The loyalty card has expired
If it’s a ploy born more of desperation than calculation, then that only tallies with the consensus view that loyalty is a devalued commodity in the modern game whereas, in truth, it would probably be more accurate to say that it has become almost an irrelevance.
For the football romantic, this is, of course, a regrettable state of affairs, even more so for the little ’uns who are still innocent in the face of the modern game’s brute practicalities.
Short of learning the bad news about yer man above at the North Pole, I can imagine there must be few greater causes of youthful anguish than junior waking up one day to discover that the name on the back of his beloved replica shirt has suddenly passed its sell-by date.
And, yes, I can sympathise because, hell, some 40 years on, I’m still not sure I’m entirely over the pre-adolescent trauma of seeing Mick Leech wearing the blue of Waterford.
But while we can all still warm, in a nostalgic sort of way, to the reassuring idea of one-club men like Matt Le Tissier, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, it is perhaps high time we adjusted our expectations to accommodate the reality that, in the modern game, and especially at the elite level, circumstances have conspired to make such loyal servants an increasing rarity.
And whether you want to ascribe his motive for moving to lofty ambition or naked greed, the more familiar spectacle now is of a player kissing the badge one day and kissing the club goodbye the next.
Which makes me think that, as a friend put it recently, what should matter most these days is not so much loyalty to club as loyalty to team — in other words, the degree to which any given player gives his all in any given game, irrespective of his arrival and departure times at the club.
So, while you can legitimately debate the extent to which Suarez became a liability at Anfield through the lengthy absences that were nobody’s fault but his own, what’s inarguable is that, as the side’s most outstanding talent, he contributed more than any other player to the team in terms of goals, assists and the all-round electric quality of his play.
Or take Nicolas Anelka — as, indeed, many football clubs have. The now veteran Frenchman was in Turner’s Cross earlier this week, wearing the stripes of his latest employers West Bromwich Albion, having previously worn the colours of — deep breath — PSG, Arsenal, Real Madrid, PSG again, Liverpool, Manchester City, Fenerbahce, Bolton Wanderers, Chelsea, Shanghai Shehua and Juventus.
And while, like Suarez, Anelka has had his troubled times off the pitch, his performances throughout all that globetrotting have invariably given substance to the theory that while his team might be temporary, his class is permanent.
For those of us lucky enough to see him in the flesh last Tuesday, that superior quality was still swooningly evident.
As if bagging a hat-trick — including one wondrous strike — wasn’t enough to warm the cockles of the small visiting support, they could also revel in the quality of his touch and vision.
Selling more dummies than Mothercare, he appeared able to turn himself inside out in order to inflict the same effect on increasingly dizzy opponents, a sensation you could almost feel in the stands as your body instinctively leaned one way while he went the other.
I’ve always thought it a mark of the very best footballers that they can make playing the game seem almost absurdly easy, as if they’re somehow magically operating within a different space-time continuum to all the other gravity-bound bodies on the pitch.
Without appearing even to break sweat, that’s the impression Anelka conveyed at Turner’s Cross and, as much as it must have been a trial for his opponents, it was bliss for the spectators to watch.
Of course, it’s no insult to the many young players City had on the park on the night to say that, now back in the Premier League, Anelka will face a much stiffer examination of his talents throughout the coming season. And, no longer boasting the pace to burn of yesteryear, his compensatory ability to make the ball do the work for him could yet be found wanting in the white-heat intensity of England’s top-flight. We shall see.
If all goes according to plan, then West Brom — and Shane Long, in particular, one hopes — will reap the benefits of one of the signings of the season. And if not?
Well, before a ball is kicked in anger, I suppose there’s no point asking the little ’uns to refrain from putting Anelka’s name on the back of their shirts.
But, as for the more mature Baggies fans, they should surely know enough by now about the ways of the modern game to give the tattoo parlour the widest berth.
