There is a wonderful Simpsons episode, entitled ‘Homer’s Enemy’, which resembles a sort of modern, dark-humoured version of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. The story is about a man called Frank Grimes who is employed at the Nuclear Power Plant to work alongside Homer. Grimes is a bitter man, disillusioned and frustrated by the fact that someone as stupid as Homer should be so well rewarded in society. He becomes incensed at people’s inability to see that Homer is a fool, and his attempts to find empathy from others – mainly in the form of rants to co-workers, Lenny and Carl – result in him being told “Hey, what’s wrong with Homer anyway?”
Angry and feeling like the world is against him, Grimes goes out of his way to show Homer up and prove he has the intelligence of a child. He enters him into a design contest intended for children, a detail of which Homer is unaware.
However, Homer inevitably wins first prize and – unfortunately for Grimes – instead of being ridiculed, Homer is applauded. Overwhelming cheers from the audience cause Grimes to finally snap: he runs around shouting “Why can’t anybody see this man is an idiot!” before adopting a mocking persona of his ‘enemy’. Impersonating Homer, Grimes furiously storms around doing stupid things, declaring “I can do anything because I’m Homer Simpson”, before getting so carried away in the process that he eventually electrocutes himself by accident and dies.
Last Autumn, I felt like Frank Grimes.
Let me take you back to September of last year and the World Cup Qualifying match between England and Croatia which saw a first England start for Theo Walcott, culminating in a hat-trick. What followed was a delirious and over-blown media and public response.
Was I the only person in the country who thought that both England and Walcott were, not great but just, not bad? As it turns out, my friend Andreas agreed with me, as did Chris Waddle, apparently. I think it’s safe to assume that, had he been alive, and had he not been a fictitious cartoon character, Frank Grimes would have agreed, too. Thanks Frank, this one’s for you.
But the support I received in the form of a cartoon was not enough to restore my sense of sanity. On the Thursday morning after the match, I read a number of articles reviewing England’s performance: The Sun described the night as “heroic”, but even the supposedly more respectable publications in the press, such as The Times and the BBC, went crazy.
The BBC Sport website claimed that “in the wonderful Walcott, (England) had a player who frightened the life out of the hosts whenever he got the ball”. This overstatement was supported by The Times who, for the first time in it’s history, awarded Walcott with a ‘ten out of ten’ mark accompanied by the phrase “Walcott terrified (Croatia left-back) Pranjic from the very first minute”. If nothing else, this is just inaccurate. Anyone who saw it will know that Walcott made an incredibly shaky start to the game. In 20 minutes he made a series of incomplete passes, lost out to Pranjic in every header or challenge and, on the one occasion he did find space in the Croatian penalty area, he rather embarrassingly (albeit unluckily) tripped, mis-hit his cross and fell on the floor.
Walcott’s goals were decent, but only really in the sense that he finished well. He was lucky with the first one, which fell kindly in his path thanks to a mis-hit clearance by the Croatian defence. His second was a very good goal, but I would argue Walcott merely added the finishing touch to some nice passing from – among others – Wayne Rooney. I will credit him with good positioning here, however, I will also add that, by this time, Croatia were down to ten men due to a red card received by Josep Simunic – incurred for an elbow on Joe Cole – which made it easier for England to find space. Granted, Walcott’s third was a nice run and finish.
Blind adulation continued in the days and weeks that followed. Ludicrous comparisons with Lionel Messi and Thierry Henry, and an article in The Times about how Walcott’s hat-trick will lead to a tripling of his salary in order to “stave off interest from Manchester City who may well bid up to £50million for the player” made me scratch my head with disbelief. Terrible business.
Even up to a month later, Walcott continued to draw exaggerated praise in the aftermath of his achievement. He was awarded man-of-the-match by the Daily Telegraph for an average performance – culminating in an early-ish substitution – in Arsenal’s 4 0 win over Porto in the Champions League. Robin Van Persie and Emanuel Adebayor both scored twice that night and Cesc Fabregas proved himself as the best player on the pitch yet, as the only Englishman on show, the papers clearly felt the need to exaggerate Walcott’s influence.
Even recently – when England played Spain – there was talk of how the team were “missing the likes of Ferdinand, Gerrard, Rooney and Walcott”. Forgive me, but since when was it decided that Walcott should be considered in the same company as these players?
