Boos Culture In Football
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the way people boo footballers. In particular, this is because Ashley Cole played an absolutely stupid and badly executed backpass against Kazakhstan which led to them scoring against England, and he got roundly booed for it.
People say that booing a player doesn’t help them play better, and it doesn’t help the team, and that people shouldn’t do it. Pundit after pundit has been queuing up to slate the boo-boys, and footballers, managers and so on have been coming out to say that the fans ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Bollocks.
For a start, let’s get a sense of perspective. Look at England’s away game in Croatia last month, or their friendly in Spain in 2004 where on both occasions a significant amount of racist abuse was heaped upon England players.
In both cases, the punishment dished out to the home team didn’t even amount to a slap on the wrist — Croatia were fined a fraction of the money they would have got from the TV revenue. The football governing bodies might say that they are acting to kick racism out of football, but many of them don’t back it up with action.
In this particular case, the English FA — by complaining about it and making it perfectly clear that such behaviour is unacceptable — are doing their bit. If we are going to stamp something out of football, surely this should be what we look at first?
Secondly, let’s look at England vs San Marino, on the 17th November 1993. Stuart Pearce woefully underhit a back-pass leading to San Marino scoring the fastest ever goal in World Cup history, after only 8 seconds. Stuart might have taken a bit of stick, but nothing near what Ashley Cole faced in a similar situation.
The question is why. There are a number of possibilities.
First, Stuart Pearce is white. Ashley Cole isn’t. Are England fans more likely to boo a black player than a white one? On the whole, I’d say no. That’s not to say that there aren’t racists amongst England fans, but I think the vast majority aren’t. So I suspect that will play at most a minor part.
Secondly, Stuart Pearce was Mr. England. He always gave his all as a professional footballer; it was obvious to anyone exactly how much he cared. That’s not to say Ashley doesn’t care, but I don’t imagine for one moment it means as much to him as it did to Stuart — or if it does, then it certainly doesn’t appear to.
Thirdly, and what I think is the most critical reason, is money. Stuart Pearce was the last of the generation of the rich footballer. Now footballers are paid so much they are super-rich; they are celebrities, megastars and demand to be treated as such.
Footballers at the Ashley Cole level earn more money in a week than the average UK employee will earn in three years. Now I’m not advocating a wage cap, nor do I begrudge footballers (or anyone else for that matter) the right to try and earn as much as they can in contract negotiations, but I believe that an inevitable consequence of this is that footballers — particularly top-flight footballers — are not regarded by the man in the street as being anything like them.
They lead a different lifestyle, are paid in a different league, and generally have nothing in common with the man in the street. They have everything that they could possibly want, and even with the economy crashing down around our ears, they don’t have to worry about a mortgage or any other financial worries.
What we expect them to do, in return for that, is to be very, very good. And when they slip from that high standard — when they make mistakes as they, being human, are wont to do — we ask ourselves what have they done to deserve their six-figure salary this week?
If we cocked up to the extent that our company lost thirty million pounds (which could be the difference between scoring a goal and not, if you’re 17th or 18th in the Premiership), we’d be expecting to be out on our ear. They just get a new job at a new club, normally on more money.
Of bloody course we resent the money they are getting. And that is the reason for it.
Look lower down the leagues: look at Hartlepool, or at Gateshead. If their players make a mistake, the fans might grumble about it, but they don’t get on the backs of the players in the same way, because the fans can identify with these players.
They aren’t getting millions; fans can identify with them, they don’t expect them to be perfect, they don’t get to read about their sexual indiscretions in every sunday paper or hear how they appear to have gotten off with a crime (or got away with a lesser sentence) simply because they can afford a more expensive lawyer.
Premiership footballers are a breed apart. They are paid apart, they are treated apart, they are apart from ordinary people. And because ordinary people are incapable of identifying with them — and because none of these footballers ever gives the impression of knowing what it’s like to be an ordinary person — they have to face up to taking a bit of stick if it’s going badly.
I won’t be the first person to say this, but pay me £90,000 a week, and I’ll happily have 80,000 people shouting abuse at me twice a month for 90 minutes a time.
Grow up. The fact that the salaries have changed beyond recognition means that the game has changed beyond recognition. The only sort of footballer an ordinary fan will actually care about any more is someone like Gavin Strachan — an ordinary bloke, just a bit better at football than most, but who thanks to his blog is maybe proving that he himself is one of the characters left in the game.
So while it might not help a player to be booed, if you’re not good enough to take a bit of stick and keep playing, then you aren’t good enough to be paid that much anyway, so we’re right to boo you in the first place.
Grow up and stop whinging.
I’ll end this rant with a little story about Peter Beardsley, a true footballing legend. Peter presented some football awards at the school my sister-in-law’s kids go to, and she got talking to him. She thanked him for his time in coming to the school, and asked him if he enjoyed doing this sort of thing. He replied that he did, but it made him sad because he never really got to see his kids get anything. Why was that, asked Sis-in-Law? Because, quoth Pedro, if I turn up at my kids school, it was never about them any more, and I never felt it was right to steal their limelight, so I’d just sit in the car and let the wife go in and see them…
For me, this tells us about Peter the man. He’s happy not to play the role of a celebrity; he wants his kids to enjoy their success in its own right, even if that means the poor wee lamb has to sit all by himself in the car…
Can you imagine any of our celebrity footballers thinking like that? Or would they only be too happy to take up as much limelight as they possibly could?
Hello. I am 
i’ve never been a fan of david beckham (no pace & one-footed), but you have to give him his due - depsite his milllions and celebrity lifestyle he’s always given his heart to the england cause, especially since he was made public enemy no.1 after france ‘98. shows you that some of them do have a bit of character after all.