Who is The Guardian’s Secret Footballer?

Originally published on Talking Sports on 04/04/11

As anyone who has seen any of the three Goal! films will know, attempts to dramatise the football world are, and I hate to generalise, disgustingly hideous flops.

Now you could make the easy mistake of confusing this hammed-up, wooden, predictable, celebrity-ridden piss fest of a trilogy for a tongue-in-cheek, postmodern masterpiece, or you could say: “Hold on a minute. These films are probably shit because real-life football is imbued with enough of a genuine sense of drama to make any staged version of a 94th minute winner seem like a poor imitation of the real thing.”

And you’d be right to do so.

But football doesn’t just have drama on the pitch. It has air rifles at training grounds, people shagging each other’s girlfriends, rivals saying nasty things about one another and the farcical spectacle of men getting dressed up in glorified PE kits.

It’s like Eastenders stuffed into the mouth of Lock, Stock and shat into the toilet bowl of Carry On.

What makes Eastenders so great, apparently, is its history of baddies, and everyone’s favourite moment is when a new baddy appears. But there’s only one thing that can top a new baddy, and that is a baddy with a secret identity.

As Guardian readers will know, football has just acquired its own mystery baddy in the shape of The Secret Footballer (TSF), a Saturday columnist who “lifts the lid on the world of football”.

Conjecture about who he might be is, well, I won’t say flooding online forums, invading pub airspace and sending footballers into paroxysms of terror – I recently met John Salako, not exactly the dumbest ex-footballer out there, and he’d never even heard of the column – but it has got a certain group of people feeling quite curious.

So, I’ve combed through TSF’s 12 columns, picked out any hints as to his identity, and tried to figure out who the fucker is.

Here are my findings:

He is a Premiership player, who grew up on a council estate. He has played for at least two Premiership clubs, has an agent, and says he has played for “great managers” – one of whom he played under for “a long time” – and “one or two where I would happily have faked my own death if it meant not working with them a minute longer”.

He has also said: “Another manager I played for was more proactive. He felt he had to step in when he became concerned about the card school on the back of the coach getting out of hand.”

He knows a fair bit about Twitter, and was once “fined for going out to a pub with a couple of friends while injured”.

He is “a more senior member of the squad”, he seems to refer to Tottenham quite a lot, says he will need hip and knee replacements when he retires, and has been in contract negotiations where “the Bosman ruling hung over proceedings”.

He has a lifelong Scandinavian friend in football, played with “a group of French players… at one club who were not interested in communicating with anybody else”, and has a wife and, probably, kids.

Astonishingly, he also once won a free-kick at Old Trafford. This, plus other comments, means I am assuming he is an outfield player.

Who could it be?

I’m automatically discounting Manchester United players, because they are likely to be too high profile to do something like this. In addition, most of their British players haven’t been at more than one club – bar Rio Ferdinand, who ticks a lot of the boxes (married; Twitter user; played for great managers; been at a few clubs; probably has won a few free kicks at Old Trafford) and Michael Owen, as he has nothing else to do. By the same token I am ruling out Chelsea (Lampard and Cole are unmarried; John Terry is a one-club man) and Arsenal players.

We can also dismiss many newly-promoted teams, as most of their players haven’t got much Premiership experience or played for more than one Premiership team. So, count out Wigan, Blackpool (James Beattie is their only viable option, but he’s a posh lad, and in all likelihood didn’t grow up on a council estate), Wolves, Blackburn (David Dunn is the only option there, but he hasn’t played under any great managers), Stoke and West Brom (only Nicky Shorey seems to fit the bill, but he hasn’t played that much in the Premiership, and only for one arguably kind-of-great manager, Martin O’Neill). In addition, no one at Everton fits the bill.

So that leaves us with quite a small group of players that it could be:

Manchester City – Joleon Lescott, James Milner, Gareth Barry
Tottenham Hotspur – Jonathan Woodgate, Jermaine Jenas, Peter Crouch (not married), Jermain Defoe (not married)
Liverpool – Joe Cole
Bolton – Zat Knight, Kevin Davies
Newcastle – Sol Campbell, Joey Barton, Alan Smith, Kevin Nolan
Fulham – Steve Sidwell, Danny Murphy, Damien Duff, Jonathan Greening, Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora
Sunderland – Titus Bramble, Anton Ferdinand, Kieran Richardson
Aston Villa – Luke Young, Stephen Warnock, Richard Dunne, Emile Heskey, Darren Bent
West Ham – Matthew Upson (not married), Wayne Bridge (not married), Scott Parker, Robbie Keane
Birmingham – Bowyer, Kevin Phillips, James McFadden (not married)

TSF said in his April 9 column that “My wife told me that last week… I came in for a particularly vicious barrage after miscontrolling a pass”.