I suppose the answer is that Walcott has become something of a Golden Boy. And, so, it seems to have been universally decided – that is, by advertisers, The FA and other such persons – that Walcott shall be the new face of everything relating to English football. The chosen one, so to speak. Since the inception of this sort of unofficial pronouncement, Walcott has appeared in almost all Arsenal-related photographs in English newspapers and Football Association PR. Clearly this is very much a conscious decision based on representation as opposed to it being down to legitimate sporting merit or, even, sheer coincidence.
In many ways, it is not hard to see why Walcott has been chosen. To them, Walcott has the perfect mix: He is young, English, refreshingly well-mannered and also black. Or ‘slightly black’, as Jimmy Carr would say. Even better.
Yet the problem is that Walcott is not actually that good. And where this gets interesting is that Walcott’s Golden Boy status means he is largely protected and treated favourably by the media. Clearly there is an irony here – in that this protection is coming from the same people that have put him in the firing line in the first place – but let us not forget that the overriding benefits of such high-levels of media adulation have, ultimately, seen Walcott given more opportunities than his peers: Evidently Sven Goran Eriksson did not decide to pick him for the World Cup in 2006 on merit, and he has not been criticised (or worse, ignored) in the same way another player might be. You may remember a similar thing happened to Peter Crouch during his first games at Liverpool. The player became a cult figure in his failure to score in 17 appearances. Whilst such a failure would have ordinarily meant demotion and the loss of a place in the team, Crouch was lauded with unfounded praise and man-of-the-match awards. Anyone could see Steven Gerrard was the best player in every game – he always is – but propaganda in favour of Crouch led to him being picked for the England team amidst exaggerations that he was a “threat in the air” and that “opposition defenders are terrified of him as they don’t know how to defend against him”.
When watching Walcott, I see a nice guy with a good attitude and good potential, but who currently has just one defining attribute, which is his pace. Call me a spoil-sport but, to me, I’m afraid everything else about him – at least at present – appears very much unpolished. Where everyone else sees a lightning quick winger who can torment opposition defenders, I see a young boy who is being elevated too quickly; a boy whose ball control and first-touch is poor, whose passing is inaccurate, who panics, who is weak and who is rarely a dominant presence in a game. Such criticisms are understandable for a 19yr old, and one would expect to see an improvement over time, but I find it hard to understand why people are so insistent on seeing him play for England now. Even if – unlike me – you are someone who believes that David Beckham should be dropped from England’s right-midfield, then I would argue there are still probably three or four players that should stand ahead of Walcott in the pecking order: Shaun Wright-Philips, Aaron Lennon, Ashley Young, James Milner, Gabriel Agbonlahor and David Bentley, for example.
In a Grimes-like moment of madness, I did some research on this and found that Arsenal’s other ‘winger’, Samir Nasri – the closest thing I could find to Walcott’s counterpart – makes, on average, more than twice as many passes as Walcott per game. Statistics from one particular game this season (Arsenal away at Fulham in August) showed that, in the same amount of time on the field, Nasri made 38 passes (55 overall), whereas Walcott only made 16, a quarter of which were unsuccessful. This is a poor record, especially when you consider that Nasri is hardly Pele himself. Comparisons with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo were even less favourable, and even James Milner – who plays for a team who typically have far less possession than Arsenal do – tended to have a more positive record.
But for this to turn into a vilification of Theo Walcott himself would entirely miss the point. My wider frustration is against (1) the English media, who have, once again, ignored any sense of reality in favour of rushing to catapult someone to super-stardom, and (2) the football-watching general public. Of those I spoke to after the game, all had an opinion on England’s “incredible” performance, yet the majority admitted they had either only caught the second half or – owing to the fact that the game was only broadcast on Setanta – had missed the game altogether. This is typical of the problem. Too many people have seen the scoreline and seen that Walcott has scored three goals, and have subsequently marvelled on these facts alone. Such an ignorant attitude is all too often seen in sport and life in general.
Clearly I understand that it is impossible to see every game. Even if you could, it would be impossible to watch any game without some sort of bias (from a commentator or even the reaction of other people), but I believe it is important to watch as much actual raw football as possible, before forming an opinion.
I suppose that, in many ways, this comes down to the fact that the majority of football ‘fans’ do not really love football as a sport, but are attracted to it because it is – at least on the surface – easy to understand and, thus, it provides a topic (just like politics, reality television and the weather) for everyone to feel they are an expert and give his or her (most likely unfounded) opinion. In this respect, I do appreciate the sense of hope someone like Walcott offers to England as a national community, but I am discouraged by the mistruths, not to mention unfair expectation, pressure and subsequent personal damage that tends to come with this sort of thing.
Anyway, I’m sorry to have gone all Frank Grimes on you. And I’m sorry to have taken it out on poor little Theo Walcott, it’s not his fault. I would say this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, but that would be untrue.
Angry and feeling like the world is against him, Grimes goes out of his way to show Homer up and prove he has the intelligence of a child. He enters him into a design contest intended for children, a detail of which Homer is unaware.
However, Homer inevitably wins first prize and – unfortunately for Grimes – instead of being ridiculed, Homer is applauded. Overwhelming cheers from the audience cause Grimes to finally snap: he runs around shouting “Why can’t anybody see this man is an idiot!” before adopting a mocking persona of his ‘enemy’. Impersonating Homer, Grimes furiously storms around doing stupid things, declaring “I can do anything because I’m Homer Simpson”, before getting so carried away in the process that he eventually electrocutes himself by accident and dies.
Last Autumn, I felt like Frank Grimes.
Let me take you back to September of last year and the World Cup Qualifying match between England and Croatia which saw a first England start for Theo Walcott, culminating in a hat-trick. What followed was a delirious and over-blown media and public response.
Was I the only person in the country who thought that both England and Walcott were, not great but just, not bad? As it turns out, my friend Andreas agreed with me, as did Chris Waddle, apparently. I think it’s safe to assume that, had he been alive, and had he not been a fictitious cartoon character, Frank Grimes would have agreed, too. Thanks Frank, this one’s for you.
But the support I received in the form of a cartoon was not enough to restore my sense of sanity. On the Thursday morning after the match, I read a number of articles reviewing England’s performance: The Sun described the night as “heroic”, but even the supposedly more respectable publications in the press, such as The Times and the BBC, went crazy.
The BBC Sport website claimed that “in the wonderful Walcott, (England) had a player who frightened the life out of the hosts whenever he got the ball”. This overstatement was supported by The Times who, for the first time in it’s history, awarded Walcott with a ‘ten out of ten’ mark accompanied by the phrase “Walcott terrified (Croatia left-back) Pranjic from the very first minute”. If nothing else, this is just inaccurate. Anyone who saw it will know that Walcott made an incredibly shaky start to the game. In 20 minutes he made a series of incomplete passes, lost out to Pranjic in every header or challenge and, on the one occasion he did find space in the Croatian penalty area, he rather embarrassingly (albeit unluckily) tripped, mis-hit his cross and fell on the floor.
Walcott’s goals were decent, but only really in the sense that he finished well. He was lucky with the first one, which fell kindly in his path thanks to a mis-hit clearance by the Croatian defence. His second was a very good goal, but I would argue Walcott merely added the finishing touch to some nice passing from – among others – Wayne Rooney. I will credit him with good positioning here, however, I will also add that, by this time, Croatia were down to ten men due to a red card received by Josep Simunic – incurred for an elbow on Joe Cole – which made it easier for England to find space. Granted, Walcott’s third was a nice run and finish.
Blind adulation continued in the days and weeks that followed. Ludicrous comparisons with Lionel Messi and Thierry Henry, and an article in The Times about how Walcott’s hat-trick will lead to a tripling of his salary in order to “stave off interest from Manchester City who may well bid up to £50million for the player” made me scratch my head with disbelief. Terrible business.
Even up to a month later, Walcott continued to draw exaggerated praise in the aftermath of his achievement. He was awarded man-of-the-match by the Daily Telegraph for an average performance – culminating in an early-ish substitution – in Arsenal’s 4 0 win over Porto in the Champions League. Robin Van Persie and Emanuel Adebayor both scored twice that night and Cesc Fabregas proved himself as the best player on the pitch yet, as the only Englishman on show, the papers clearly felt the need to exaggerate Walcott’s influence.
Even recently – when England played Spain – there was talk of how the team were “missing the likes of Ferdinand, Gerrard, Rooney and Walcott”. Forgive me, but since when was it decided that Walcott should be considered in the same company as these players?
I suppose the answer is that Walcott has become something of a Golden Boy. And, so, it seems to have been universally decided – that is, by advertisers, The FA and other such persons – that Walcott shall be the new face of everything relating to English football. The chosen one, so to speak. Since the inception of this sort of unofficial pronouncement, Walcott has appeared in almost all Arsenal-related photographs in English newspapers and Football Association PR. Clearly this is very much a conscious decision based on representation as opposed to it being down to legitimate sporting merit or, even, sheer coincidence.
In many ways, it is not hard to see why Walcott has been chosen. To them, Walcott has the perfect mix: He is young, English, refreshingly well-mannered and also black. Or ‘slightly black’, as Jimmy Carr would say. Even better.
Yet the problem is that Walcott is not actually that good. And where this gets interesting is that Walcott’s Golden Boy status means he is largely protected and treated favourably by the media. Clearly there is an irony here – in that this protection is coming from the same people that have put him in the firing line in the first place – but let us not forget that the overriding benefits of such high-levels of media adulation have, ultimately, seen Walcott given more opportunities than his peers: Evidently Sven Goran Eriksson did not decide to pick him for the World Cup in 2006 on merit, and he has not been criticised (or worse, ignored) in the same way another player might be. You may remember a similar thing happened to Peter Crouch during his first games at Liverpool. The player became a cult figure in his failure to score in 17 appearances. Whilst such a failure would have ordinarily meant demotion and the loss of a place in the team, Crouch was lauded with unfounded praise and man-of-the-match awards. Anyone could see Steven Gerrard was the best player in every game – he always is – but propaganda in favour of Crouch led to him being picked for the England team amidst exaggerations that he was a “threat in the air” and that “opposition defenders are terrified of him as they don’t know how to defend against him”.
When watching Walcott, I see a nice guy with a good attitude and good potential, but who currently has just one defining attribute, which is his pace. Call me a spoil-sport but, to me, I’m afraid everything else about him – at least at present – appears very much unpolished. Where everyone else sees a lightning quick winger who can torment opposition defenders, I see a young boy who is being elevated too quickly; a boy whose ball control and first-touch is poor, whose passing is inaccurate, who panics, who is weak and who is rarely a dominant presence in a game. Such criticisms are understandable for a 19yr old, and one would expect to see an improvement over time, but I find it hard to understand why people are so insistent on seeing him play for England now. Even if – unlike me – you are someone who believes that David Beckham should be dropped from England’s right-midfield, then I would argue there are still probably three or four players that should stand ahead of Walcott in the pecking order: Shaun Wright-Philips, Aaron Lennon, Ashley Young, James Milner, Gabriel Agbonlahor and David Bentley, for example.
In a Grimes-like moment of madness, I did some research on this and found that Arsenal’s other ‘winger’, Samir Nasri – the closest thing I could find to Walcott’s counterpart – makes, on average, more than twice as many passes as Walcott per game. Statistics from one particular game this season (Arsenal away at Fulham in August) showed that, in the same amount of time on the field, Nasri made 38 passes (55 overall), whereas Walcott only made 16, a quarter of which were unsuccessful. This is a poor record, especially when you consider that Nasri is hardly Pele himself. Comparisons with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo were even less favourable, and even James Milner – who plays for a team who typically have far less possession than Arsenal do – tended to have a more positive record.
But for this to turn into a vilification of Theo Walcott himself would entirely miss the point. My wider frustration is against (1) the English media, who have, once again, ignored any sense of reality in favour of rushing to catapult someone to super-stardom, and (2) the football-watching general public. Of those I spoke to after the game, all had an opinion on England’s “incredible” performance, yet the majority admitted they had either only caught the second half or – owing to the fact that the game was only broadcast on Setanta – had missed the game altogether. This is typical of the problem. Too many people have seen the scoreline and seen that Walcott has scored three goals, and have subsequently marvelled on these facts alone. Such an ignorant attitude is all too often seen in sport and life in general.
Clearly I understand that it is impossible to see every game. Even if you could, it would be impossible to watch any game without some sort of bias (from a commentator or even the reaction of other people), but I believe it is important to watch as much actual raw football as possible, before forming an opinion.
I suppose that, in many ways, this comes down to the fact that the majority of football ‘fans’ do not really love football as a sport, but are attracted to it because it is – at least on the surface – easy to understand and, thus, it provides a topic (just like politics, reality television and the weather) for everyone to feel they are an expert and give his or her (most likely unfounded) opinion. In this respect, I do appreciate the sense of hope someone like Walcott offers to England as a national community, but I am discouraged by the mistruths, not to mention unfair expectation, pressure and subsequent personal damage that tends to come with this sort of thing.
Anyway, I’m sorry to have gone all Frank Grimes on you. And I’m sorry to have taken it out on poor little Theo Walcott, it’s not his fault. I would say this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, but that would be untrue.
