when football brutality counts as fair play

I’m not one of them, but many people attach importance to role models in sport and the presumed ability of successful men and women to have a positive impact on young people.

So how does this square with the indisputable evidence that cheating, lying and violence are integral to the great game of football? The new video assistant referees (VARs) don’t tell us anything we didn’t know before. But now we can watch, unendingly in glorious controlled slow motion, behavior which could easily get us arrested if it was outside a pub or prosecuted for perjury in a court of law.

We should not blame the footballers alone of course. Referees, football authorities and media commentators are complicit in the illusion of a game of skill played according to a rule book. The use of brutality is frequently acknowledged as “fair play” by broadcasters if it prevents a goal from being scored. Supporters seem more conflicted. They’ll howl with outrage when one of their side is the victim of an offence which goes unpenalised, but admire the gamesmanship if the same player kicks the feet from under an opponent.

It’s not so much the offences dressed up as footballing tactics that irritate me. I’m personally safer if this amorality and criminality is confined to as field where St Johns Ambulance are on patrol.

What I find mildly distasteful is the indignity of attention-seeking young men rolling helplessly on their backs like overturned wood lice. (Yes it is mainly men – sexual equality has yet to demean the women’s game to the same extent.) It’s the hypocrisy of pretending there are rules without the intention to apply them. And ultimately, I suppose, it’s the disappointment of seeing a game which can be characterised by extraordinary skill and brilliant teamwork reduced so often at the highest levels to a playground scrap.

I’d like to see an occasional game of football where the more serious infringements are actually treated as serious by the referee. This would involve every player who attacks an opponent in a way which could cause an injury receiving a red card. It would involve every player who falls over and writhes on the ground with the express purpose of impugning the sportsmanship of someone else receiving a red card. It would involve every player who uses violence to stop a goal receiving a red card. Should it prove difficult to identify the offender when two players clash and one of them falls over, they should both be sent off – less as a formal penalty than a warning to others.

And if the only people left on the pitch at the end of the match are the referee and two goalkeepers trying to resolve their differences with a staring competition, I for one would be happy that a point had been made. Even if no goal had been scored.

At least it would show up all the other games where this course isn’t taken to be the festivals of devious malevolence that they really are. Sadly more Hunger Games than Beautiful Game.

Perhaps I’m overstating my case. Really it’s a matter of indifference to me whether footballers gather together in public places to cheat and gouge one another to victory. But let’s not tell the kids that these performers are admirable or that their struggles are worthy of emulation.

20.6.18