He’s a bit of a numpty, but sometimes football isn’t the right place for moral postulating.
It was yesterday announced that Senegalese striker El-Hadji Diouf had found himself a new home at the Keepmoat Stadium. Doncaster, who are currently joint-bottom of the Championship, had delved into the dark pits of football’s utterly despicable characters and plucked the most vile, putrid and contemptible human capable of wearing a football shirt out from the stench-filled cavern. Those monsters! How could they?!!!
It’s relatively well-realised that El-Hadji Diouf is one of the most awful people in football. His early career in English football was reminiscent of a lawn sprinkler, with numerous incidents of spitting on players, fans and practically anyone who came within a few feet of him. One of the most grotesquely nasty incidents involving Diouf was during last season’s FA Cup, where Diouf abused Jamie Mackie as he lay on the floor with a broken leg. Following the incident, Neil Warnock insinuated that Diouf was lower in people’s estimations than a sewer rat (thereby tying him with Neil Warnock in many people’s estimations).
But still, Doncaster successfully pursued him. There’s much debate about whether signing a player like Diouf, a man with unquestionable talent, is good for a football club when the man has displayed such a tremendously appalling character in his career. Is it right for a team to be seen justifying the man’s previous incidents with a fresh new contract?
This has been a case made many time before. Marlon King and Lee Hughes are just two examples of players whose reputations suffered following incidents of a much more serious nature than those of Diouf’s. Regardless, both players have gone on to help their clubs achieve more success, and the questions of their former lives gradually faded away from the fans’ thoughts as they performed in games and scored goals.
I think the truth is that whether or not it is right for a person of Diouf’s attitude to be rewarded and paid so fruitfully, it is not the issue of the football club. Of course a team can make a point of not signing a player if they feel it goes against their values, and this would be a nice thing to do, but in many cases it’s just not a situation where being picky and choosy is an option.
Take, for example, Doncaster. They are bottom of the Championship and could well be in a big relegation scrap this year. If Diouf’s goals help them to stay up, the fans won’t have their party spoiled by the fact that Diouf played a role in the survival. That’s just not how things work. Some ambitions in football are too important for the moral high-ground to get in the way, and it would have been no solace to Doncaster if they had turned Diouf down and then got relegated.
Following the death of Colonel Gaddafi, I was pondering the fact that at one time during Portsmouth’s seeming descent into financial meltdown, Gaddafi’s son was rumoured to be interested in buying the club. Given how events turned out, it’s quite good that this didn’t happen, but at the time I was quite comfortable with the thought of a Gaddafi running Portsmouth. Despite the disgusting history of the family, all I wanted was to see my club survive the turmoil, and if that meant allowing the son of a murderous dictator running affairs, well, so be it.
You can accuse me of being a morally bankrupt cur (no idea if that’s an insult, but it sounded nice). Perhaps that’s true, but sometimes in life bad people get good things. It’s a matter of fact, and I don’t think football is the cause of this, nor will it spark the movement that prevents this. Anyone looking to football as a bastion of moral fabric in our society is completely mental. Besides, it’s not like Diouf’s killed anyone…
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