Jonathan Woodgate, Jonathan Greening and Emile Heskey didn’t play on April 2/3 weekend. Zat Knight, Stephen Warnock, Titus Bramble, Sol Campbell, Alan Smith, James Milner, Gareth Barry and Kieran Richardson also didn’t play, so that leaves us with:

Manchester United – Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen
Manchester City – Joleon Lescott,
Tottenham Hotspur – Jermaine Jenas
Liverpool – Joe Cole
Bolton – Kevin Davies
Newcastle –Joey Barton, Kevin Nolan
Fulham – Steve Sidwell, Danny Murphy, Damien Duff, Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora
Sunderland –Anton Ferdinand
Aston Villa – Luke Young, Richard Dunne, Darren Bent
West Ham –Scott Parker, Robbie Keane
Birmingham – Lee Bowyer, Kevin Phillips

If we’re after someone who has played with a bunch of Frenchies, is big pals with a Scandinavian and has played under “great managers”, one for “a long time”, I’d say Lescott, Jenas, Barton and Anton Ferdinand are out. For my money, that also rules out Darren Bent and Damien Duff, and probably Luke Young and Richard Dunne. This leaves:

Manchester United – Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen
Liverpool – Joe Cole
Bolton – Kevin Davies
Newcastle –Kevin Nolan
Fulham – Steve Sidwell, Danny Murphy, Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora
West Ham –Scott Parker, Robbie Keane
Birmingham – Lee Bowyer, Kevin Phillips

In all likelihood we could also get rid of Bowyer and Phillips.

Another clue is that, on Twitter, @TSFGuardian follows Michael Owen; Rio Ferdinand; Chris Kamara; Robbie Savage; Radiohead; Oasis and Biffy Clyro.
For those reasons, I’d knock off Rio and Owen.

Most people in web forums seem to think it is Kevin Davies, who is very active on Twitter and apparently mates with The Guardian’s Barry Glendenning

But from what’s left, I’d go for Murphy. He’s been around a few clubs, arguably played for some great managers (Hodgson, Dario Gradi) and some clowns (Houllier), was around for the tail end of Liverpool’s Spice Boy period (fits with the card school and the Owen Twitter follow). He also played with a few French players at Liverpool, and a few Scandinavians.

It’s also fair to say that, even though the column must be quite liberally edited, TSF must be reasonably intelligent, which rules out Joe Cole, Andy Johnson and Bobby Zamora for my money.

So, who do you think it is?

Sporting Heroes – Roger Milla

Originally published on Talking Sports on 05/06/11
Nine years to the day after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the world was changed forever, I did something that would rock the foundations of many people’s worlds to a similar extent – I gave up watching football.

That last bit might be a gross exaggeration, but this kind of hyperbole is typical of the elevated status that football has come to occupy in the 21st century – just pick up any tabloid today and try not to laugh while reading the overly-dramatic back-page stories about, well, nothing really – and is the main reason why, in September 2010, I decided I could not be arsed with it anymore.

I lasted a few months and then eventually got sucked back in – partially because it made it easier to talk to hairdressers and boring men at work functions – but it got me wondering what had ever attracted me to football in the first place.

Playing football every day in the playground as a kid probably had a part in it, plus the fact that most of my mates were football fans, but then I’ve never been one to be swung by public opinion (I am happy to say that I have never read a Dan Brown book and didn’t watch a single second of the latest series of MasterChef).

So like a veteran fisherman I grab hold of my memory-fishing rod and toss it deep into the recesses of my hippocampus. As I feel the tug of something bulky and fairly old, I rip it through the rest of my mushy brain (made mushy by drinking too much beer while watching football in pubs, I might add) – past this superb own goal by Forest Green’s Wayne Hatswell

this ridiculous Saudi Arabia goal in the 1994 World Cup

and other cherished football memories – and then find a dancing pensioner (well, almost) sticking out the top of my skull.

Yes, Roger Milla. He must be the reason I got taken in by football.

Italia ’90 was my first real football memory. It came before the obese publicity/cash machine that is the Premier League and, in my head at least, embodies the pure reckless joy that football has the ability to foster but is now so utterly denuded of.

If anyone personified that pure reckless joy it was Roger Milla. Despite his being 38, I, like so many others, felt drawn to him because he played football like it was played in the playground. He didn’t seem self-conscious, or particularly technically able, he looked scruffy and he took delight in everything he did on the pitch, as became most evident when he scored and went to dance around the corner flag – an act that may well provoke a booking for time wasting in today’s Premier League.

I won’t bore you with a chronological walk through his Italia ’90 – you can relive his best bits on YouTube – but will say that he had me in hysterics when he robbed Rene Higuita, Colombia’s showboating keeper, of the ball about 40 yards out and went on to slot into an open net.

Higuita was a bit of a laugh too, and one of the tournament’s highlights, but in many ways he embodied the arrogance of the most repugnant footballers (and most of today’s millionaire players) – and when Milla robbed him of the ball, it was like reckless playground football was taking the game back from pompous corporatism and saying: “Oi, football is supposed to be a laugh, a bit of fun – keep it that way.”

Shame the corporates didn’t listen.