It’s crazy to vilify a good pro like Krul for saying well done
When Pele and Bobby Moore embraced, yielding perhaps the most famous of all images of sportsmanship on a football pitch, the final whistle had already blown.
That was in 1970, at the end of a wonderfully hard-fought World Cup group match between england and Brazil, which the South Americans won 1-0. So loudly did the football world applaud such an exhibition of mutual respect between two giants of the game that all these decades later, the applause still resounds. That image of them is frequently flourished as a perfect example of what the game was, and is used to compare, unfavourably, with what it has become.
And so the Stadium of Light on Sunday afternoon. Tim Krul and Jermain Defoe are lesser stars than Moore and Pele, of course, and the newcastle United goalkeeper’s instinctively friendly gesture towards the man who had just scored a brilliant goal past him took place with 45 minutes yet to play.
But was it really so different to that celebrated business in Guadalajara, Mexico, for which we don’t only continue to congratulate the england colossus and the Brazilian legend for their integrity and values, but also ourselves, somehow, for knowing and loving the game when it still had a place for common decency?
Sportsmail’s Jamie Carragher, among many others, has lambasted Krul for an inappropriate show of brotherhood towards a fellow professional. On Match of the Day 2, Danny Murphy agreed. The Dutchman, they say, was out of order.
The implication is that, as he walked off the pitch at half-time, he should have been so lost in his own despair, or anger, or disappointment, or fierce resolve to get back on terms, that if he’d noticed Defoe at all, the only acceptable form of communication should have been a muttered oath, or at best a hard stare.
Any form of friendliness could at the very least have waited until after the game was over, they reckon.
Meanwhile, for some of Krul’s critics on social media, the fact that it was an intense local derby puts his behaviour almost beyond the pale.
how unutterably depressing. has football really become so leeched of humanity that one decent pro can’t turn to another and say ‘well played’?
nobody thinks that Krul would have complimented his opponent had it been a scuffed shot through his legs from two yards. But it was a wondrous strike, and, derby or not, half-time or not, a game that has no room either for an acknowledgment of a great piece of technique, or for a simple, impulsive act of sportsmanship, is a game that has become entirely detached from its roots. Others insist otherwise, saying only someone with ‘no passion’ for football could com- mend Krul for doing what he did. That’s rubbish.
I am a passionate evertonian and naturally I have asked myself how I’d feel if, let’s say, Tim howard congratulated Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard in the tunnel after just being beaten by him, stupendously, from 30 yards. Would I con- sider it disrespectful to shell- shocked fans? Or assume that by so publicly fraternising with the ‘enemy’, howard wasn’t quite up for what remained of the fight?
Of course not. On the contrary, I’d be pleased to have a grown-up on my team. Moreover, there is another dimension to all this. The sub-text in at least some of the excoriation of Krul’s back-slapping is that he is one of the Premier League’s foreign imports, and either doesn’t fully understand the ferocious tribalism that flavours the Tyne-Wear derby, or being a highly-paid mercenary, chooses not to inhale it.
But that’s rubbish, too. Some of us might have wistfully fond memories of an age when english football was overwhelmingly populated by players from the British Isles, but we kid ourselves if we think that the modern domestic game is divided by passports into those who give their all and those who don’t.
And yet, let’s be brutally honest, would the condemnation have been quite so swift and quite so loud if the boot had been on the other foot on Sunday, if it had been Defoe walking down the tunnel at half-time slapping Krul on the back for denying him seconds earlier with a truly breathtaking, world-class save?
In fact, would there have been any condemnation at all? Or would it have been held up as a heart-warming example, even in the intense heat of competition, of a typically honest english footballer doing the decent thing?
Football has become leeched of humanity