The modern technology that offers us internet access, smart phones and the ability to connect with other people on social media from practically anywhere in the world should bring us all closer together, but there is always the underlying, paradoxical feeling that it actually pushes people further apart.
Organic gatherings are traded for Whatsapp groups, local kick-about have been swapped for online FIFA battles and birthday cards are dying out in favour of posts on Facebook walls.
Perhaps that depends on the kind of person you are; whether you’re an introvert who uses such mediums to lazily limit face-to-face interaction, or an extravert who looks to find new friends and new adventures that would have previously been beyond the imagination.
Yet, if there is one area where social media and the availability of the internet has unquestionably had a pejorative effect on connecting people, it’s in the world of football. Despite now being a handful of typed keys and a few clicks of a mouse away from each other, footballers and the fan bases that once created them appear further polarised than ever before.
No doubt, that’s as much to do with the life footballers now lead as it is the technology of 2017. The sheer money of the game has put footballers in almost a socio-economic sub-class of their own, living in a bubble of mansions and million-pound salaries that bear minimal, if any, resemblance to the experiences of the common man. A drastic change from football once being the sport of the working classes.
But it’s the willingness in which footballers retreat to their bubble that should concern us most. Not because it shows a lack of respect for the modern day fan, but because we’re often the ones pushing them back into it. Darron Gibson’s drunken outburst earlier this week, secretly filmed at a tellingly lopsided angle by a Sunderland fan, provides the perfect example.
Of course, Gibson’s comments have created embarrassment, not least because they came with a healthy dose drunken slur and a series of according expletives. If the Ireland international had made those disparaging remarks about his team-mates fully sober following one of Sunderland’s many abject performances last season, we’d probably all be praising him for his honesty, rather than the alcohol-fuelled manner in which he eventually expressed it.
And yet, after a 5-0 defeat to Celtic, whether drunk or not, Gibson gave an honest answer to concerned fans about what’s going wrong at a club that’s rotten the core. That should have been left as a heated conversation between footballer and supporter, the kind that were once commonplace outside of every football ground in the country post-match. It shouldn’t have been posted online and turned into a PR disaster because one fan decided to film it on the sly. That’s a betrayal of the trust Gibson drunkenly offered those infuriated supporters wanting answers.
It also highlights how we’ve forgotten footballers are human beings too, who need time to unwind and relieve the pressure – in fact, they probably need that more than most of us – and if anything, a week before the start of the season is arguably the most acceptable time to get a little sloshed; barring the odd international break or an unfortunate injury, Gibson’s schedule will be chock-a-block with 46 Championship fixtures, around two a week, until next May.
This is by no means the first incident of this kind. Back in November, a worse-for-wear Wayne Rooney was draped across the back pages after being snapped at a wedding during an international break whilst suffering an injury – surely a time when England’s all-time record goalscorer should be given the licence to relax. After The Sun picked up the images, he was later made to apologise to Gareth Southgate.
The common theme in both episodes, aside from alcohol, is an invasion of privacy and a betrayal of trust seemingly sourced from a desire to broadcast an interaction with a footballer to the rest of the world, regardless of the consequences for them. The other side of the argument, of course, is that we live in a free society where we can rightly question the actions of public figures, and that footballers earn so much we have every right to criticise them.
But what’s incredibly concerning is that these stories don’t start with the press. They may be picked up by them, but they all begin as a video or a picture usually posted on social media. In fact, the press know building the kind of long-standing relationships with footballers that eventually produce the huge, truly important scoops means avoiding breaking such scandalous, short-termist and sensationalist stories themselves.
That epitomises the crux of the issue; it’s not the press footballers have become scared of, but the fans. Scared that saying the wrong thing in a candid moment will soon have them trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons, scared that something they say or do will be dangerously misinterpreted, scared that doing something which would be considered completely normal in any other walk of life, like getting light-headed in a night club, will become a source of vast criticism.
It’s no wonder most footballers these days enter and leave grounds with their headphones on, trying to ignore the world around them, and always stick to the hymn sheet in any given press conferences. There’s a worrying trend of honesty being punished, if not by the press or their clubs then by the fans.
Whilst you may argue Gibson and Rooney only have themselves to blame, or at least the people around them at the time, it’s the resulting fear these incidents create that pushes footballers away from fans and back into their bubble.
Those Sunderland supporters undoubtedly thought they were helping the club’s cause, but amid an age in which footballers and fans are more polarised than before, it’s another step backwards.
