Dear WSC
I’m assuming the Ruud Gullit who recently defended himself working for a dictator by saying he wasn’t interested in politics (Caucasus calling, WSC 292) to be the same one who dedicated his 1987 European Player of the Year to Nelson Mandela. I realise people’s opinions can change over 20 years, but I’m just curious as to what made him decide he wasn’t bothered about injustice anymore.
John Chapman, Sheffield
Search: 'Gary Neville'
Stories
Dear WSC
I recently heard Alan Green and Robbie Savage give the customary abuse to Howard Webb during the Man City v Sunderland game. While Green’s job is to commentate on football, Savage, as a current player, is in an awkward position when he criticises officials from the safety of a studio in terms that would get him booked on the field.
Maybe the threat of a disrepute charge would concentrate his mind. As Savage himself commented during the broadcast: “The officials bring problems on themselves. First sign of dissent, bang, yellow card.” Well you said it, Robbie.
Paul Caulfield, Bradford
Simon Tyers explores the punditry credentials of one of football’s more controversial players, Robbie Savage:
Stating that Robbie Savage is a difficult person to admire is like suggesting Jeremy Kyle could be more equitable. Like Kyle, Savage is the sort of personality who could only have risen to the top of his chosen profession at this specific moment. He’s benefited from the disappearance of the traditional hard man, the short-haired, beefy full-back or defensive midfielder whose raison d’être was to see how many reducers a creative winger could stand, the “that type of player” that no player who lunges in two-footed on an opponent’s shin these days apparently is.
Seen off by clampdowns on reckless tackling, the standard bearer for the player who goes in hard and covers a lot of ground is now a bellicose Scrappy Doo who was once fined for using the referee’s lavatory. Where most retired hatchet-men proudly state their lack of regret for their actions, Savage seems continually flummoxed as to what he’s ever done that people might be expecting him to regret.
Somewhere along the line Savage lost the admiration of fans of the team he played for, which was pretty much all that was keeping him afloat for years. But like most players who seem reasonably approachable and have a certain back-page profile, he was compensated by being invited into the media. Like Stan Collymore before him, Savage proceeded to surprise radio listeners with the breadth of his tactical knowledge and so producers swooped to put him on everything. Like Collymore, the wider exposure has only served to expose his limitations.
In essence, these are threefold. One, he’s still professional footballer Robbie Savage. Two, his natural range is the shrill half-shout. Most importantly, he can’t control his overexuberance when miked up. His comments are usually anodyne but they’ll be delivered as if he’s just been told the oxygen is about to be sucked out of the room. If he can fit a joke in on the end, or just an over the top laugh, he’ll consider it a bonus.
Anyone who saw the ESPN coverage of Man City’s home Europa League game against Dynamo Kiev will be well aware of the deadening touch Savage can bring to any moment. Watching the Premier League’s most singular footballer Mario Balotelli struggle with a training bib, Savage progressed in under a minute from confusion to a lame joke – “I think I’m going to change his name to [expectant pause] Mario Bibotelli!” – which not even Ray Stubbs dignified with a reaction. Having gone for the funny far too early, he progressed quickly to an outraged tone rarely heard outside late night phone-ins on Radio 5 Live. “Is this tonight? Is this now? It’s gotta be a wind-up, this,” he thundered, as if some training ground footage had been accidentally slipped in.
Football Focus, a programme which never met an anodyne footballer it didn’t like, has been using Savage as a reporter for a few months. And so it was that he turned up with pitchside tactical analysis at Everton v Birmingham filmed from an unedifying position adjacent to the cameraman crouching down next to him. This piece was introduced by Dan Walker as “keeping an eye on their tactics – no truck required, though”. It’s always fun to grind Andy Townsend’s reputation back into the dirt at any given opportunity, but the Tactics Truck was a three-minute feature that ran for roughly two months nearly ten years ago. Children the length and breadth of the country must have been seeking explanations from their parents.
Savage then turned up as token Welshman outside the Millennium Stadium ahead of England’s visit, in a production that dealt in national cliches to an extent not seen since the last World Cup game involving an African side – Manic Street Preachers music, helicopter shots of unfurling valleys and a cameo by Miss Wales. Savage was first required to interview Gary Speed, whom he greeted with a Yoda-like fragment of a sentence, “Premier League legend – you are!”, where most people would have used a question.
Afterwards he gave his verdict on Wales’s chances, which was that: “We need the keeper to play like Neville Southall, the defence to play like Kevin Ratcliffe and the strikers to score goals.” Why Ian Rush was overlooked was unclear. No wonder Dan Walker and the pundits had been placed against the backdrop of a local brass band and some chanting children. Clearly someone felt that alternate entertainment might be required.
From WSC 291 May 2011
Dear WSC
So, following Man Utd’s exit from the Champions League at the hands of Bayern Munich, Sir Alex Ferguson saw fit to make the following comment regarding players influencing a referee, in particular to getting an opponent dismissed: “They got him sent off – everyone ran towards the referee. Typical Germans”. I couldn’t help but think back to Derby v Man Utd at Pride Park in the late 1990s and an incident I witnessed just yards from where I was sitting. I distinctly remember Gary Neville instructing the referee, Mike Reed, to send off Derby’s German defender Stefan Schnoor for a foul he had committed shortly after having already received a yellow card. Reed had walked away and wasn’t going to take further action until United’s players forced him to change his mind. To double check my memory I found the following match report on the Independent’s website for the match on November 20, 1999: “Stefan Schnoor, admittedly, invited his own dismissal, ploughing through Dwight Yorke in the 40th minute after being cautioned for dissent moments earlier. What enraged Derby was that when it seemed Mike Reed was undecided about a second yellow card, and the automatic red, David Beckham and Gary Neville ran over in an apparent attempt to pressure the referee into banishing the defender". It’s a bit of an irony, isn’t it, Man Utd’s English players talking a referee into sending off a German. Perhaps, if this behaviour is “typically German” in 2010, they are just emulating the behaviour of English players in an English team, Manchester United, who have been practising it for over ten years.
Andy Kitchen, Derby
My Autobiography
by Gary Neville
Bantam Press, £18.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 297 November 2011
"Put ‘Gary Neville' and 'wanker' into Google and you'll get about 10,000 results." Neville is a man with no illusions about his popularity. The English generally like their professional footballers to be either thick or humble, preferably both. Gary Neville is neither and has taken plenty of flak about what are deemed to be his ridiculous pretensions, such as planning to build an ecohouse and daring to have opinions.