RESPECT: The World Cup – Football’s Chance For Redemption

I watched a football match at the weekend. One player tugged the shirt of his opponent slightly and, as the referee awarded the free-kick, the fouled player began waving an imaginary card, clearly feeling that his opponent deserved a booking for this infringement. Nothing unusual about that I suppose, we seem to see this sort of practice every weekend now in Europe’s top leagues. The sad thing about this story is that I was watching my cousin’s game of football. He is 10 years old.

This makes it hard for me to say the RESPECT campaign has been a success, even at this level. Yes there was ‘Respect’ branded tape surrounding the pitch for spectators to stand behind, I don’t recall hearing any bad language or abuse from the watching parents towards the referee or the players. But the fact remains that kids will still copy whatever it is they see their heroes doing on the television.

I have, for quite a while now, believed that the campaign needs to start at the very top for it to have any effect. We have heard everyone from Sir Alex Ferguson to John Terry voicing their support for the Respect campaign. Sadly the ‘win at all costs’ attitude seems even less about winning and more about doing anything you can to reduce the opposing team to 10 players, or fewer.

Take the recent Champions League tie between Chelsea and Inter at Stamford Bridge. Jose Mourinho had his team and tactics set up so brilliantly that Chelsea would probably still not have scored if the game had lasted three hours. But that didn’t stop a majority of Inter’s players rolling around as much as possible given the slightest contact, in an attempt to get their opponent booked and to eat up more precious time on the referee’s watch. The game itself was poor, but the gamesmanship was pretty spectacular and is what we have come to expect from the bloated and ridiculously named Champions’ League.

I’m afraid to say it is also the kind of thing we can expect from this summer’s World Cup. There will probably be some fantastic goals, mazy runs and hopefully some good old heroic defending. There will, however, almost certainly be some games that turn on referees’ decisions, as a result of what some would call ‘clever play’, or ‘professionalism’. Well I will call it cheating.

The Italians, as Inter showed, are major culprits, but so are the South Americans (remember Rivaldo) and so, it appears are the Spanish. Fernando Torres’ penalty spot scuff against Manchester United was a horrible piece of bad sportsmanship from a player I admire so much for his ability, and he should have been booked for it.

So what about England? My fear is that we will adopt the ‘if we can’t beat them join them’ attitude. So when Wayne Rooney ‘goes down easily’ in the box, or Steven Gerrard waves his imaginary card, or even when John Terry subtly grabs a handful of an opponent’s shirt while defending a corner, we will merely shrug and say ‘it’s part of the game these days’.

My thoughts are that it has been a part of the game for a long time, but with today’s blanket media coverage, it is much more scrutinised, and rightly so. The first ‘imaginary card’ I saw was waved by Romario at the 1994 World Cup, yet I doubt he was the first to do it. And Jurgen Klinsmann’s dives first came to my attention four years before that at Italia ’90, but my father’s words at the time were ‘they all do that in Europe’.

At every tournament the authorities seem intent on clamping down on a particular issue, whether it is shirt-pulling or two-footed challenges, yet after the tournament the new rules are soon forgotten again.

I hope this World Cup can see a revolution in players’ attitudes to each other, enforced on them by officials with harsher punishments, and then continued after the tournament in football leagues all over the world. This is football’s opportunity to turn over a new leaf, and both players and officials must play their part.