Spare us the sound of silence

FOR the second week running, football fans have been required to observe a minute’s silence/ applause for the Argentinian player Emiliano Sala, who died in a plane crash on his way from France to Cardiff.

But until the accident, almost no one had heard of him and he hadn’t played one game in the Premier League.

It was appropriate that this tragic loss of a young life — and let’s not forget his pilot David Ibbotson — was marked at Cardiff City. But what’s it got to do with, say, Spurs or Leicester City, who recently experienced their own tragedy when their club chairman was killed in a helicopter crash?

Some may consider me callous, but I abhor football’s incessant cult of enforced vicarious grief. Barely a game goes by without yet another sentimental, ostentatious display of mourning, utterly unconnected to anyone in the ground.

If the Premier League really wanted to acknowledge the loss of someone who made a significant contribution to the English football scene, they should have paid tribute at the weekend to The Sun’s Vikki Orvice, the first female football reporter on a tabloid newspaper, who became a role model for other young women.

She died last week, aged just 56, and is missed not only by her family, friends and colleagues, but by millions more who read her work.

No disrespect to Emiliano Sala, but if anyone deserved a minute’s silence it was Vikki Orvice.