LONDON’S best pub-based fantasy football World Cup competition will be named after former Middlesbrough Brazilian flop Emerson, it was announced today.
Best remembered in England for his two-season stint on Teeside in the 1990s, Emerson’s unfulfilled potential, meandering CV, failure to appear for his national side and dodgy haircut were key factors in the Kenna HQ committee’s decision to make him the contest’s figurehead.
For the first time the traditional auction will be held on the opening day of the tournament, Thursday 12 June. The match between Brazil and Croatia will kick off halfway through an auction experts predict will last around five hours.
“The 2014 Emerson World Cup auction will be a continuous, high intensity affair that will test managers’ skills to the very limit,” enthused the chairman.
“Players will be auctioned thick and fast, and among distractions like the opening tournament game on a pub TV in the background and regular round-buying we can expect entrants to find themselves falling foul of the Titus Bramble forfeit ruling,” he said, with a nod to the Horn of Africa manager’s unprecedented resignation during the 2012 Emmanuel Olisadebe Euros auction.
As with the 2010 Dr Khumalo World Cup in South Africa before it, the Emerson will limit managers to buying no more than one player of any nationality.
Managers will also be required to set their teams out in a rigid 4-4-2 formation, a proven formula at international level.
The Emerson winner will receive an estimated £150 cash prize, with the two runners up also getting their mitts on some dosh.
In a move away from previous international tournaments, there will be no prize for the best individual player. Instead a radical new system will see the team with the worst disciplinary record winning the Emerson Unfair Play award. It is hoped the award will keep wider interest further into the competition.
In unrelated news, the official partner of the 2014 Emerson World Cup has been confirmed as Soul Glo – a Jheri Curl product: Let Your Soul Shine Through.