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Another
week, another front page for football. Not, this time, the sight
of David Beckham on the arm of his wife or a player wrapped in the
sudsy embrace of a soap star, but another full blown scandal, and
this one withpotentially the grimmest of legal implications as three
Leicester players – Paul Dickov, Frank Sinclair and Keith Gillespie
– remain incarcerated in a Spanish jail charged with sexual
aggression.
It would be wrong – and legally dangerous – to debate
the particulars of this wretched case, it does once again bring
into question the ethos of British football, and particular the
drinking culture which is used, spuriously, to enhance team spirit,
bonding, togetherness. It’s an open secret that going out on
the lash is tacitly accepted by clubs and managers the length and
breadth of the country on the grounds that it will create a "lads
against the world" gang mentality.
In public, the managers might pretend that their players don’t
drink, that only the highest standards of professionalism are tolerated,
that football has moved into the modern world, but that’s arrant
nonsense. In Britain, football is all about creating a backdrop
for having a drink, whether you’re a spectator or a player.
Play hard, drink hard is the motto and ever more shall be so it
appears, for little seems to have been learned down the years. It’s
only a decade or so since Paul Gascoigne returned from Italy after
all, saying he chose Glasgow Rangers because they had the reputation
for being the biggest boozers.
Leicester City are an archetypal English team, albeit that a couple
of foreign players have infiltrated their ranks. But there’s
little of the continental influence at the Walkers Stadium. The
team play a typically English "up and at ‘em" style,
closing down, running hard, tackling harder, a "man’s
game" that yields little to subtlety, to intelligence, to wit.
Certainly, in the financial climate in which they operate, they
cannot emulate the kind of football that Arsenal are currently playing
because they cannot afford footballers of that standard. Yet they
never look up at the stars from the gutter where they sleep. Instead,
they play foundry football, all about gut wrenching effort and hard
work, football of the foundry rather than the gallery, where blood,
sweat and tears are more highly prized than beauty, elegance and
style. At the end of a game, their players look like they’ve
done a strenuous shift in the factory and, like workers all over
the world, reckon they’ve earned themselves a few drinks.
But the difference between footballers and the rest of us is that
we are not performing in an athletic sport, our bodies are not the
prime tool of our job in that sense. For a footballer, especially
in the modern game, speed and strength are the key assets and there’s
no question that alcohol, if drunk dulls those senses. Leicester
boss Mickey Adams complained that if his players were guilty of
anything, it was drinking to excess. Yet they were in
a training camp, there to work at finding ways of avoiding relegation.
Why were they drinking at all? The end of the season is two months
away.
Why not dedicate those eight weeks to your profession, stay in the
Premier League and then have the mother of al celebrations for a
week once the job’s done?
The psychological differences between English and continental footballers
are marked in every respect, but especially with regard to preparation,
to diet, to looking after the body. Chelsea’s wonderfully athletic
full-back Mario Melchiot summed it up best at the weekend when recalling
his arrival in England. He told his British team-mates that he did
not drink and they immediately thought he was joking.
But to the Dutchman, avoiding alcohol was no less a part of his
preparation for games than going in for training sessions day after
day. Chelsea were at the forefront of educating players on that
aspect of the game through the Gullit and Vialli years when both
brought a new professionalism to Stamford Bridge, alongside players
such as Roberto di Matteo and Gianfranco Zola. Nobody is suggesting
that all European players are angels, nor that they don’t occasionally
let their hair down and have a few. But it’s moderation that’s
the key.
They don’t hit the booze day after day, week in week out.Of
course, not all British footballers deserve to be tarred by the
same brush either. There is evidence that slowly, habits are changing,
with the appointment of fitness coaches, nutritionists, dieticians
and the rest. But if you want to really see the difference between
British footballers and the continentals, just take a look at the
Premier League.
Ten years ago, Manchester United team swept all before them with
a side with an English core and a sprinkling of continental flair
from Cantona and Kanchelskis. But they’ve subsequently been
matched and perhaps overtaken by two other clubs, Arsenal and, to
a lesser extent, Chelsea. Of course both have spent lavishly in
the pursuit of success, but look at where they’ve spent their
cash, particularly Wenger.
Little has been invested in players from this country, other than
in defence where the battling British virtues come into their own.
But when it comes to the attacking positions, where speed, sharpness
of thought and deed, are the key ingredients, nine times out of
ten Arsenal look abroad. Pundits rave about the new kind of football
that Arsenal are playing, that we are watching super athletes. And
that we are.
Men committed to their profession, to their fitness, to playing
at their peak as many times as possible, not men who indulge themselves
by drinking to all hours just before they’re due to go out
on the training pitch. It’s no coincidence surely that so few
British players look good enough to play abroad yet so many foreigners
can come into this country and appear to be from another planet
so talented are they.
Sure, Thierry Henry was lucky to be born talented. But it’s
only his application and dedication to his profession that enables
him to deliver the best of that talent game after game after game.
Unlike so many English players, it’s not an accident waiting
to happen.
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