capture the moment. Maybe a moment of silent reflection about the monsters we have created will be more apt. Good luck to all involved.