An ode to Piero Hincapie’s arse and a reminder of what football is all about | OneFootball

Monday was a momentous day in English football. Arsenal closed in on a first Premier League title in over 20 years as a bolt from the sky blue declared Pep Guardiola’s decision to leave Manchester City at the end of the season.

But that’s not what we’re interested in. No. There was something else that happened yesterday. Something bigger than that. Something large.

Burnley’s Axel Tuanzebe and Arsenal’s Piero Hincapie tangled in the penalty area at the Emirates, and somehow – it doesn’t matter how – the result was that Hincapie’s shorts came down and his arse came out.

That’s the story. If you’ve got a football history book at home, take it out, throw it in the bin, it’s worthless.

The football history books will now have to be rewritten. They’ll simply say ‘Piero Hincapie’s arse came out’. Everything else will be a footnote.

We really aren’t still quite sure precisely how Tuanzebe and indeed Hincapie managed to do it.

Quite how Tuanzebe was able to tread on the tumbling Hincapie so delicately as to do no damage to anything even more privately personal than an arse, yet with sufficient force to send both Hincapie’s shorts and undercrackers for the full Bucks Fizz.

It was a lovely little tension defuser on a night that needed it. There was something humbling and rather magical in the discovery that even in these tribalistic times, where rival football fans feel more disconnected from each other than ever before, there are still things that can bring us all together.

We reckon there are three such events left at a football match.

One: an animal finding its way onto the playing area. Bonus points if the cat/dog/urban fox manages to give a stumbling steward the slip.

Two: a referee or linesman suffering a misfortune. Can be as simple as a straightforward stumble, or a referee dropping his cards, but the real points-scorer here on the “Wahay!” scale is when a linesman ends up on the accidental receiving end of a full-blooded full-back-on-winger touchline challenge.

Full-back goes into the advertising hoardings, lino goes down like a sack of spuds, flag flapping pathetically in the breeze. Who wouldn’t have their spirits lifted by that?

But then third: a player’s arse and anus accidentally becoming visible for a brief moment of time due to a shorts-based wardrobe malfunction.

Vital here that it is only ever the arse and anus and never the testicle and penis. That’s a different thing altogether, potentially requiring the jurisdiction of an authority greater even than Stockley Park.

A bit of harmless arse cheek, though? Good for the soul, that. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s laughing. Everybody’s having a nice time.

Crucially, in this case, up to and including Hincapie himself. There is no victim here. Everyone wins.

There are two human responses to the sudden, unexpected sensation of cold evening air on pink bumcheek skin.

The first and surely most naturally instinctive for most of us is an instant panic to rescue the situation before anyone sees. The second, less common response, is an almost proud luxuriating in the exposure of one’s arse.

There’s a certain confidence a man must carry to be as content as Hincapie was to be in any kind of public space with his arse out and yet be in possession of absolute certainty that there is no pimple or hair or worse on either cheek, east or west, to just lie there for several seconds as he did before rearranging his garments.

That’s true in a normal everyday setting – never mind in front of 60,000 people and countless cameras.

Even now we’re delighting in the thought that somewhere sits David Squires over a drawing board, carefully making sure to get the delicate curve of Hincapie’s derriere just so.

Doesn’t it just briefly make you feel slightly better about the bad things that happen? Doesn’t it just briefly lift you from the misery and drudgery of everyday life?

And isn’t that, ultimately, what this daft game is supposed to be all about?

So let’s hear it for Piero Hincapie and his bottom. To our mind, the most impressive thing we’ve seen from Arsenal’s champions elect all season.