Some football cliches can be surreal to the point of disturbing the listener, a prime example being 'the keeper made himself big'. When you hear it, you're put in mind of the terrible Tom Hanks movie Big, where little Tom becomes big Tom for a tedious hour of television before deciding he'd rather be little Tom after all. Of course it's creepy as hell given that Hanks is really a child carrying on with a grown woman, but it's still not as creepy as this cliche. What the action amounts to is a goalkeeper placing his feet a meter apart and extending his arms, not a bad idea for someone whose job is to stop the ball going into the goal, yet whether through boredom, frustration or sheer insanity, Britain's commentators have to take a normal situation and make it strange.
