Sterling penalty another blow for sportsmanship
Pep Guardiola's reaction to forward not owning up to self-inflicted tumble shows elements of deception are now just a fact of life in modern football
Whataboutery, a word that has grown like knotweed around popular discourse, is essentially the art of drawing false moral equivalence. One Northern Irish MP defined it, in 1982, as a “macabre game of ‘You are worse than us’”. All sides did it to each other during the Troubles, the Soviets did it to the Americans during the Cold War, and now, risibly, Pep Guardiola is doing it to defend Raheem Sterling after the winger’s toe-tripping tumble against Shakhtar Donetsk.
Asked about quite possibly the worst Sterling fall since Black Wednesday, and whether his player should have let the referee know that it was never a penalty, Guardiola framed his specious answer around James Milner. Who else? Dredging up a long-forgotten incident from Manchester City’s 2-1 home defeat by Liverpool in last season’s Champions League, he argued: “Milner could say the same for the pass for the second goal in the 44th minute. That was a legal goal.” It is a familiar, if feeble rhetorical device. Yes, my man could have done the right thing, but what about the other guy seven months ago?
It is often said that we live in an age of zero accountability, a theory for which football offers an intriguing parable. For when it comes to moral standards on the pitch, our leading Premier League clubs seem to be engaged in a race to the bottom, deflecting any suggestions of individual blame by invoking past precedents that cast their rivals in an equally unflattering light. What matters is not that they fail to set an example themselves, but that they are seen to be the least worst offenders.
Sterling, as Guardiola indicated, had no obligation to tell referee Viktor Kassai that the penalty decision had been reached in error. But it is a reflection of how far football’s fabric has frayed that the very notion of Sterling admitting fault is regarded as an act of selflessness of which Mother Teresa would have been proud. There is a fundamental hypocrisy at work here. We gnash our teeth at all those, from Arjen Robben to Dele Alli, who have repeatedly dived to con officials. And yet when it comes to players being content to profit from a clear refereeing mistake – a lower-order transgression than simulation, to be sure, but still a form of deceit – we become agnostics, apologists even.
It is hardly beyond the pale to imagine that Sterling, with City one goal to the good in a 6-0 stroll, could have held his hands up and acknowledged that he had accidentally gone down in a heap. Let us put this in terms that the whataboutists might understand.
What about Miroslav Klose demanding that his goal be chalked off in Lazio’s defeat by Napoli in 2012, after accepting that he had guided the ball in with his right hand? What about Aaron Hunt of Werder Bremen, going down easily under contact with Nuremberg’s goalkeeper in 2014, instructing the referee to reverse the penalty call? ball after address and cause it to shift from its spot, you own up and incur a one-stroke penalty. Should you ground your club in a bunker, you take a two-stroke penalty and move on.
In cricket, despite its strict codes of honour, the spread of technology means that the burden of responsibility is no longer as clear-cut as it used to be. While the old school of thought insists that a batsman always knows if he has edged it, the tendency now is to wait for the snickometer to provide final confirmation. Which, one might say, is fair enough: feathering a ball travelling at 90mph leaves rather more room for ambiguity than falling flat on your face in the penalty area when nobody has touched you.
In football, however, there is no expectation that players should declare culpability. Instead, the established norm is that they should keep quiet and stand back, even when travesties of justice occur. Sterling knew this, adhering to a time-honoured pattern by letting Kassai commit a howler and leaving City to reap the reward.
That might be perfectly permissible, but by no means is it reputable. Those giving Sterling a free pass over the episode are effectively acknowledging that elements of deception are now immutable facts of football life. Whichever way you cut it, that is an alarming place for the game to be.