WHEN it comes to virtue signalling, our football authorities – rainbow laces proudly on – sit atop the table.
Whether it’s players taking the knee, wearing a pretty rainbow armband* at the World Cup in Qatar — a country where it is illegal to be gay — or spouting about the importance of mental health, nowhere is Britain’s liberalism demonstrated more than on a well-manicured football pitch.
The obsession with “fair play” has most recently seen Everton docked ten points for breaching financial rules.
Money talks.
Clubs will now think twice before spending hundreds of millions on their next centre forward.
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But fans, unfortunately, also talk.
And sometimes unpleasantly, and loudly.
Racist chants continue to ring around stadiums and in 2024 that is both unthinkable and disgusting.
(Well, it was both of these things long before Woke 2024.)
Over the weekend we saw AC Milan players in Italy walk off the pitch after abuse was shouted at their black keeper, Mike Maignan.
Closer to home, Coventry City midfielder Kasey Palmer said he received similar abuse at Hillsborough during the club’s 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday in football’s second tier.
So what are our football bosses doing? Precisely nothing.
Besides taking the knee, perhaps, at various internal crisis comms meetings deciding quite how to play this latest PR disaster.
At a time when players aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory — hiya Kyle Walker, heyyy Jordan Henderson — now is the time to start getting serious about a problem that isn’t going anywhere.
As Liverpool and England’s John Barnes once said: “Racism isn’t just a football problem, it’s a societal one."
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If football really does consider itself to be a beacon of morality it needs to lead from the front with meaningful actions, not just gestures.
Bosses need to hit clubs where it hurts — the league table. A
£200,000 fine to Man City means nothing but a six-point reduction means everything.
As respected pundit Ian Wright suggested, points must be deducted.
Tweeting after the AC Milan game, he wrote: “Solidarity from the rest of the team. Keep walking off!!
“We did ‘playing through it’ and nothing has changed. Points deductions needed, the fines are pointless.”
Bad apples
Sixteen months ago I interviewed Chelsea and England’s Reece James.
He detailed the daily abuse he gets behind closed doors over social media as “fans” send him monkey emojis and a litany of expletive-led vitriol.
He is like countless other players who, by virtue of their skin colour, face racial profiling and, when they try to report hate crimes to the police or Instagram bosses, get met by resounding silence.
If only fans were so silent in the stands.
But they’re not.
And it cannot continue.
Ninety nine per cent of football fans are decent people, men and women who love the beautiful game.
But kids watching matches are being bombarded by abuse they should never, ever be privy to — what sort of example is it setting them?
Football fans get a bad rep.
But the bad apples need clearing out.
They must be made examples of, given lifetime bans and, the ultimate penalty, see the club they love being sent plunging down the table.
Only this will shut them up, once and for all.
*That is, until players were threatened with yellow cards, after which said armbands were removed faster than you could say “big gay bear”.
I, Claudia, am your biggest fan
AROUND ten million of us are obsessed with The Traitors, a show that just keeps on getting better.
But at the heart of it all is host Claudia Winkleman, a Cambridge-educated, 52-year-old orange woman.
She ad-libs with aplomb and is passionate and invested in the series.
It’s not just another pay cheque.
In this, she reminds me of Davina McCall with Big Brother and the late, brilliant Caroline Flack, who cared, deeply, about Love Island and its contestants.
TV execs, take note.
Give me a rest, please
LAST week, smug from 18 days without booze, I splurged on an Oura ring, a fitness device that tracks sleep, heart rate, exercise and stress levels.
Well, that was a mistake.
Yesterday, a celebrity personal trainer by the name of Dalton Wong – the man behind Jennifer Lawrence and Kit Harington’s abs – hit out at such AI apps, claiming they’re dangerous if used incorrectly.
While I’ve not yet pushed through any pain barriers, or vomited from exhaustion on a treadmill, I am becoming paranoid about sleep – or lack thereof.
Waking up one morning thinking I’d blissfully slept a solid eight hours, I was BEREFT to be told via the ring that I’d actually managed a paltry 56 minutes of “deep sleep”.
A corresponding graph helpfully demonstrated I’d been thrashing around from the hours of 2am to 4.07am, and the remainder of my sleep had been pitifully “light”.
The ring’s going in the bin (alongside my sleep).
Catherine's bathroom hacks
“FOR marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have their own bathroom. The end.”
Words to heed from Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Absolutely NOTHING kills romance faster than an “I’d give it ten minutes, if I were you”.
Socket to me Romeo
AT the age of 21, David and Victoria Beckham’s middle son, Romeo, has finally fled the nest (egg).
The very handsome footballer/influencer has shown fans inside his new multi-millionaire London pad, courtesy of TikTok.
Yes, it looks lovely and snazzy, etc, with cool artwork and pretty views.
But why the hell does anyone need quite so many plug sockets?
Royal health chaos
NEVER complain, never explain has long been the unofficial motto of the Royal Family.
But at the risk of sounding flippant, this past week has been much like London busses – absolutely nothing, then three health scares in quick succession.
For the first time in living memory, the royals – King Charles, Kate and Sarah Ferguson – have detailed their ongoing hospital battles.
In so doing, in so breaching their own medical privacy, they may each have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of British lives.
Perhaps it really is the start of a new royal era – and for the better.
We wish them all well.
On med alert
THE over-fifties are increasingly giving up on doctors, a new report suggests.
With hospital waiting lists post-pandemic at an all-time high, there’s also a worrying trend of people sharing prescriptions, if Sun readers are anything to go by.
Several have emailed to say they’ve taken to swapping medications, having given up on the idea of ever getting face-to-face appointments.
God only knows the possible consequences of this down the line – but more needs to be done now to stop this drug lottery.
