The most pervasive and influential violation of the laws, the plague that intolerably disfigures just about every match contested, is the unbridled use of hands and arms to hold, pull, push and generally interfere with the movement of opponents to an extent that often reduces the action at set-pieces to an ugly mockery of fair competition. Once we add the premeditated blocking manoeuvres of players who show not the faintest interest in reaching the ball, and the crowding of goalkeepers by specialist harassing crews, we are forced to recognise that systematic cheating around the penalty box has become institutionalised. Television evidence indicates it is a global scourge but we don’t have to look beyond our own country to find its grossest manifestations.
On-field skulduggery is as old as football and those of us with memories stretching back through too many eras for our comfort must acknowledge that physically hurtful fouling, heavy contact with malicious intent, is much less common than it was in the past. But the pleasure we take in that civilising advance is lost in the nausea we have to stifle when the grapplefests and blockathons are at their height. Naturally, outbursts of public indignation are more likely to be stirred by the extremes of the cynical thespians who gain advantage for themselves and their teams, and cautions and red cards for others. And they are worthy targets for contempt.
Where has a man parked his self-respect when he engages in the pernicious mummery flaunted by Robben at Stamford Bridge last Sunday? Jose Reina did sufficient in the end to invite dismissal but how does the Dutchman recall his part in the episode without shrivelling to a blob of embarrassment? First he gratuitously provoked the Liverpool goalkeeper and then he reacted to the light brushing of a hand across his face as if he had been stabbed through the jugular with a burning spear. Robben is a brilliant footballer but he needs to improve either his sportsmanship or his acting.
Yet it’s the hammy obviousness of the kind of deceit he perpetrated that should simplify stamping on it. Though such antics are worryingly prevalent, they are usually identified readily enough and instantly isolated from what is regarded as acceptable behaviour. That cannot be said of the far more varied and damaging lawlessness that becomes epidemic whenever a free-kick or a corner is about to be taken.
Practically everybody in the 18-yard area barefacedly assumes the right to obstruct and neutralise the opposition with techniques more appropriate to wrestlers. It’s as if the game’s ban on such use of the upper limbs had never existed. Any man inclined to play fairly knows he will lumber himself with a crippling handicap. Consistently, the scene rapidly degenerates into a turmoil of illegality whose very scale seems to paralyse referees into a sense of helplessness. The officials appear to have abandoned long ago any idea of responding immediately to the sight of an offence inside the box as they might to a transgression in midfield. If they did, the manhandling at every set-piece would bring a barrage of whistling.
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They are by no means alone among professional observers in being hypnotised towards passivity by the universality of the wrongdoing. Newspaper reporters and television commentators have apparently decided, perhaps understandably, that fouling with the hands and arms has become so embedded in the fabric of football that relating it to the laws is a waste of ink or breath. As we watch a forward and a defender exchanging grabs and tugs and sweaty embraces, the voice at the microphone is liable to tell us “it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other”.
Never was there more indulgence for the diseased principle that two wrongs (or a hundred wrongs, come to that) can make a right. The result of this climate of acquiescence is frequently a spectacle that bears little resemblance to football as it was meant to be played. Plenty that is exhilarating and beautiful survives — the aesthetic core of the game is too strong to yield meekly — but the degree to which skill, creativity and athletic grace are smothered by unscrupulousness is a scandal.
The curse of the grapplers has been with us for years. Back in April of 2004, I raised the subject with Keith Hackett, the former referee who was by then the man in charge of all officials handling matches throughout professional football in England. Hackett honestly conceded the seriousness of the problem and when we talked again last week he was equally frank in admitting that efforts to tackle it had produced minimal returns. He promises a renewed campaign next season, with a vigorous insistence on enlisting the support of the League Managers Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association. But experience will tell him that a voluntary solution isn’t feasible. The laws must be applied, and the penalty of choice must be penalties. If the awarding of 20 in a match is warranted, that’s what should happen.
It won’t, of course. My utopian dream hasn’t much chance against the wrestlemania nightmare.
Heavyweights of sporting celluloid
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The Boxing Writers Association of America mean to have a little extra entertainment at their 81st annual awards dinner by asking the membership (a hard-nosed fraternity who kindly welcomed me into their ranks 20 years ago) to choose their favourites from all the films about the fight business ever made. Voting will be in two categories, for movies that came out in the years up to 1965, and for those produced since then.
Even the many who abhor the brutal elements of pugilism rarely attempt to deny its capacity for drama. In fact, its cruellest aspects are often its most compelling: the extreme hazards, the harsh, exploitative milieu, the examination of courage and pride that can end in the stripped-bare experience of lying at another man’s feet. There can also, of course, be grace and artistry and triumph, and the confluence of intensities in boxing has, in my view, made the best writing about it (from Hazlitt to Hemingway, Liebling, Schulberg and Heinz) superior to writing on anything else that can loosely be termed a sport.
But if the evidence for making such a case in literature is powerful, in relation to films it is overwhelming. Consider the BWAA’s contenders: Body and Soul (starring John Garfield, 1947); Champion (Kirk Douglas, 1949); The Set Up (Robert Ryan, 1949); The Harder They Fall (Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, 1956); and Requiem for a Heavyweight (Anthony Quinn, 1962); The Great White Hope (James Earl Jones, 1970); Fat City (Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, 1972); Raging Bull (Robert De Niro, 1980); Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, 2004); Cinderella Man (Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, 2005). There are substantial variations in quality represented, but faced with that lot, what other sport’s cinematic challengers would dare to get off the stool? For the record, my clear favourite from the earlier period is The Set Up, directed by Robert Wise, and my overall pick as the best film ever set in the boxing world has to be Raging Bull, though director Martin Scorsese’s feel for the realities of boxing itself wouldn’t qualify as the work’s greatest strength. Commenting on Raging Bull, Variety said Scorsese “makes pictures about the kind of people you wouldn’t want to know”. Having briefly met the fighter whose life is depicted, Jake La Motta, and heard first-hand accounts of his behaviour in his prime, I think he fitted the pattern.
Greenwood’s glory
Talking to Ron Greenwood, the former England manager (1977-82) who has died aged 84, was always an agreeable reminder of why football will never lose its hold on so many of us.
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Obituarists rightly emphasise his distinction as an innovative coach whose advanced thinking and purist philosophy enabled West Ham United to supply three key players to England’s World Cup-winning team of 1966.
But above all Greenwood was a lover of the game, of the beauties implicit in its fluid geometry.
He was immensely proud of England’s triumph, and of the part played by Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, but it was characteristic that when we discussed those 1966 finals he rhapsodised about a goal scored for Hungary by Janos Farkas.
It happened to be the best goal of the tournament and Ron wanted to celebrate excellence.