‘CITY’S MORALS HAD TO BE UPHELD’
PREMIER League footballers live fortunate lives. It’s clear to see for outsiders, and many players admit as much. They have been particularly lucky during the past year. While people around the world have been forced to give up their passions and make sacrifices, footballers have been able to continue doing what they love.
Yes, it’s work. Yes, it is not the same without a crowd. Yes, their personal and social lives are affected, just like everyone else’s.
But their professional lives have barely been impacted and it is work they absolutely adore.
From the moment football made its return amid the pandemic, Brendan Rodgers has been saying how grateful he is and how grateful his players should be that they get to continue doing what they love on a daily basis.
In these times, it’s a particular privilege to be a footballer. In exchange for that, they are in the public eye and therefore have to be squeaky clean.
Misdemeanours won’t go unnoticed and therefore won’t go unpunished. But it’s a trade they surely all accept.
Yet here we are, where a handful of Leicester City players have shown they are not grateful enough for their privileges.
They have let down the club, let down themselves, and let down the fans.
Looking at each in turn, there could barely have been a worse time for the club for them to attend a party, as is understood to have taken place.
City were preparing for what could be the season-defining match.
We’re at the stage of the campaign where it is clear who the contenders are for the Champions League spots.
West Ham are a direct rival. Win, and City would have moved seven points ahead of them with seven games to go, a healthy cushion. Lose, and the gap is down to a point.
It could have been the only sixpointer of the season for City if they had won it. With four games against bottom-half clubs to come (WBA, Crystal Palace, Southampton and Newcastle) they could feasibly have wrapped up a Champions League spot before those tricky final three fixtures, against Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham.
But by breaching protocols, James Maddison, Ayoze Perez and Hamza Choudhury ruled themselves out of a crucial tie.
Their manager and their teammates needed them available to play their potentially vital roles in securing the three points, and yet they decided that wasn’t a just reason to abstain from attending a social gathering for the few more months until they’re allowed.
The performance at West Ham cannot be wholly blamed on their poor behaviour, but it impacted Rodgers’ selection plans, and it may have rankled the remaining teammates, affecting the preparation during the week.
City certainly played for the first hour like a team reeling from an injustice.
If City are now to miss out on the top four, their decision to breach protocol will be seen, by fans and by the media, as the first domino that toppled the others.
As bad as it is for the players to think their actions may be a cause of the club missing out on the Champions League again, there will be personal implications too.
For Maddison, it seems any hope of a place in the England squad for the European Championships is now gone.
Injuries had been cruel for the number 10, coming at just the wrong times so that he missed out on the national squads, despite being in terrific form for most of the season.
The country’s other attacking midfielders, such as Mason Mount and Jesse Lingard, have stepped up, and Maddison is now so far down the pecking order that selection seems incredibly unlikely, no matter how well he plays over the final few weeks.
He won’t be out of the picture completely, as Jack Grealish and Phil Foden have overcome misdemeanours to get back into the fold, but Maddison will very likely have to wait until after the Euros to get his reprieve.
For Perez, it is a blow to a player who was enjoying some of his best
form in a City shirt. He was finally given a run of games in the position he has long wanted to play, behind the strikers, and he took his chance to earn plaudits from a fanbase that has struggled to warm to him at times.
But now he’s thrown that away. For Hamza Choudhury, there could be greater implications in that he was also involved in the last incident of this like at City, when he and Ben Chilwell missed an important training session and were subsequently left out of a defeat to Burnley. It was around that time that Papy Mendy leapt ahead of him in the defensive midfield pecking order.
This incident will be a mark against Choudhury as Rodgers looks to rebalance his City midfield to make it more attacking in the summer.
The impact of their decisions on the club and on their personal footballing lives will be the hardest to take, but it is the way they have let down the fans and the public in general that frustrates most of all.
The rules put in place during the pandemic are restrictive and demoralising, but many will argue they are worth it for keeping more vulnerable members of society safe. And we’re all in it together, the rules apply to everyone, no exceptions.
Following the guidelines, as they have been reminding fans to do in videos published by the club for the past year, is something they would surely agree is necessary.
Yet they have decided they do not have to follow them.
THE impact of the coronavirus restrictions has been more fiercely felt by the people of Leicester than in any other city in the country. Residents here have been affected for more than a year, without any moment of respite.
The experiences of those people were clearly not considered at all.
There was no sympathy for fans for whom football on the telly once a week has been an extra special treat given that everything else around them has changed.
That reason in particular is why Rodgers had to make the decision he did.
In non-Covid times, if players had attended an ill-advised party, a fine may have sufficed, because in that situation, it is only the club and themselves they have let down. But letting down the public too left the City boss with little choice.
He would either have to axe them from his side to the detriment of his own team’s success, or show further disregard to the public’s sacrifices by allowing their actions to go without consequences. The match ended in a defeat, but the morals of the club have been upheld. Luckily for the players, there is time for them to put it right. Their actions may not ever quite be forgotten, but they will be a mere footnote if the club can win the FA Cup, qualify for the Champions League, or preferably both.
City are in a good enough position to still achieve what would be the second best season in their history, and these players can have a role in that. They need to show more desire than ever to get City over the line.
And they need to do it for the club, themselves, but particularly the fans.
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