Impudence...

I watch the occasional football game, usually on a pub TV, though I’m not sure why. Pele called football “the beautiful game”, but I’m not convinced by that either. I watch players dive, cheat, dissemble, con the referee and try to gain an unfair advantage at every opportunity throughout the game. In a show of crowd-pleasing petulance, players surround referees in an attempt to make them change a decision. But referees don’t change their minds, not even when the players are swearing in their face. It’s an unedifying spectacle, not least because these antics can now be seen in grass-roots football. Children swear at their match officials, and so do their parents, standing on the touchline. Beautiful game? I don’t think so.

“Where are the role models?”, the pundits ask. Well, they’re not playing professional football, that’s for sure. I can only think of one player I admire, and he hung up his boots a few years ago. Niall Quinn donated the entire proceeds from his benefit match to a children's hospital in Sunderland, acting with a kind of grace and humility that football seems to have lost altogether.

Just occasionally I’m reminded why, despite everything, I still keep watching. Liverpool won a free kick against West Ham yesterday evening, just outside the penalty box, and Coutino prepared to take the shot. The West Ham players were lined up, ten yards away, between Coutino and the goal. They assumed Coutino would try to kick the ball over the wall, and make it dip down towards the goal, so as Coutino ran up to the ball, they all jumped in the air to block the shot. Without missing a beat, Coutino slid the ball along the ground, beneath them, and into the bottom left corner of the goal. The goalkeeper never moved. As a tactic it was clever, impudent and very effective. It gave me a smile. I think Coutino smiled too, which made a change from the usual goal celebration: the snarl of triumph and the fist-pump…

The River Nene - and Georgian buildings - in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire…