Turncoat crisis starts at the top
This has been a rough couple of months for guardians of the impressionable. There is Mourinho, of course, a daily caution as to how they might turn out, if you get this badly wrong.
And there was that appalling incident at the finish of the Rugby World Cup, when a young buck was rewarded for a reckless pitch invasion with a gold medal. An episode matched in its senselessness only by World Rugby’s decision to give Sonny Bill Williams another medal; an official devaluation, or at least a quantitative easing, of the currency of sporting medals.
Every apocryphal Kerryman who accidentally pays for the odd pint with a Celtic Cross or two, and who goes around the town with medals ‘jingling in his pockets’, walked a little lighter from that day on, and no doubt many homes and creches and schools are still feeling the ripple effects of the garlanded disobedience at Twickers.
But that is to digress. Well-placed anecdotal evidence suggests an epidemic more insidious than the current cascading torrent of snot and mucus is infecting schools. An outbreak so virulent, we may have to accept our last standing taboo is no more.
Youngsters are openly changing the team they support. Without sanction or ridicule. It would be easy to blame Mourinho again, at this point, as indeed it is the colours of his men many of these shameless defectors are shedding. LVG too, must come under fire, for the cruel tedium he has inflicted on vulnerable minds. Though, in reality, it is only the more resilient among the young faithful who survived the bleak Moyesian famine.
And balancing the other side of this disturbing quadratic equation, we have the seductive power of Kloppo’s x-factor. Multiplied by the assists of Riyad Mahrez.
But I fear this is a movement more dangerous than seasonal whims, that this Vardian Winter will give way to a dystopia that may yet bring down the game from its very summit. Before we get to the bottom of that, we should summarise the principles that have kept football support safe:
You may never trade up; that is, it is never acceptable to swap your team for a more successful one.
Forget (a), it is unacceptable to swap your team in any circumstance.
There is, to be fair, the well-established Summer Bay Exemption, available to sufferers of long-term memory loss.
Applications to change your team if it is taken over by a dubious oligarch who may have blood on his hands can be considered on an individual basis, as long as they don’t coincide with a downturn in results. A five-year separation period will be required.
Of course, we have all known people with experimental lifestyles who brazenly flout these rules. Dangerous characters who undermine the very foundations of sport and represent a threat to everything we hold dear. Here are some such acquaintances:
We can have a certain sympathy with this man, for falling for Luton Town in the late eighties. Some would say he has suffered enough, but this soft spot he has developed for Arsenal cannot be indulged. Take your medicine.
Under the mistaken impression you can trade down. Grew tired of swimming with the crowd while Liverpool were still on their perch and soon began turning up to five-a-sides in a Derby County shirt. Maintained a database of up and coming Rams and worshipped Craig Ramage in a bid to prove his bonafides. It was no use.
Some societies accept polygamy, but there is no place in football for a man with too much love to give. Yet, he is out there on the margins, following the Toffees since Kendall, fond of the Saints since Le Tiss, Celtic through and through, and an honourary Geordie due to the annual Patrick’s Day pilgrimage to the Gallowgate. Reminders of these allegiances arrive by text, when the value of one of his portfolio has trumped your sole investment. A wrong-un.
Noticeably, it is Arsenal mopping up many defectors, as though the promise of interminable frustration assuages their guilt. On the face of it, this guy is still Sunderland, out of family obligation, or maybe to Roy Keane. But since he moved to London, he is going down the Arsenal, talking Arsenal, seduced by the Arsenal. Big Sam’s arrival at the Stadium of Light has only pushed his nose closer against the Arsenal glass, cursing his inheritance.
There is a belief it should be acceptable to shrug off a callow infatuation with a Premier League side and return to the bosom of your local team. But didn’t some of those prodigal sons of Dundalk time it all so beautifully, what with United’s parallel demise.
Owner of Blackburn, Leeds and Man City shirts. Walks away from the game every year when he can be heard scorning the ‘diving and play-acting’. Will be back when Munster are out of ‘the Heineken’, wearing a different shirt.
All of these are bad people, who must be kept away from children and should, ideally, be on a register. But I fear an even greater menace threatens this generation. Messi.
We learned, recently, that Messi’s shirt is the biggest seller in the UK, and presumably in Ireland. Cristiano Ronaldo trails him narrowly.
The notion of supporting a player rather than a team isn’t entirely new. Who among us hasn’t traced the fortunes, from club to club, of a Baggio or a van Basten or an, er, pony-tailed Ecuadorian maestro Alex Aguinaga?
But these were meaningless affairs, crushes to lift domestic tedium. Yet word, again from well-placed sources, is support of the player now preoccupies many youngsters. Leaving a moveable feast of club allegiances trailing in reserve.
Maybe it is the sheer, unprecedented scale of these men’s brilliance that commands a devotion it once took a whole club to occupy. And sure, it is a fine way of life, if an ultimately empty one.
Some people will tell you football support is useful preparation for the endless struggle with day to day vicissitudes. They have it backwards, of course. It is the everyday disappointment at mankind’s fundamental weakness that prepares you for throwing away three precious points on a Saturday with a late poorly-weighted back pass.
The youngsters who support Messi don’t know any of that. They don’t know defeat. They barely know a misplaced pass. Their medals as handily earned as the one Sonny Bill gave away. They’ll need strict parenting, if they expect everything to be this straightforward. Especially after the little man is gone.
Heroes & Villains
“They had a player on the bench, Juan Mata, a Spanish player.” Eamo showed, once again, at Old Trafford midweek, that he didn’t become RTÉ’s Spanish football expert without good reason.
As Lombardi would doubtless have put it, had he been in Fenway last week; show me a guy who’ll play a friendly exhibition of a made-up game in the spirit of friendship intended and I’ll show you a loser.
The media is going to ruin him for everyone, aren’t they? We can only be days away from learning he never leaves skidmarks in the Melwood jacks, rather perfumes the place rosily with his deposits.
Even amid all this season’s claptrap, his jibe at Graeme Le Saux, for missing a match 14 years ago due to the terrorist threat in Israel, might be his most extravagant forfeiture of dignity yet.
