Footballers behaving badly

Leicester incident shows decline of society, not just sport

Find out more about World Soccer magazine's online subscription offer.

By Brian Glanville, World Soccer magazine

THERE, alas, we go again. Three Leicester City players banged up in Cartagena for alleged rape, several others impugned. Because, allegedly, they had forced their way into the La Manga hotel bedroom of three women of German nationality but African origin.

Paul Dickov, Keith Gillespie and Frank Sinclair were the three detained.

Par for the course, you might be tempted to say, remembering the horrific case of the teenaged girl who was "roasted," in the repugnant euphemism, a few months back in a Park Lane hotel.

Not to mention the almost concurrent case of Stan Collymore, culpable of something -- another euphemism -- called "dogging." That is, frequenting open-air car parks to have or to watch sex with strangers.

Odd to think that about the same time I twice met Collymore -- who once let off a fire extinguisher in a hotel in that same La Manga -- at Highbury matches. Where, when I asked him whether he might play again, he replied that he wanted to devote his time to his family.

It is futile to take all these cases in isolation. What they surely and sadly represent is a breakdown in our society, the gradual erosion of the old self-contained, self-respecting working class, replaced by what you can only call an underclass. And when young men emerge from that sector, to find themselves, barely out of their 20s, making anything up to £45,000 a week, the consequences are all too predictable.

Things aren't helped by the superficial responses of those who should know better. To blame "the media," as the PFA's Gordon Taylor and Mick Maguire, even Arsenal's sophisticated Arsene Wenger, are doing, is the equivalent merely of killing the messenger.

To complain that no charges were brought against any of the men who had sex with the girl in Park Lane -- they included Carlton Cole of Charlton and Titus Bramble of Newcastle -- is cynically to beg the question. In so far as the girl, picked up in a West End club, had agreed to go with the so-called party organizer -- most of us, I am sure, could think of a better one-word description -- the police clearly felt it couldn't be proved that she'd denied consent to the others.

At the same time, it is ludicrous to put the blame and the ignominy on football as a whole, as Simon Heffer, ranting and raving in the Daily Mail, so often and predictably does. Football, with such deep roots in our society, such immense if exaggerated popularity, simply reflects the realities of that society. Which, alas, seem all too clear.

GOOD, Alex Ferguson has had to ingest a large portion of humble pie and back down in his misbegotten bid to claim a fortune in breeding rights for the racehorse Rock of Gibraltar.

This after allegedly being ready to risk half a million pounds on a court case in Ireland against Man Utd investors Magnier and McManus, who had, let us not forget, given him rights in the horse for nothing. Now poor Ferguson will pocket only a few million a year on top of his colossal salary from Manchester United. Let us weep for him.

Meanwhile, his various errors have been catching up with him. Though the gifted young Portuguese Ronaldo had a fine game against Fulham last Saturday, pulling his team's chestnuts out of the fire, the utter folly of selling Jaap Stamp and the mistaken jettisoning of David Beckham have clearly cost the club dear. Each transfer seemed motivated less by mature consideration than by personal pique.

Stam was on his way hard on the heels of his autobiography, in which he revealed that he had been tapped up by United while with PSV. But he has done so well at Lazio that now he is due to join Milan next season. Ferguson meanwhile could do no better than sign the fading Laurent Blanc, whose lack of pace proved a hazard to his own defense.

Last January, when he might surely have gone for another central defender, he splashed out on a new striker in Louis Saha, and in taking on Magnier and McManus, with their huge share holding in the club, he has opened up a Pandora's box as they insist on answers to so many embarrassing and potentially explosive questions.

ASKING Pele to choose his best living 100 footballers was a cheap shot by FIFA at the best, and they have got pretty well what they deserve, even if Pele threw in another 25 names for good or bad measure. Among them, Lord save us all, two American women players, Michelle Akers and Mia Hamm -- a groveling obeisance to American feminism and an insult to the stars who were omitted.

One of those was his own essential teammate in the 1970 Brazilian team that won the World Cup in Mexico, Gerson. I can still recall the marvelous long, left-footed ball Gerson put right on Pele's chest in the penalty box, enabling him to score. Reportedly -- and publicly -- Gerson tore the list up when he saw sit.

My colleague Jeff Powell, having seen the American women's team play, reported that the level was just about that of an English professional club's under-16 side. Hard to think of an American footballer worthy of figuring in the first 100, but to deny implicitly that a goalkeeper with as fine a World Cup record as Brad Friedel is less worthy of selection than a couple of women defies logic.

No room for one of the greatest of all England wingers, Tom Finney, who some, including Billy Shankly, who played with him at Preston, rated as better even than Stanley Matthews, whose place he took on England's right wing for a time in 1946. That is, until the two of them figured, Matthews on the right and Finney on the left, in England's 10-0 win in Lisbon versus Portugal in May 1947.

No place either for John Charles, who was still alive when Pele made up his fatuous list. Nor for that powerful outside right Jairzinho, the winger who crossed the ball for Pele's header and Gordon Banks' amazing save in Guadalajara in that same 1970 tournament.

His latest book, a fully updated edition of THE STORY OF THE WORLD CUP is available in all good bookshops. Readers of worldsoccer.com can buy this highly acclaimed history of the World Cup and enjoy a 10% discount by clicking here.