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24th January 2018
03:11pm GMT

Let's just take a moment to fully absorb that headline/paragraph. 'Alexis Sanchez is being paid more by Manchester United...' good, strong start - people loooove banging on about much he's being paid. This'll do numbers for sure...'...than it cost to rebuild his home town after a devastating earthquake...' Whoooooaaa there Nelly! We weren't expecting that plot twist! '...but the locals still love him' They DO?! What, after he accepted a job offer for significant cash monies, despite the fact a natural disaster occurred over a decade ago? Well, they're more forgiving than me.
By anyone's standards - even one as carpet-skimming as that of the Mail - it's quite the leap. It takes a special kind of imagination to conjure up a headlining connection between a footballer's wage, and a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that killed people, damaged the local copper mining industry, trapped commuters in a collapsed highway tunnel, and displaced 15,000 locals. An 88-year-old pensioner was crushed under a collapsing wall in her home, but fuck yeah! Let's use it as an angle to highlight the fact that a much sought-after sportsman is being paid a fair wedge!
No doubt there's some level of actual research and journalistic endeavour that's gone into the actual body of the piece - even excusing the nonsensical mention of the 2007 Tocopilla earthquake that left locals mourning and homeless - but it is completely and utterly undermined by the atrocity of a headline above it. And indeed by the masthead of the Daily Mail above that. Maybe it's a private joke at the Mail offices - who can concoct the most ridiculous non-correlation of a leader as possible. If so, I'm in! Here's a few off the top of my head...
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