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Sky thought it fit to apologise for the & #39;stereotyping& #39; of & #39;Latin& #39; football in its coverage. If the apology were needed, it should have been left to Souness to present it. This kind of public disowning/humiliation doesn& #39;t sit well with me at all.
I consider myself & #39;Latin& #39;, with some reason: a good part of my family comes from Marseille. French football is essentially & #39;Latin& #39; football, regardless of where our players& #39; parents/grandparents came from - i.e. everywhere. This is our culture, which we claim, and are proud of.
So a Scotchman thinks we Latins have a propensity to be & #39;cute& #39;? I don& #39;t have a problem with that. It& #39;s just the way he describes how his own football culture perceives our own. Our own perception of the & #39;British& #39; game is just as prejudiced, believe me.
As I was telling @larssivertsen earlier on, this didn& #39;t prevent Jack Charlton from handling the ball on his goal line as sneakily as he could (not very well) in England& #39;s win over Portugal in the 1966 World Cup.
Neither did it prevent Nobby Stiles from committing one of the worst fouls in WC history when he broke Jacques Simon& #39;s leg in a crucial group game. England carried on playing and scored. That& #39;s shithousery on a different level. The & #39;manly& #39; game can be also the most hypocritical.
But the point is - we think we live in a world where footballing cultures have somehow blended into a single, global perception of what is & #39;right& #39; and & #39;wrong& #39; for the game, and, therefore, we can call out the people who step beyond the lines we& #39;ve imagined. This isn& #39;t the case.
I& #39;m glad it isn& #39;t. Souness& #39;s view of Latin sneakiness may be tainted and clumsily expressed, but it isn& #39;t false in essentia. It has a historical and cultural grounding which we should not brush away because it affects our sensitivities. Whose, btw? Not mine. And I& #39;m a & #39;Latin& #39;.
