Way out made a bit easier
Granted him, early doors, the much coveted ‘Game Lad’ tag. Toyed, in my lyrical years, with ‘Reliable Servant’. Carried away in the golden Euro 2008 days, I allowed him ‘Good Option’. Eventually settled, with customary effusive generosity, on ‘Decent Player’.
Then, this week, he reappeared and the nitty gritty of his business mocked us provocatively. Fifty-two caps! When did that happen? Whither now, the previously reliable labelling credo; you don’t win 50 caps for Germany without being a Top Player.
Luckily, it doesn’t matter much now what kind of player Hitzlsperger was because his new label will suffice.
First Gay Prem Ace.
His coming out has shaken up the battle for places at the top of football’s homosexuality league table. Robbie Rogers has been knocked off top spot, since he was neither Prem nor, let’s face it, ace.
Anton Hysen has dropped into the European places and is close again to being introduced as Glenn’s young fella. It is hard, too, to see a climb out of mid-table mediocrity for Norwegian Thomas Berling.
Unfortunately, Justin Fashanu’s better days predate the invention of football in 1992 and he has been relegated. And women, it appears, have no chance of mixing it at the business end of this division.
Hitzlsperger, who noted the unhelpful media obsession with outing more players — ideally top, top ones — knows he will not have it all his own way at the summit and seems certain to lose out, eventually, to First Current Gay Prem Ace and, ultimately, to the man with a real chance of going the distance; First Gay England Ace.
Or maybe Gay England Aces will never be comfortable enough to emerge until everyone has stopped keeping score.
This began as a good news story. Hitzlsperger hoped his announcement would underline again, for the benefit of slow learners, that homosexuality and masculinity could co-exist.
It may be the first time in years that somebody has mentioned masculinity and football in the same breath.
But as people remembered that Hitzlsperger isn’t just Ex-Prem Ace — he is, since September, an ex-footballer — fingers pointed.
What intolerance lurks in the game’s black heart that stops these guys being themselves before they retire? It was easy to summon from memory the image of a crouched Robbie Fowler, taunting Graeme Le Saux; victim of a whispering campaign born of his flamboyant habit of reading The Guardian.
So we can well imagine the crass things Hitzlsperger has heard that helped persuade him to keep quiet.
But can we not afford footballers a little credit? We hear a lot from the sport about strong dressing rooms — and these have thrown up their own victims at times. But could there be a greater show of strength than an ability to look after your own? Surely every football dressing room has a Brian Corcoran or Sean Óg Ó hAilpín, who stood with Donal Óg Cusack when he made his own announcement to his team-mates. Or people like Stephen Jones and Martyn Williams, who told Gareth Thomas they didn’t care about his news and made sure nobody else in the Welsh dressing room cared either.
Indeed, Thomas came out to team-mates three years before he became Gay Rugby Ace. You’d like to think there are many footballers able to trust at least some of their colleagues in the same way.
Could it be that a place on the gay league table — with all the attention and distraction it brings — is a more daunting prospect than any loose dressing room bantz?
Certainly the gay civil servant is less likely to encounter a roaring mob insisting in unison that he is a ‘pooftah’ to the tune of Go West.
Perhaps it is just a process that must be gone through.
Every brave character like Hitzlsperger hastens a day when the league table can be shelved and Decent Servant, Game Lad and even Top, Top Player is able to choose his own label. And live his life at the same time.
Just as Cusack has hopefully made things easier for First Gay Ireland Ace. As well as for those who have decided not to go first.
I am not for turning — how can I, with my jersey held? — on the black card. A sanction that depends, for its imposition, on the victim tumbling, is unlikely to create anything other than a mess.
But you can only attribute the early criticism of Gaelic football’s other innovation — the new advantage rule — to football people’s default resignation everything must be wrong. Because, as advantage rules go, this could well be the best in the business.
While rugby’s advantage period can drag on confusingly, soccer’s — at a prescribed two-to-three seconds — is arguably too short to give referees clear thinking space. The recent foul by Hugo Lloris on Ashley Young that infuriated David Moyes is a case in point.
Referee Howard Webb presumably allowed play proceed because Young’s cross created a chance. When that came to nothing, he didn’t, for whatever reason, feel obliged to rewind for a penalty. Perhaps Gaelic is making a problem for itself by setting its rule at a firm five seconds. Vaguer wording such as “roughly five” would spare refs unfair trial by the action replay clock. But at least administrators have made it clear that whatever happens during the five seconds, play will always revert if the affected team winds up in a worse position.
Even the committed pessimists will come round to this one.
Manchester United fans have been unburdening their grief on the phone-ins this week and one of them posed a salient question. If Fergie is up for trekking to Sunderland, on a cold January evening, to watch a League Cup first leg; why, in the name of Busby, did he retire at all?
It is an interesting one. Especially when you consider Mike Phelan was doing all the management anyway, according to Mike Phelan.
Equally, isn’t it a grand old duplicity to fret about Fergie overshadowing his successor while hungrily pointing your camera at him to facilitate the overshadowing?
At least Moyesy has loyal servants like Rio Ferdinand at his side. Having previously advised his gaffer on the best time to pick his team, Rio revealed this week he spent last summer working on Moyesy’s transfer business; ringing Ronaldo day-in day-out, generously trying to supply the magnetism his boss just doesn’t have.
You suspect Moyesy has enough to do watching his back without glancing at the stands.
A week on and we still haven’t turned up any bitter words. Unanimously a treasure.
The Morton gaffer has a doctor’s note to excuse him from post-match interviews on the basis of a condition that makes it impossible to overcome his “urge to tell the truth”. Expect this to become the 2014 version of Pochettino’s interpreter.
This week’s ’controvassy’ champion broke the first rule of full-back play; do not draw further attention to your suicidal defending by dressing up as a suicide bomber.
