FIFA think Dele Alli is a problem and they are missing the point
World football’s governing body fail to get their priorities right — again
THE organisation that have usurped even the IOC as the most venal body in sport, the organisation who have consistently failed to reform themselves and the organisation who awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar opened disciplinary proceedings against Dele Alli last week for joking around with a team-mate.
Alli did not hurt anybody. He did not go into a tackle two-footed. Or studs-up. He did that once before, for Spurs against Gent i n the Europa League last February and got a red card for it. He deserved it, too. It was such a shocker, he could have got two reds. No one defended him then.
This time, all he did was flash his middle finger at Kyle Walker during England’s victory over Slovakia at Wembley on Monday night. It was not a gesture of abuse t owards t he referee, Alli has insisted. It was, sources close to the player say, a jokey reproach for what Alli considered a waste of possession.
That is what common sense tells you it was. Especially with the benefit of time and pictures that show a wider angle of the pitch. The FA are said to have other photos that make Alli’s case even more strongly. The idea that he would make that sign to a referee just does not mesh.
It may sound stupid but it is the kind of exchange a player might have with someone he knows. A friend. You might remonstrate with a referee. Even shout at him. But that was a gesture of familiarity. And yet FIFA appear to have decided that it merits punishment. Really?
This is the same FIFA, don’t forget, that have a history of meting out a harsher punishment to a player wearing branded underpants than to a team whose supporters chant racist abuse.
Spare the felon and clap the jaywalker in chains.
FIFA are not big on getting their priorities right. Now they have surpassed themselves again. There is a wider issue here, too, that goes beyond the insufferable, powercrazed idiosyncrasies of the game’s governing body. It concerns the 1950s standards to which we hold the young men who populate our football teams in the second decade of the 21st century.
I have never bought into the idea that footballers should be role models for our kids, by the way. Parents should be the role models for their kids. Not Alli or Wayne Rooney. Looking to footballers for moral guidance is as absurd as looking to film stars or musicians. It is a way of abrogating responsibility.
It is enough that Alli is probably the most talented English player we have at the moment. In terms of technique, he is certainly the best. He has the best touch, the best awareness of space, the best movement off the ball. He is the jewel in England’s rather battered crown.
But he is also a man who had to fight his way out of a difficult, chaotic childhood. He was raised, according to Mike Dove, head of t he MK Dons youth s ystem, ‘ without a traditional support mechanism’. In the end, he forged his own path to adulthood without his parents. He is still only 21 and we expect him t o act l i ke a choirboy. The game is a middle class plaything now and FIFA police it accordingly. Showing a team- mate the middle finger during a game is not ideal but it is hardly shocking, either. It was playful. It was everyday.
It was the same when Rooney swore into a television camera during a game against West Ham in 2011. There was a furore. Why? Do we really think that players do not swear during football matches? Do we really expect them not to swear? What do we want football to become?
That difference between reality and the desire to establish an idealised reality has al ways fascinated me. When I was a schoolkid, campaigners were outraged when someone swore on the BBC children’s programme Grange Hill. But the language on Grange Hill was a heavily sanitised version of the language in every school playground in Britain. It was bizarre.
It sometimes feels as if we are trying to crush the spirit of our leading players. Many of the best ones have an edge. They get themselves into trouble, they lose control, they snap. Sometimes that costs a team. But isn’t it better to have the talent in the first place and accept that it comes with flaws? I think so. Try to destroy that in certain players and you just make them ordinary.
Football does not even allow them to celebrate a goal joyously any more without the risk of a red card, as Raheem Sterling found out to his cost recently. Nor does it allow players to stick up for the supporters of their clubs, as Sergio Aguero discovered in the same game.
Does football want its footballers to be like characters from The Truman Show, cleansed of sin and real feeling? Does it want lobotomised smiley, happy people? As fans and media, we crave individuality and dissension and maverick talent. At FIFA, they distrust those things deeply. They seek conformity and players like Alli hate conformity. That is what makes them special.