Sanctimonious Scots
should get their own house in order before attempting to lead
campaigns condemning Johnny Foreigner's cheating
By Bernard Thompson
Now that the
international heroics are out of the way, Scottish football fans can
devote their energies to what they have been itching for since
Saturday: the baiting of Saulius Mikoliunas.
Rangers fans are the first invited to join the media-led campaign to harangue the Lithuanian who dared to dive at Hampden against the country that is giving him a home and a livelihood.
Rangers fans are the first invited to join the media-led campaign to harangue the Lithuanian who dared to dive at Hampden against the country that is giving him a home and a livelihood.
To be fair, Mikoliunas
is a hard player to love, which makes him perfect for Hearts just
now. Undoubtedly talented, occasionally interested, prone to sly
kicks off the ball, but always ready to bleat to referees at the
slightest provocation, he has up to now been more often booed by his
own fans at Tynecastle than by those of opposition teams.
But nothing rallies the
Gorgie faithful more passionately than the Weegie media or the SFA
criticising any aspect of their brilliantly run club. So just a few
weeks after some Hearts fans had pencilled in this weekend to
demonstrate against the regime of another Lithuanian, owner Vladimir
Romanov, contempt for outsiders has prompted them to close ranks. The
prevailing feeling is that Miko "may be a son of a bitch, but
he's our son of a bitch".
If the reasoning of
Hearts fans - that everyone based in Glasgow is out to destroy a club
already living on borrowed players as well as time - is flawed, they
have some justification in asking why their 23-year-old winger is
attracting such special attention. Granted, the penalty he won could
have been catastrophic for Scotland's Euro 2008 campaign; but it
wasn't.
And if players like
Craig Gordon or Jay McEveley could claim that the venom they directed
at Mikoliunas was uttered in the heat of battle, the SFA Chief
Executive Gordon Smith has no such excuses. Smith is undoubtedly
intelligent and his experience as a player, assistant coach and agent
appeared to make him the ideal choice to replace the unpopular David
Taylor.
But more crucial to his
appointment was his media background - it was thought he could be
relied upon to avoid the sort of idiotic remark that precipitated the
demise of former SFA president John McBeth, who famously argued that
"by and large, the four British countries know what fair play is
and when we are stepping out of line. But, as soon as you hit Africa,
it's a slightly different kettle of fish. They're poor nations and
want to grab what they can. I presume the Caribbean is much the same
- they just come at it in a different way."
When Smith gave his own
reaction to Mikogate, there were echoes of that insular sentiment
that had embarrassed Scotland so badly: "It could be that he
reverted to what is acceptable in Lithuania because he was playing
for his national side, even though it's unacceptable here," he
said. "I don't think the referee helped the situation, either,
possibly because he comes from a country where that sort of behaviour
isn't so frowned upon." He then went on to insist that Scotland
- and presumably Smith - should lead the world in eradicating
simulation, name-dropping Franz Beckenbauer and Dino Zoff along the
way.
Smith, of course, did
plan to tackle the issue in Scotland before discovering that
retrospective punishments based on television evidence would breach
Fifa regulations. But he is naive to believe that, having made such
crass judgements on the values of Lithuania and Slovenia
respectively, he could be trusted to lead any such international
movement. The fact that his comments came after a match in which
Garry O'Connor also dived didn't help. They also came on the back of
an apology for the Tartan Army's disrespect for the Lithuanian
national anthem, which only added to the surreal air of farce that
would have made the Marx Brothers proud.
Smith has merely
demonstrated precisely why Scotland is in no position to lead any
campaign on fair play: while Scots - or the British as a whole -
delude ourselves that we are inherently more trustworthy than other
nationals by dint of our birth, we will never show ourselves capable
of objectivity. For example, when France last visited Hampden (before
beating the world's best team was commonplace), Uefa found that
Scotland were slow in returning the ball to the field after Gary
Caldwell's goal.
Standing next to Alex
McLeish on Saturday was Roy Aitken, the model hard-but-fair pro, but
one who was also guilty of outrageous opportunism while winning the
Scottish Cup for Celtic at that very stadium. His predecessor in the
dug-out, Ally McCoist, was far too beloved of the Scottish media to
ever be accused of "going down easily" while playing for
Rangers, although fans of every other team were less reticent. But
suggesting that Scottish players are as guilty of underhand tactics
as those "on the continent" is viewed as a kind of treason.
The irony is that many
of the same fans who booed Mikoliunas on Saturday, and who will
continue to do so over the next few weeks, will happily list
Maradona's Hand of God goal among their all-time sporting highlights.
So the Lithuanian might well be justified in shrugging off the
righteous indignation of his adopted country. "If Hearts fans
want me to apologise I will, but not to Scotland fans," he said.
It is a response that, probably temporarily, has endeared him to his
club's faithful, a surprising number of whom chose to support
Lithuania rather than their own national team.
But then he comes from
a nation of heroes, sportsmen, geniuses, villains and cheats - a bit
like Scotland.
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