All hail Gary, Gareth and decent football men
Date published: Monday 14th November 2016 10:51
You might have noticed that the official opposition to the government at this moment is not the Labour Party, nor even the SNP, no, it is ex-Leicester, Everton, Spurs, Barcelona and Grampus 8 reliable tapper-in of 238 goals, the “have a word” lovely man that is Gary Lineker.
I’m sure you are all well aware of Gary’s positions on many of the pressing issues of the day, via his Twitter feed. As far as I understand, it is this:
‘Have some empathy. Don’t be a tw*t.’
Simple and civilised sympathies, but hardly the call to arms of a committed Marxist revolutionary or, worse still in the eyes of his press critics, a champagne socialist.
It’s not the easy route for a man in Gary’s position to walk. The fret it must cause him is entirely avoidable; he could have just kept his head down and said nothing. Gary has chosen not to do that. But as he said himself, when in the middle of one of the recent storm-in-a-teacup outraged blartings aimed towards him.
‘Getting a bit of a spanking today but things could be worse: Imagine, just for a second, being a refugee having to flee from your home.’
Indeed.
The usual black-hearted sulphurous newspapers wanted him sacked from Match of the Day because we can’t have the BBC paying people to have opinions on anything other than football, especially if they contradict the newspaper’s agenda. All nonsense, of course, because you can’t bring a TV station or programme into disrepute by being a decent man.
Politics aside, part of this is because the world of football is seen as a repository of so much vulgar ignorance, with players quick to be painted as shallow, greedy materialists interested only in watches, cars, houses and filming themselves in flagrante in a hotel room. And of course this is a cartoonish representation of the reality, even if it does have one foot in the truth. So the idea that an ex-footballer might have a view on political events is, by some, considered anathema. Footballers, ex or current are stupid and rich. Why should we listen to them? They know nothing of ordinary life. Shut up and get on with buying flash things for us to be appalled by.
However, we desperately need some sensitive and clever to balance out the numb and the dumb in media and in life. Dumb is everywhere. Celebrated. Elevated. Vaunted. Exploited for profit.
And that’s why I’m delighted that Gareth Southgate is, in all probability, about to be appointed England manager. This isn’t a football choice. I can’t tell you if he’ll be any good as England manager. If you put God in charge of England, John Stones would still probably pass it blind across the goal; that’s free will for you. And I already know that when he is sacked, he’ll be said to have been a boring and uninspiring choice.
But Southgate is a good man. A thoughtful man. Decent. Like all of us, not without faults, I’m sure, but not stupid, crude, or vulgar. He is recognisable as the sort of sentient, intelligent human who we can all respect. He is intellectually curious and not content to rely on the football hive mind default thinking. He’s been a leader of football men since his early 20s. He’s clearly got something about him. He’s just not a gobsh*te who indulges is noisy self-promotion.
He was Steve McClaren’s first signing for Middlesbrough, specifically because he wanted an ambassador on the pitch. In his days as a player, during our quite incredible progress to the UEFA Cup final of 2006, he was never one to shirk his responsibilities. Indeed, it was said that McClaren pretty much had his hands off the wheel in the crucial comeback games against Basel and Steaua Bucharest. It was GS who dragged us through those games in the dressing room, even though injured in the Bucharest game. He is articulate, proactive, he listens and he tries to reach understandings.
He so impressed Boro chairman Steve Gibson (a man who has now employed three managers who have gone on to manage their country) in how he went about pitching for the managerial job by doing widespread consultation on how to progress the club, that he opted for him above far more experienced men. Now, you may point to Boro’s relegation under Southgate as a sign of his inadequacy, but I can assure you that was only as a consequence of the financial crisis largely caused by having to feed Mark Viduka for three years. There’s only so much debt a club can carry.
My point here is only this; we need less intolerant dumb alpha male noise and more intelligent empathy in football and in life, be it from Gary or Gareth or anyone else prepared to not swim in the shallow waters of idiocy.
Having an England manager of Gareth Southgate’s character sets a good example, in the same way Gary Lineker’s expressed views do. It says football needn’t be a place of the stupid to shout at the stupid, and the people you can look up to in life needn’t be the vapid, selfish monsters they’re quick to be painted as by the more feral media.
It is most assuredly not a guarantee of English football success, but it is a way to help public life be better. And that’s a very good thing indeed.
John Nicholson
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