There are times watching the football melodrama unfold when you are half expecting a voice to shout “cut” and Quentin Tarantino to emerge from behind a megaphone exclaiming: “Brilliant Conte, you really let that motherf***er Mourinho have it.” There are plenty out there who discern entertainment in the puerile spat between Mr Blue and Mr Red, yet behind the knockabout trading of insults there is a heap of connected messaging that is ruinous for the beautiful game. A chum of mine who invests much of his spare time as a leader and coach with the East Lancashire Football Alliance junior leagues, and who also serves on the Lancashire FA, posted a few pics on Twitter yesterday of the ELFA Under-7s Christmas competition winners.
Proud Parents
Rows of nippers lined-up cross-legged in their kits while the presentation took place, their parents and the coaches looking on proudly from behind. The snapshot revealed a behavioural code that I know is highly regarded up there. As much as the coaches want the boys and girls to excel they want them also to be decent people so they speak a lot about respect, tolerance and discipline, about how to behave on a football pitch. You can’t get a gaggle of seven-old-olds to sit patiently in groups for long without them understanding how to conduct themselves properly. Not surprisingly same the code of behavior is carried into matches. The kids give it everything, and they all want to win, but they accept that the match is governed by certain rules that must be respected and without which there there would be no game.
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And then they go home and switch on the TV where Reservoir Dogs is playing out with boots on. The most depressing episode of the past week for me was not the bovine exchange between Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho, nor the infantile attacks by Arsene Wenger on referees, though both examples were bad enough, but the conflagration that swept up Everton’s brilliant young prospect Mason Holgate.
Dispiriting
His altercation with Roberto Firmino was as unnecessary as it was dispiriting. Allegations of racial abuse that followed are yet to be substantiated, have been denied by Firmino, and are self evidently reprehensible. But so, too, was the rank thuggery that saw Holgate heave Firmino into the perimeter hoardings. Holgate is not the exception in football but the norm, his buttons set to full-on machismo mode. The confrontational posturing as Firmino reacted has become the de rigueur method of validation for young lads. Of course he has every right to react angrily to racist abuse, though we stress not proven in this case, but the worry is the degree of snarling disrespect that he carried in his attitude towards his opponent in the first place. Holgate has learned this behaviour, and in turn is teaching by example those seven-year-olds kids who worship him.
Integrity
This kind of deportment is directly linked to the conduct of managers who trade insults and invoke dementia to belittle rivals, who question the integrity of referees every time a decision goes against them, and who slam opponents for diving but sanction with their silence the cheating of their own simulators. Is there no-one in a position of responsibility prepared to stand up and call the miscreants to account? Where are the leaders in this game? Why is none at the FA, the League Managers’ Association, the Premier League taking a visible stand? Can they not join the dots? Do they not see the damage that is being done? Or maybe they think ranting managers shouting abuse at each other, the routine Source:[inews.co.uk] hounding of officials, the dangerous manhandling of opponents, adds to the gaiety of life and is good for business.
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