OPINION: Take arms against a sea of football cheats
Ahead of England's World Cup showdown with France, Jewish News historian Derek Taylor reflects on how the sense of fair play has vanished from the beautiful game.
Every society has its violent elements. In the 18th century you were wise to carry a sword in the street. In the 19th you needed an armed guard at night to go from Hyde Park Corner to Knightsbridge. Now we see youngsters stabbing each other, racist attacks and potential emigrants drowning in the channel.
The danger is that criminal activity becomes the norm and I am furious with a TV commentator on the World Cup. Two men were running for the ball and the commentator said that as one was overtaking the other, it was necessary for the loser to foul the other for the sake of his team.
That’s where the red line is clearly crossed. Because the TV commentator is accepting cheating as part of football. The man who committed the foul may get a yellow card or even be sent off – though that very seldom happens – but nobody in Head Office seems to take offence at the TV commentator’s acceptance of blatant cheating as the norm.
What is the message for all our children who play football? If your opponent looks likely to get the ball, for the sake of the team, you should foul him. No you shouldn’t because if illegality is OK on the football field, it means that society has accepted violence. Gang warfare, for the sake of the team, becomes heroic. Your life may be ruined if you’re caught, you may spend 10-20 years in prison, but the TV commentator has put the sake of the team ahead of civilised behaviour.
Will the commentator be banned from doing the job in future? One famous commentator had his career ruined for making a racist remark, but I suspect I’ll have to wait a very long time for Gary Lineker to criticise his colleague’s totally unacceptable view of how football should be played.
As a Bishop of Lichfield once said: “Right is right even if nobody’s right and wrong is wrong even if everybody’s wrong.”
I’ve also been watching Simon Schama’s History of the Jews and we know all about the suspension of civilised behaviour. Sir Simon spoke from Lithuania where ordinary people helped massacre the ancient Jewish community during the war. You wonder how people can behave that way but then you can reflect on many in the Channel Islands who behaved equally horribly.
The only way to prevent the collapse of civilisation is to fight, tooth and nail, to protect it. The lesson of the Corbyn years is that the vast majority of our fellow citizens are prepared to do that when they go to the ballot box, but you can see from that TV commentator that you can never lower your guard.
In another World Cup many years ago, the opposition centre forward had only the goalkeeper to beat and was tripped from behind. There was a free kick but the England player wasn’t sent off and cheating was rewarded.
Of course, the contrary argument is that I’m old fashioned, out of touch with reality, and naive. But then as a Bishop of Lichfield once said: “Right is right even if nobody’s right and wrong is wrong even if everybody’s wrong.”
That is the correct view of any right thinking individual but, as Hamlet said in Shakespeare’s words, “whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. “
It’s always time to take arms.
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