January is not yet out and already I've had my fill of "the morality of football". The non-subject first appeared when it seemed that Kaká might move to City and a heft of sportswriters demanded that he stay in Milan "for the good of the game". Kaká's individual rights were being blithely overridden by the sportswriters' need to show that the sport they cover is "better" than it actually is.
This is a common misconception. After all, if you're dim-witted enough to consider football a religion it is only consistent to believe that it is imbued with a particular moral quality. In reality, it is as morally neutral as money itself. Kaká could have taken the Sheikh's cash and diverted it into building a children's hospital in Moss Side (an action many would consider worthy) or he could have taken it and blown it on hookers (an action many would consider profligate) but either way it would say nothing about the morality of football (yet something about Kaká's personal morality). Morals are an individual's concern, not the state's, and certainly not the press pack's.
Yet, before the week was out, an even more absurd figure, Garry Cook – who has a CV containing stints with Thaksin "a great guy to play golf with" Shinawatra and Nike – started twittering on about the morality of football and trying to claim that Milan were "bad for the game". So far, so absurd. He then topped the lot by responding to questions about Nike's "child-labour issues" with a "morally, I felt comfortable in that environment". Of course he did. He's a marketing man. They have their own language and belief system, drummed into them during endless team-bonding exercises.
Cook's chuntering was ridiculed in two excellent articles, by Marina Hyde (for our big sister paper – online at bit.ly/6hMa) and Michael Henderson in the Telegraph (bit.ly/FwjH). Their thrust was similar, but the reaction of the online community could not have been more different. On the Guardian website they rushed to praise Marina; on the Telegraph they hurried to bury Michael, even going so far as to demand he be sacked (a bit de trop given the number of sportswriters already "let go" by that organisation). As with the online community, so with the rest of us, we all have different opinions ... and morals.
On to weightier issues and the revelation in the Times (bit.ly/lXUc) that Alastair Campbell (Burnley fan, political aide, and, scarcely credibly, novelist) receives more text messages from the rich and famous per second than the neediest micro-celeb. On Wednesday night, for example, he received "messages" (plural!) from Andy Gray ("he may be paid to be neutral but he was far from it once our third goal went in", writes Campbell) and one from Alex Ferguson ("keep playing as you have been and you're there", texts Ferguson).
All of which is fascinating on a number of levels. First, Campbell is clearly one of those man-child types who can no longer go to a sporting event without group-texting everyone in his phone as to his whereabouts and following up with minute-by-minute updates on the "Super Clarets". Second, the long pauses that are increasingly a feature of Gray's analyses are obviously not for thought but to provide him with the space to text his muckers. Third, as in so many things, Ferguson is a traditionalist when it comes to texting. Where many would have responded with a brusque "ur" instead of "you're", Fergie not only spelled out the word but "went upstairs" for the apostrophe, too.
will@willbuckley.org
