When I was a kid my Dad spoke of the ‘good old days’ with such fondness that he convinced me his youth was a perpetual spiral of ecstasy. He’d get all misty eyed about going down the Holte to help suck the ball into the net alongside a collective fervour of thousands. He created such a romantic image of following Villa in those days that I wanted to be transported there right away, directly into the heart of it. Now it’s my turn to tell my kids of the glory days, when Sid trotted out to Hurricane Smith’s classic and warmed up in front of the Holte’s left side while I looked on from aboard an upturned milk crate, pie in hand, eyelids on stalks as my heroes prepared for action. And I’m talking proper heroes; the likes of Rimmer, Mortimer and Shaw. I doubt however that the youth of today will have reason to look back on the current crop with any sense of romance, denied the opportunity to wax lyrical about the wonder of following Villa thanks to the sports’s commercialisation and the world’s obsession with celebrity squeezing the life out of English football. While we cling onto our club like a husband refusing to relinquish an unfaithful wife, in our heart of hearts we know we’re going through the motions.
The latest lament I have to offer is the ludicrous histrionics of managers and players, their bodily contortions so exaggerated that second careers on the boards beckon. In some regards it’s amusing but in truth it’s demoralising to see grown men behave in such a manner, yet it’s established now as the norm and is so engrained in modern day football culture that there seems no way back. I blame Rivaldo, he started it when feigning receipt of a punch on the nose over by the corner flag that time when all he’d received was a funny look. The floodgates were opened and now it’s common practice for footballers to feign contact in order to win penalties, get opponents cautioned and let’s face it, cheat their way to victory.
Such tawdry behaviour from footballers doesn’t stop at ‘winning’ free-kicks (and I hate to hear the likes of Danny Mills on Radio 5 brazenly claiming such behaviour to be acceptable, part and parcel of the game etc, shame on him and others of his ilk). Players’ histrionics reach way beyond pretending they’ve been fouled, they extend it to all parts of the game; throwing themselves into mock despair when claiming throw-ins they know fine well aren’t theirs, the same with corners and goal kicks. I could puke as they nonchalantly amble into position after the ref’s decision, pretending they’ve not discovered the tragic news, then melodramatically halting in their tracks as it hits them that the referee has indeed found against them, a signal for their eyebrows to stretch heavenwards, their hands to alight on their heads before they turn to the lino for support. They wave their arms dismissively at the referee, yet all along knowing the truth, that they were indeed the last player to touch the ball. Born liars and cheats, their behaviour a terrible example to youngsters yet we have summarisers claiming it to be a part of the game. Pathetic.
A personal bugbear is the recent introduction of the ‘turf slap’, a player gets fouled and lies face down slapping the ground with the palm of his hand as if an agony stricken woman in the late throws of childbirth. Two minutes later, after the trainer has reset said player’s hair or given him a plaster, he’s berating the referee from the side of the pitch for not letting him back on quickly enough. These are the type of players too who swagger proudly to the six yard box in anticipation of a corner they’ve just ‘won’ when in truth they should be ashamed of themselves for not getting the cross in. How often do attackers get away with this routine conning of the crowd? The ‘winning’ of a corner received with rapturous applause by supporters when in reality the bloke had all the time in the world to get the ball into the mixer or put a striker through.
Managers are no better, the embarrassing example they give to their players succeeds only in making their charges worse. Hitherto respectable men, managers who interview well and come across as perfectly reasonable (eg. Hodgson, Moyes) can be found spinning like tops when goal chances are spurned, convulsing their bodies back to the dugout, facial expressions of fake shock, water bottles flying, assistant managers joining them in tantrums that toddlers would be consigned to the naughty step for. These managers kid no-one when trying to convince supporters with that they’re innocent of any outcome to the score line due to such missed chances, their shenanigans I often think are a deliberate attempt to appeal to us numbskulls that they have spent the entire week training the team professionally and they mustn’t be held accountable for strikers who miss open goals. They kid no one, these managers must carry the can and that’s the end of it.
But let’s return to the players since they’re the worst culprits. So grotesque has become their celebrity status, their fame and fortune, the hero worship and adulation they gleefully receive, that they spend their entire time during a ninety minute game of football believing that the television cameras are trained singularly on them and them alone. I will largely absolve goalkeepers and defenders here, it seems the further up the pitch you go the worse the posing becomes, midfielders are bad but strikers worser (I’ve strayed into WBA levels of grammar and intellect). Such players feel they’re on a perpetual televised catwalk, their hair preened to within an inch of its life with dye, designs and product, their tat sleeves polished, facial hair sculpted and odd luminous coloured boots gleaming under the floodlights as they chew gum Clint Eastwood style. It’s a chastening sight indeed to watch a squillionaire poser of such description shuffling onto the pitch as a sub for the last ten minutes, playing a couple of square passes and taking a throw-in for which he’ll receive a weekly salary totalling six figures, and yes, that’s before the decimal point. Hey ho, that’s life in English football today and we have to deal with it, though you might have noticed that I’m struggling to. Today’s youth we can only hope aren’t taken in by all of this sophistry but my hopes aren’t high. Not for them memories of a toothless Jimmy Rimmer gurning at hippy haired centre forwards or combover laden Ralph Coates’s as they bear down on goal. Instead they’ll look back on journeymen muppets like Leandro Bacuna, smirking his way to financial security beneath a blonde streaked barnet , all paid for by despondent onlooking supporters who just want their old Villa back.
