12 April 10, 2022The Sunday Times
Football
I was delighted to discover last week
that Matthew Le Tissier is a weirdo. I
have always admired the man as a
footballer and the fact that he is
possessed of fairly ludicrous beliefs
does not reduce my appreciation of
him.
There are too few weirdos in
football: by and large when asked
about something beyond the game,
such as politics or international
affairs, footballers have been trained
by PR people to respond with
Lineker-lite meaningless,
platitudinous liberal drivel, if they
respond at all. Not, however,
Matthew.
He parted company from
Southampton last week as a
consequence of having dared to
question a news story. He had his
doubts, he said, about the supposed
Russian massacre of civilians in
Bucha, suggesting that “crisis actors”
might have been posing as the dead
and dying. Here’s a bit of what he
said. “It is incredible — if you talk to
people about crisis actors and point
out that that picture they’re claiming
is from this war was taken four years
ago. Does that not make you a littlebit suspicious they’re using a picture
from four years ago? With all the
technology we’ve got available now,
why couldn’t they get a picture from
Kyiv? Please, do some critical
thinking and just make yourself think
that possibly there’s something else
at play here.”
Le Tissier’s views are hard-rightish
teetering into Ickeisms — another
weirdo footballer who later went on
to assure everybody that he was the
son of God and that we are being
ruled by alien lizard things. Le Tissier
seems to have some time for Icke.
The former England international
also seems to be getting quite a lot of
his information from the very hard
right British forum, Unity News,
which was set up a few years ago by
some people who were on the right
wing of Ukip. However, various
media watch companies rate the site
as being strongly factually based,
rather than simply purveyors of
whacko conspiracy theories. Do you
have a problem with Le Tissier
believing something different from
what most of the rest of us do? I can’t
say that I do. My suspicion, for what
it’s worth, is that there was amassacre carried out in Bucha by
Russian forces — but I do not believe
it as an article of faith and it’s not
outside the realms of possibility that
we are all being skilfully manipulated
by the plucky Ukrainians (for which I
wouldn’t blame them one bit). Why is
a dissenting view such a problem for
Southampton, or for us as a society?
Let a thousand flowers bloom, surely.
This is the second gig Le Tissier has
lost on account of his loopy Twitter
feed. He lost his contract with Skybecause — he thinks — they did not
like his views on the Covid vaccine.
Yes, of course he is an anti-vaxxer
who thinks Covid scarcely exists — or
at least exists but is of scant danger to
most people (which is, right now,
probably an accurate assessment).
The thing is, though, the more you
call out these opinions and persecute
people for holding them, the more
convincing it becomes for many that
there is a conspiracy. Le Tissier has
refused to resile from his various
statements — which is, I think, a far
more noble thing to do than the usual
recourse of issuing one of those
patently insincere apologies. We are
becoming ever more authoritarian
when people say things with which
we might disagree.
I daresay Glenn Hoddle might be
feeling an element of sympathy with
his former striker, even if Le Tissier
did once refer to him as “a bit of a
twat”. Hoddle lost his England job for
being a weirdo — suggesting that
disabled people had probably done
something wicked in a previous life. I
thought that it was a stupid belief but
that it did not remotely impact upon
Hoddle’s ability to lead England. But I
daresay the young Gareth Southgate
learnt a lesson which is why our
national team are led by a
sanctimonious right-on knee-bender
with the political views of Yoko Ono.
There are still dissenting voices in
football. Of course, there are the out
and out fascists, such as Paolo Di
Canio and the young defender much
loved at Lazio, Romano Floriani
Mussolini — yes, the great-grandson
of Il Duce. Romano, 19, has yet to
opine on politics, but in the meantime
I expect the black-shirted saluting
Lazio fans get a thrill out of singing
“Romano Mussolini — he’s one of us!”
Elsewhere most of the weirdos
seem to be Croatian, with the Ustase-
supporting former player and now
boss of the Croatian under-19 side,
Josip Simunic, one of the most right
wing people in Europe this side of the
Dnieper. And good old Dejan Lovran
who has called for a boycott of Disney
because the channel is introducing
more LGBTQ+ themes. Neither would
be allowed to work in this country, of
course, because we believe in
freedom.‘When asked about
something beyond
the game too
many respond
with Lineker-lite
platitudinous liberal
drivel — if they
respond at all’That Le Tissier is
possessed of
ludicrous beliefs
does not reduce
my appreciation
of himLAURENCE GRIFFITHS/PARod
Liddle
Yes, Le Tissier’s a
weirdo but should
Southampton or
society really be
silencing him?