Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira has left viewers in stitches after a post-match interview, reminding them of a Key & Peele sketch.
After Tuesday night’s 2-1 victory at home over Wolves, the ex-gunner while speaking to the panel of pundits on Amazon Prime’s coverage of the Premier League, appeared to shake hands with everyone except former Crystal Palace player Clinton Morrison.
Seeing that Morrison and Vieira are of the same racial heritage, this was seen as being comically reminiscent of the Key & Peele sketch of Barack Obama’s meet and greet after a presidential address.
The said sketch makes light of the fact that Obama only appears to do a very formal handshake with everyone except those of African-American ethnicity, whom he proceeds to either wholeheartedly hug or ‘give the dap’.
The humour comes from the apparent change in the mannerisms as ‘Obama’ moves on from person to person.
The same was hilariously, albeit unwittingly, recreated by Vieira as clips show him taking his leave and shaking hands with Premier League all-time top goal scorer Alan Shearer and Ally McCoist before embracing Clinton Morrison.
In reaction to this, Twitter threads went wild as comments started to pour in from fans, each taking note of the hilarity of it.
Some fans reasoned that the switch-up is supposed to be because of Clinton Morrison’s past and present association with the club Vieira is managing.
Seeing that, there’s bound to be a closeness between the two men.
The same is the case between managers of various other clubs and their past legends as well.
Morrison represented Crystal Palace during two spells of his career, first between 1998 to 2002 and then for the second time between 2005 and 2008.
He had plenty of highs at the club that endeared him to the Selhurst Park faithful, amongst which was the injury-time winner he scored on his debut for the club in 1998 against Sheffield Wednesday.
Managers are expected to know the history of the clubs they manage and often strike up friendships with those who came before them or are revered by the fans of the club.
This probably explains why only Clinton Morrison got the hug off of Vieira.
However, this didn’t prevent people from seeing the funny side of it all.
Crystal Palace fans aren’t short of reasons to be amused about this season, seeing that Vieira in only his first season as manager of the club managed to comfortably keep the Eagles in the Premier League, with a respectable 12th-position finish.
This came after years of management by veteran Roy Hodgson, with many players out of contract towards the end of his term.
The former ‘invincible’, in spite of the initial scepticism surrounding his limited experience in management, has managed to resolve the ageing personnel issues at the club.
Having brought in exciting young talents to the mix amongst the experience in the squad, Palace fans now enjoy an entertaining brand of football that is well-organized and can cause any top team problems under the management of Vieira, as they look set to comfortably stay in the league again.
