Every side has a panto villain the rival fans love to boo
Football followers tend to have long memories when it comes to a perceived sense of injustice, as Jim White recalls
Moses was not simply booed, his every touch was greeted with a cacophony of righteous fury
Within moments of the game kicking off at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday, the neutrals in attendance were treated to a most peculiar modern footballing phenomenon. The ball landed at the feet of the Chelsea wing-back Victor Moses and as soon as he set off towards the Swansea goal the air was filled with fuming indignation.
Moses was not simply booed, his every touch was greeted with a cacophony of righteous fury. “Cheat, cheat,” yelled a man sitting behind the press box.
This was not Joey Barton or John Terry or Robbie Savage, the widely loathed villains of modern football. This was Victor Moses, a player who, when he steps out at any other ground in the country, is barely noticed.
But at Swansea, Moses has history. Back in 2014, when he was on loan at Stoke City, he fell under a challenge in the Swansea area and the referee awarded a penalty. Garry Monk, the visiting manager, furiously claimed in his postmatch interviews that Moses had dived. His agitation was backed up on Match of the Day that evening by John Hartson (admittedly not the most impartial of observers when it comes to Swansea), who called Moses a cheat. Peter Coates, the Stoke chairman, complained to the BBC about Hartson’s comments and the pundit had to issue an apology.
But fans never forget. At Swansea, long after its significance has faded, Moses’s alleged offence still raises hackles. He remains the pantomime villain of choice at the Liberty.
Moses’s relationship with Swansea fans, though, is by no means unique. Every club’s supporters have a favoured target that they and they alone boo. This is not simply about previous associations. It is much more particular and personal than that.
Crystal Palace fans, for instance, have a particular place in their disdain for Ashley Young, booed to the rafters every time he visits Selhurst Park in memory of another diving offence. At Arsenal, Troy Deeney is the favoured hate figure after publicly voicing an opinion about the Gunners players’ lack of cojones that many of the club’s supporters had been uttering for years. But when an outsider says it, then he is forever to be heckled.
And it is not always to do with perceived slights. At Queens Park Rangers, Richard Keogh, of Derby, is the man who provokes a noisy vocal reaction every time he plays. In this instance, the memory recalled is a good one. In the closing moments of the Championship play-off final in 2014, Keogh gave the ball away to allow Bobby Zamora to score the goal which clinched promotion for Rangers. As a result, Keogh is now roundly mocked whenever faced with Rangers fans.
But this childish imperative of football support to find someone to boo is not always good, clean fun. You wonder what possessed Burnley fans at the weekend to target Brighton’s Gaetan Bong. The Cameroonian defender had recently issued a formal complaint about alleged racial abuse from the West Bromwich Albion striker Jay Rodriguez. The Football Association had cleared the player, but for Burnley fans that was not the end of the matter.
Even though long since departed, Rodriguez was once a favourite at Turf Moor, so Bong became an object of fury. Every boo grated with the neutral; the FA called it “totally unacceptable behaviour”.
It was indeed bizarre, inappropriate and morally dubious. But in the favoured game of selective scapegoating, such minor considerations have never stopped the football fan.