THERE was, as
Little Britain’s Andy would say, a bit of a kerfuffle at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. The basics you will know. Didier Drogba had a storming game at centre forward, scored two goals, played some basketball for one and generally fell over a lot, as he does.
When he was revealed to have been voted man of the match, there were boos amid the cheers, too loud to be coming from the Manchester City end alone. Drogba then went off to be interviewed by the television stations, standing in for José Mourinho, who is in the middle of a hissy fit because he has not been fêted, knighted, declared the victor in the Champions League against Barcelona or whatever the hell it is he thinks he deserves for being special in England. Shortly afterwards, various TV types emerged from the room with the red “ON AIR” sign over the door, shaking their heads in disbelief. Then the fun began.
Drogba, it emerged, had told the BBC that he did handle the ball for his second goal, that this was part of the game and that he did dive, although when pressed he retracted the last statement. Clearly, this was significant information and a copy of the interview was requested by print journalists. Reluctantly, Chelsea’s press officer agreed. Except, when the tape arrived, it had been mysteriously edited. There was a skip, at which point the interviewer asked: “So you are saying you dive?” followed by Drogba’s frantic denial.
As an exercise in news management, it was the most ham-fisted operation since the FA’s spin-doctor tried to divulge details of the England head coach’s sex life to the News of the World to preserve the dalliances of the chief executive. Instantly, Chelsea’s attempt to cover up Drogba’s admission of cheating became as much the story as the cheating itself, with the suggestion the BBC had been placed under pressure to edit the tape.
It appears that there was a compromise, with the interview broadcast in full, showing admission and denial. In the Match of the Day studio, Lee Dixon was extraordinarily lenient on Drogba, accepting that his confession may have been the result of misinterpretation. It would be fascinating to discover how indulgent he would have felt towards Drogba as an opponent; at Arsenal, he did not seem enamoured of the similarly footloose David Ginola.
Leaving Stamford Bridge, it was possible to imagine Mourinho as head of a gang of moustache-twirling villains in a bad black and white movie. “Ha! So you win this time, independent media. But wait until we, the clubs, control all access to our product and you shall see our power. Try getting to the truth, then. Ha, ha, ha, ha!” Most correspondents knew that Drogba had handled to score Chelsea’s second goal because (a) it was visible to the naked eye and (b) it was shown in replays broadcast on television monitors in the press box. At half-time, those still unsure gathered around a larger screen downstairs, where Chelsea TV was showing reruns of the significant incidents.
Drogba’s second goal was featured from numerous angles, all inconclusive. The footage later broadcast on Match of the Day, which left no doubt that there had been an infringement was, oddly, also unavailable at the stadium. So there, in microcosm, is football’s future. The day the clubs are the sole source of broadcast information, reality TV goes out the window quicker than a halfdecent player at Southampton. You will see and hear what they want you to see and hear.
Chelsea are not the only culprits, merely the ones clumsy enough to get so obviously caught. The FA is not immune to a bit of tinkering when it suits, either. Before the recent England match against Uruguay, David Beckham was asked about the appointment of Sven-Göran Eriksson’s successor. “He has to have a certain amount of experience, of course,” he said. “That’s part and parcel of being a top- flight manager, to be able to handle big games like in the Champions League and World Cups. So I think you do need to have a certain amount of experience on that side.”
Not unreasonably, it was written that the England captain was as good as ruling out an English-born manager with this opinion. On Friday, the following statement appeared on the FA website beneath the headline “Beckham’s exact words”:
“Further to inaccurate reports this week claiming that England captain David Beckham has said that the next England manager must have experience of managing in the Champions League, the FA today print his exact words.”
There followed a transcript of the conversation with the key phrase “so I think you do need to have a certain amount of experience on that side” omitted. Considering the “inaccurate” reports were based on this quote, its disappearance from the official version of Beckham’s “exact” words was quite an oversight. Maybe it was cock-up, maybe conspiracy. Either way, if the FA is entering the Alastair Campbell business, this was an inauspicious start. Journalists have tape recorders, too.
The fact is, not all Chelsea supporters want Drogba’s excesses airbrushed from the picture. They share the opinion of many that he is a fine, physically imposing centre forward, whose game is undermined by a propensity for cheating. Most England fans would similarly argue that Beckham, as England captain, is entitled to express an opinion on the subject of the national team’s coach and if he thinks, as many do, that no Englishman is qualified to succeed Eriksson, he is at liberty to say that.
The move towards censorship is doubly worrying for what the clubs and authorities wish to censor. Debate, usually. The reason that cheating is at the top of the news agenda is because it has been placed there by television analysts and newspaper commentators appalled by its growth. In these instances, the media are not policemen but informants.
Referees have become wise to Drogba’s behaviour (and to that of El-Hadji Diouf, Stelios Giannakopoulos and Cristiano Ronaldo) because it has been so widely identified. The alternative is pictures from Chelsea TV, MUTV and, one day, Bolton Wanderers TV that obscure the issue, with unchallenged statements presenting a point of view that is skewed towards the home team.
“Yes, I handled it,” Drogba told Chelsea TV on Monday, “but it is part of the game. If the referee saw it, he has to whistle, but he didn’t.” Of course, handball is not part of the game. Fifa Law 12 (Fouls and Misconduct) states: “A direct free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a player handles the ball deliberately [except for the goalkeeper within his own penalty area].”
Saying that handling is part of football is akin to claiming that breaking and entering is part of life and reprehensible only if the police find out. Mourinho’s assertion that Drogba was a player with whom he could go to every war is also questionable. Soldiers who fall over when accidentally poked in the eye might not be as much use in the trenches as José thinks.
There are occasions when the Pravda-like machinations of footballs clubs are understandable. MUTV did not show the interview in which Roy Keane strongly criticised his Manchester United team-mates because it would have damaged club morale and no business is duty bound to place itself in a bad light. Yet there is something to be feared from the day when a football club can doctor the screening of events on the pitch to suit their purposes.
A dive, or a deliberate handball, provides context for the incidents that follow. Without knowing that Drogba handled, why would Sylvain Distin, the Manchester City captain, have been sent off for protesting to the referee at half-time? When fans meet sports writers, one of the first questions is invariably: “What team do you support?” There is an obsession with fairness, often married to the belief the ambition of their club is being thwarted by conspiracy. They are wrong.
Abroad, it is not uncommon for journalists to wear colours or show partisan leanings and clubs such as Real Madrid and Barcelona as good as have official newspapers and correspondents; in England it is frowned upon and any hint of bias is exposed. And yet these days, at every ground in the Premiership, there is an increasing club presence: an expanding press department, website, radio station, television network.
There used to be some old guy who wrote the programme and kept his sympathies to himself. Now there are cheers when the home team scores from those who rely on results to pay the mortgage.
Mourinho is from a culture in which the press are often glorified cheerleaders. He told Chelsea’s director of communications that he had one columnist removed from his job for criticising FC Porto. Maybe that is what irks him about the English game — the freedom. Drogba is a cheat and Beckham doesn’t fancy Sam Allardyce as England manager. Read it here first. While you still can.
