As you may have been trying your best to forget, England played Estonia on Sunday night. As you may have been completely unable to avoid hearing since, Raheem Sterling, Liverpool's 19-year-old wunderkind, didn't start the game after he told his manager, Roy Hodgson, that he was "tired" and out of form.
Where Raheem Sterling leads, other footballers should follow
Raheem Sterling is an inspiration. We need more players willing to stand up and say the things they’re not allowed to say.
Christopher Lee
This might sound reasonable enough; certainly, better a rest than a rubbish performance or an injury. But that would be to forget the fundamental rule of the international break: when life gives you an international break, make internationalbreakade. This is like lemonade but without anything to take the edge off the bitterness, and so, half the British press have lined up to condemn the poor lad's anti-patriotic indolence; the other half have been preaching caution while simultaneously mocking Roy Hodgson's gauche handling of the press.
So far, so predictable. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the entire episode has been Sterling’s refreshing honesty. Where the macho culture of sport would normally demand that no weakness be acknowledged, he was happy to hold his hands up and say “Actually, I don’t think I’m at my best here”. Refreshing stuff. Well, that or he couldn’t be bothered with Estonia. It would be hard to blame him. Either way, here are a number of other things that we think footballers could stand to treat with a little more frankness.
Liverpool Offside
Their clubs
I’m here because I like the manager, and because they offered me the largest wages. I will play to the best of my ability because I’m a grownup and I’m a professional, but I’m sorry, I don’t know when you — ahem, we — last won the FA Cup, I’ve never heard of the people that the stands have been named after, and I didn’t even know where this place was until my helicopter landed 10 minutes ago.
Look, we’re not saying that no player should take any interest. Plainly, some will, and that’s great. But the expectation that they should pretend is a little peculiar. You love the club. They work for it. And employees don’t have to fall in love with their job to do it well.
Their teammates
No, I think he’s a pillock. I don’t like him as a person -- we don’t see each other off the pitch unless we absolutely have to, and the last time he came to my house I think he kicked my dog. But he’s good at passing me the ball, and I’m good at kicking the ball in the net after he’s passed it to me, so there’s no problem here.
Think about the place you work. Think about the people you work with. Now, unless you work at SB Nation — hi guys, love you all! — then chances are that at least one of the people you’ve brought to mind is, well, not somebody you like. Somebody you dislike. This is perfectly natural, since humans come in many flavors and some of those flavors clash, yet professional sportspeople are often simply assumed to all get on. All that hugging after goals, and so on. It’s weird. It’s unnatural. It’s quite obviously a lie.
More players should take the road traveled by Manchester United strike partners Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham: four trophy-laden seasons on the pitch, barely a word exchanged off it.
Their opponents
I switched him over to the right flank because he asked me to. He thinks their left back’s a dick, and he wanted the opportunity to make him look a fool on national television. I was happy to help.
Following on from the point above, it stands to reason that some animosity exists between opponents. Yet this only really seems to manifest itself in violence: hello, Roy Keane; hello Alf Inge Haaland. This is strange. Football is rife with opportunities for the giving and receiving of humiliation and it would be extremely gratifying to learn that this fancy winger or that tricky striker had been dumped over an advertising board not just for reasons of business, but also reasons of pleasure.
Their goals
Absolutely, it felt great. Like I’d really proved a point about how good I am. I mean, I’m amazing. I’m really, really good at football. And scoring that goal made me feel fantastic about myself.
Of all football’s great lies, the line trotted out by strikers after they score — “well, I’m just happy for the team that we got the win” — is among the flimsiest. To be a goalscorer is to be a creature constructed from single-minded selfishness, to be the shark of the penalty area, and these post-game pretenses towards humility are fooling nobody. Say what you like about Cristiano Ronaldo, but he’s not pretending he cares about anything other than Cristiano Ronaldo, and that’s refreshing.
Their legends
I am better than Pele. So are most of my teammates. Get me a time machine, send me back, and I’ll score two thousand. Or send him here and we’ll mark him out of the game. Old football was rubbish, let’s be real here. Have you seen the state of the goalkeeping?
Related: Lionel Messi is the best there has ever been.
***
Look, we’re not saying that all the above are necessarily totally accurate. Maybe plenty of workplaces are entirely pleasant places to work; maybe John Charles is the greatest of all time. (He is. Messi is a fraud.) But football is currently wedded to an entire structure of near-compulsory platitudes that serve nobody any good; that only serve to breed an infantilized culture of heavily policed attitudes, where any deviation from the accepted line is to be jumped upon.
Embrace the honesty, footballers. Embrace the improprieties. Embrace the fact that you’re a collection of different people with different views on the world, and revel in that fact; don’t wait until the autobiography to run your mouth. Most importantly, embrace the simple and fundamental human right to turn up to work, think about things for a minute or two, and then realize that you’re knackered and couldn’t give a stuff. We’ve all been there, Raheem. You put your feet up.
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