Footballers as role models?
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Whether or not one is a football fan or was supportive of former England manager Fabio Capello its quite obvious that by removing John Terry’s captaincy the Football Association (FA) was clearly exploiting whatever ‘alleged’ racist comment Terry made to QPR’s Anton Ferdinand to deliberately enforce Capello’s resignation for some reason or other!
Everyone is supposedly ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the eyes of the law but of course in the ‘real world’ this is very selectively administered particularly when there’s a lot of profitable headlines to be made by the corporate press over the fate or glorification of certain individuals in the public eye!
Although Terry should have remained untouched until after his ‘oddly’ delayed trial in August after the Euro championships, if the FA’s concerns was really about racism it would have decreed Terry was removed from the England team altogether not just the captaincy! At least this would have appeared to be more of a direct principled stance that would have exerted less pressure on Capello. However solely removing Terry from the Captaincy was clearly to frustrate Capello’s tactical planning and undermine his authority to which he was compelled to respond!
To put it in context Tory MP Damien Collin’s (Folkestone and Hythe) during a listeners BBC Radio 5 Live ‘Your Call’ debate on the issue said that professional footballers should act as role models for children. So when Premier League footballers prior to a game emerge from the dug out holding hands with proud young schoolboy footballers (a symbolic gimmick epitomising this role model function) not all of of them are Captain’s hence what’s the difference which of them is charged with an alleged racist offence?
The crux of this whole issue is that footballers are footballers and shouldn’t necessarily be expected to be better role models than any other adult! However because football is watched by many predominantly working class spectators which arouses many deep seated passions in certain players the likes of professional footballers are singled out by governments as being role models rather than the professional politicians themselves and their divisive economic and social policies which are certainly not conducive to producing good role models yet alone with dealing with the root causes of racism in British society today!
Has anyone else noticed the irony (or is it hypocrisy) of the whole affair? Terry is accused of making a racist comment and is sacked as captain for this. Capello resigns for criticising this and the whole sports press (including the broadsheets) unleashes a tirade of abuse against him … for being a foreigner.
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