The great Radric Delantic Davis, known professionally as Gucci Mane -- who would have still been known as Gucci Mane had he pursued soccer instead of rap -- once explained how someone can have "the sauce." The interviewer asks him: "Is it hard to be fresh if you don’t have money or can you still pull it off?"
Gucci replies: "See, when I ain’t have no money, I still had sauce. See if you ain’t got no sauce then ya lost. But you can also get lost in the sauce."
The interviewer then asks: "How can you get lost in the sauce?"
Dimitri Payet has an overdose of sauce. But as Gucci says, a man is not born in this state, it’s practically impossible. You can’t be born with seasoning -- the thought itself is preposterous. You have to acquire the sauce. This is why Payet had to struggle at Le Havre, why he had to work at a clothes shop to supplement his meager wages at Nantes, and why he had to rise through Lille and Olympique de Marseille. It’s why France had to lose at the Euros. Each obstacle, each hardship and subsequent bounce back contributed to his sauce.
Now in his second year at West Ham United, the full-cheeked magician is dripping with it.
But the question still remains, how can one get lost in the sauce?
This isn’t an issue of Payet becoming so enamored with himself that he loses his way, but rather as Gucci explains, only someone else can get lost in your sauce. It’s like a gravitational pull so strong that the other person forgets their senses and become intoxicated with your being.
For example, Payet’s rabona cross was so saucy, filled with so much seasoning, that Miguel Britos, the Watford defender, had no choice but to get lost in it.
When Payet drives at him, Britos probably convinced himself that he was ready for the challenge. And when Payet pushed the ball to the outside, Britos must have thought that he had the Frenchmen in his trap; there was no way for Payet to go and no route for him to get the ball into the box. But these thoughts are delusions, the silly man was lost in the sauce and he didn’t even know it.
The Cruyff turn broke the spell, the rabona broke his heart.
Look at how Britos watched the cross as it found Antonio at the far-post and then how he looked at Payet after, both in shock and in despair, before bending down to grab his socks in embarrassment. He was lost and didn’t realize it until it was too late. Payet was Leonardo DiCaprio in Britos’ dreams, and only after the goal did Britos come to the conclusion that the situation, which he thought he was in control of, had been implanted by the attacker.
Britos had been incepted. Played like a fool. Hoodwinked. Scammed, swindled, duped, taken to the cleaners; had the wool pulled over his eyes, bamboozled, done a number on, hornswoggled, roped in and then ripped off, played for a sucker and victimized. The whole damn thing was a hoax.
But it’s not just him, the entire defense was mesmerized. They were dancing with Payet as well, while watching their colleague get led astray and were so lost in the deepness of the sauce, the avalanche of seasoning, that none could react sensibly as the ball floated above them and into Antonio. All they could do was to look at the linesman for solace after.
Payet doesn’t even celebrate the goal, he just turns around and walks away as if the mixing of a defender, which ends in a rabona assist, was routine. Because it is. Because that man has so much sauce that he doesn’t even notice or care too much when some drips off in the form of a spectacular play like that. He’s dropping sauce as we speak right now. Some defender, whether one of his children or a random person on the street, is entranced in that man’s aura at this moment.
I guess the consolation is that Watford won the game. Three points in exchange for Britos’ soul. That may be enough for now, but he will have to face Payet down the road again, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he curled up in the fetal position and wept at the sight of the most saucy one. Highly flavored and seasoned.