Football’s bosses are as neanderthal as its stars

JUST when you thought the world of football couldn’t sink any lower, the head of the players’ union, Gordon Taylor, compares the story of convicted rapist Ched evans to the Hillsborough tragedy.

It was a crass attempt to point out that it took years for the truth about the stadium disaster to come out — and when it did, it exonerated all those who had been accused of vile, drunken behaviour as 96 people died.

Taylor suggested that one day Ched evans, too, may have his reputation restored. But even if you believe the footballer’s pleas that he is no rapist, he is still a man who had a threesome with a fan so drunk she couldn’t remember having sex with him.

For Taylor to compare his situation with Hillsborough is repugnant on every level — and he has since apologised in a bid to save his job. But what the whole incident has done is to shed new light on the barely concealed contempt for women that permeates all aspects of the game.

Scarcely a week goes by without the red top papers exposing the boozefuelled infidelities of yet another player, to the extent that it’s hard to compile a teamsheet of stars who haven’t been implicated in a sex scandal. The two most famous British players of the past decade certainly aren’t untouched by such controversy.

Wayne rooney is now hailed as the father of the england team, despite frequenting ageing hookers behind Coleen’s back, while David Beckham has become a global ambassador for SPEAKER John Bercow’s wife Sally has had to pull out of the reality TV show The Jump after fracturing two ribs. Shame. If there’s one woman I’d happily watch plunge down an icy precipice . . . the sport despite alleged dalliances with rebecca Loos and former PA Sarah Marbeck.

And the more we l earn about the sport’s governing bodies, the more we realise they are equally sexist, amoral and neanderthal.

After all, Gordon Taylor is the man who, while declaring he had ‘zero-tolerance’ for footballers’ who gambled, amassed more than £100,000 in debts after placing £4 million on 2,000 bets over the course of 30 months.

MeANWHILe, Premier League boss richard Scud a mo r e was exposed as an oldfashioned sexist after forwarding crude emails about ‘irrational’ women. Or ‘ big-t*tted broads’ as one email called them.

With men like this at the top, it’s no wonder the players believe that the rules of civilised behaviour don’t apply to them.

As footballer Joey Barton put it: Gordon Taylor and his mob are a ‘rotting corpse of maggots’.

This from a man twice convicted of assault! I fear the whole sport’s rotten to the core.