When Myles Lewis-Skelly found both calm and a storm in meditation, a rabbit hole opened into football’s archives. Those places can be a thing of wonder – a trove of lost treasures, forgotten tales and a reminder of how much stays the same across the ages, right down to the whining.
I dug out one such item, dating to January 1975 and an earlier kerfuffle on the topic of goal celebrations. The august chaps of the Football League were not a happy bunch. Not one bit.
Half a century on, the furrows in their brows are still preserved within an old Guardian report. The directive was clear: ‘Kissing and cuddling should be stopped and players continuing to act in this way should be charged with bringing the game into disrepute.’
Stern stuff. But there was a problem – the kissers and cuddlers just wouldn’t stop, and so it fell to FIFA to get even crosser in 1981. Their message was thumped into a bulletin for the national associations: ‘Exuberant outbursts of several players at once jumping on top of each other, kissing and embracing, should be banned from the football pitch.’
And let that be the end of it, they hoped. Alas, FIFA got no further than the blazers in this country, and if there is a point to be made here, it is that times change but football’s commitment to daft arguments never will. Because as sure as kisses follow cuddles, the herds of the game will always be spooked by the cracking of tiny twigs.
Which is how we find ourselves back at Lewis-Skelly and the sagely advice he has received in hourly dispatches since turning Erling Haaland’s celebration on its proprietor last Saturday. The lotus pose has never before generated such anxieties.
Myles Lewis-Skelly found both calm and a storm in his meditation celebration last weekend
Jamie Carragher is one of many pundits to have had his say on Lewis-Skelly’s celebration
We could choose to send this debate in all manner of directions, to Gary Neville, Sam Allardyce, Alan McInally, Graeme Souness or Jamie Carragher. They have all had a say from the experience of an elite dressing room and know how these details can play in the weeds.
But I’m thinking predominantly of a specific warning. The speaker was Tony Scholes, the Premier League’s chief football officer, who was asked for his thoughts on this strange business.
‘Some of the celebrations have been very funny, entertaining, but there’s a line,’ he told Sky Sports this week. ‘Once it crosses over into mockery or criticism then we would need to deal with it.’
And so we sigh the sigh of the damned.
It’s the sigh of those who have seen officers of football’s laws at work. Witnessed how they used their lines to kill the moments after a goal due to VAR and now have an eye on elements still breathing.
Celebration police, they have been labelled, and it’s a fair tag in this era of regulated fun. Of sterilised fun. Of having fun but only so long as it keeps to the boundaries of our petri dish.
And of course that has been a riot of laughs.
To study the laws of football is to see no fewer than 36 routes to a yellow card. As best I can understand those commandments, the two in closest proximity to ‘mockery and criticism’, if that is to become the line, would be a failure to ‘respect the game’ and ‘gesturing or acting in a provocative, derisory or inflammatory way’.
Iliman Ndiaye was booked last month for imitating a seagull after scoring against Brighton
Lewis-Skelly’s celebration in the 5-1 win against Man City was full of care-free irreverence
The latter is the well-meaning principle that went to an absurd place last month, when Everton’s Iliman Ndiaye was booked for flapping like a seagull after scoring against Brighton. He clearly had too much fun and didn’t see edge of the petri dish until he fell off.
But isn’t that a woeful sign of what we’re building towards? Shouldn’t respect for the game include respecting the obvious? Which is to say, this construct, this ever-growing beast of such seriousness, is still a game.
Continuing down the path of stripping away football’s human element, its fun, does no service to anyone, least of all those who find the attritional bits rather entertaining.
I loved what Lewis-Skelly did. I loved the care-free irreverence of it. I loved the ego, the confidence, the show of character it takes for an 18-year-old to act on a grudge he held against a giant like Haaland. Just as I loved it when Haaland dismissed his presence in September by asking a question – ‘who the f*** are you?’ – at the starting point in this mini-drama.
Because what is competitive sport if not an ecosystem and a food chain and the constant effort to swap your place for the other guy’s? Deference and submissiveness shouldn’t come into it, but colliding wills and emotions must.
That seems to go against the conditions a few of the old boys wish to impose on young talents. Those ideas that say you have to strive to impossible stands so long as it is done within the confines of your lane.
But the best teenagers, so the likes of Jude Bellingham or Wayne Rooney to name two, have thrived on confidence and letting it run wild. Know their place? They knew it perfectly.
Lewis-Skelly isn’t in their talent bracket, nor is his ego, but he does look special, and a chunk of that comes from his internal sense that he belongs. It’s his refusal to be pushed around and if he wants to have some fun at a great striker’s expense, he will.
The starting point for Lewis-Skelly’s feud with Erling Haaland came when the two sides met in September
Wayne Rooney knew his own place perfectly and thrived on confidence and letting it run wild
That’s never a yellow card offence; it’s an extra foot in height. It’s also not an apocalypse, a symbol of moral degradation or a reason to design another addendum for the sacred book of footballing laws. It’s just a great part of the game.
We should all kiss and cuddle the lawman who finally grasps such an outrageous mode of thinking.
Survey shows Chelsea fan disgruntled
Chelsea Supporters’ Trust conducted a survey in which 68 per cent of fans said they felt their club is not doing enough to tackle ticket touts.
The spark for such enquiries was the awkward discovery that Chelsea’s co-owner, Todd Boehly, is a director in a US-based ticket-resale company, Vivid Seats, which features on a Premier League list of ‘unauthorised ticketing websites’.
From perusing the site on Saturday morning, overseas visitors could buy tickets to no fewer than 17 Chelsea games between now and the end of the Club World Cup.
The cheapest for next week’s fixture against Brighton was £257 and the most expensive is £870, because this is the rip-off business and one that raises questions around Boehly’s conflicts of interest.
It is a grubby look for him and fair play to those putting a light on it. As for the other 32 per cent in the Trust survey, we can only assume they have never used Fulham Broadway station on a matchday.
Chelsea’s co-owner, Todd Boehly, is a director in ticket-resale company, Vivid Seats, which features on a Premier League list of ‘unauthorised ticketing websites’.
Golf merger finally on the horizon
A merger of golf’s squabbling cartels finally appears to be close after the White House got involved this week.
The assumption within the game is that the Department of Justice needed to be persuaded to lower their guns over long-held concerns that a collaboration between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, who bankroll LIV, would breach US competition laws.
If Donald Trump’s manoeuvres were the only viable answer, professional golf really ought to assess how it conjured up such an absurd set of questions.
The great unknown at this point is whether a reunification of the sport will win back those fans who grew bored of the greed parade and changed channel, sending audience figures into a tailspin. They might be beyond presidential interventions.
