The England team hotel yesterday looked, in every yard of its well-tended grounds, the archetypal English weekend retreat. There was a wedding reception in the Ivory Rooms, golfers on the fairways and the expensive cars outside reception. What could possibly go wrong?
The Grove in Hertfordshire has not just become a team headquarters in the last seven days, it has also served as a sanctuary for some very famous footballers on the run from embarrassing headlines. Yesterday was the turn of Wayne Rooney, who was the subject of allegations about his private life which will have made a few days away from home seem like a good idea.
Like his team-mate Peter Crouch, Rooney was hit with the classic News of the World kiss and tell, alleging infidelity. The five pages devoted to the Rooney story in yesterday's News of the World, among others, caused the fairly conservative BBC Radio Five Live to claim that Rooney would not travel to Switzerland today with the England squad for tomorrow's World Cup qualifier. This was dismissed by the Football Association.
Such is the appetite with which these stories are devoured and then reproduced across the internet and magazines that by this morning there will be few people who, whether they like it or not, have not heard some of the allegations against Rooney. In fact it would not be a surprise if, when they emerge around Christmas, those trapped Chilean miners do not press their rescuers for details of life in the Rooney marital home.
The sensible rule to apply to these situations is that what goes on in the private lives of footballers, or anyone else, is their business. That changes when it has an effect on their professional lives – as in the Vanessa Perroncel saga which ended with John Terry's dismissal as England captain. Equally, the News of the World's speciality is this kind of sting and it is a very naïve footballer who does not know the rules of engagement.
The modern England international must by now have noticed that the stakes have been raised. For the millionaires holed up in their Hertfordshire hotel the message is clear: it is open season on footballers' private lives and there is a public appetite for these kind of revelations.
One of the many consequences of England's dismal performances in the World Cup has been a backlash against them where it hurts the most. Rooney's struggle in South Africa to live up to all the hype around him that preceded the tournament made him the obvious target. Had he been a success at the tournament then the kind of embarrassing allegations that surfaced yesterday would not have fitted the public mood.
The England team failed at the World Cup and therefore the projection of them as feckless, greedy and disloyal fits with the public mood. The allegations made yesterday against Rooney date back to June last year. How recently the woman in question took her story to the News of the World is not a matter of public record but it would have been unimaginable for the paper to run with it before the World Cup and risk alienating potentially the country's biggest hero.
Very occasionally a newspaper judges the mood wrongly, as when the Mail on Sunday ran the story that kippered Lord Triesman and could have done damage to England's 2018 World Cup bid. The paper forced a resignation but was widely condemned for doing so. Generally, targets are picked much more carefully.
This current England team finds itself embattled and under siege. There are injunctions in the High Court from high-profile players in order to stop disclosures. Public sympathy is in short supply for rich, young footballers who are perceived to do what they like. The players, and their lawyers, fight for their own privacy. The News of the World will continue to pick off those who stray. And at the centre of it, the sadness is that the England team just seem to be getting more and more unpopular.
The crowds keep turning up at Wembley but increasingly, as they did for a couple of Rooney's touches against Bulgaria on Friday night, they do so to boo. The relationship between players and fans is fractured even more. The players disappear behind blacked-out car windows and roped off VIP areas, unable to trust anyone. The fans become ever more resentful.
No one supposes that professional footballers only started having affairs in 1992. It was not introduced overnight, like the Bosman rule or the law banning the back-pass. There have been plenty of famous footballers from the past who were portrayed as rogues rather than the "love rat" of current tabloid parlance. There are plenty of players from the past who just got away with it.
The current open season on footballers allows people to feel morally outraged without having to think too hard about it. It gives the football public another dimension to their feelings of disappointment about the World Cup. It allows them to buy into the mistaken belief that all footballers are overpaid and uncaring.
There are certainly many of them who have made crass mistakes and – like a lot of people – have made bad decisions. And those who have made mistakes are forced to endure their humiliation in full public view. That is not an appeal for sympathy for footballers. Just the recognition that if they had come back from South Africa as heroes, no one, least of all their adoring public, would care about any of this.
Harvey goes from central midfield to out of the picture
Sitting in the Wembley press box before Friday's England game I noticed Colin Harvey take his seat over to my right. A few minutes later a father and son approached with a camera for what the casual observer would expect was a photograph with one of Everton's "Holy Trinity".
No, what they wanted was Harvey to take their picture with Wembley as the backdrop. They had not realised that the obliging gentleman behind the camera was one of the best midfielders of his era. That is the cruel march of time, I suppose. But does it say something too about the football knowledge of some of the people you get at Wembley these days?
Queiroz has to pay his own way in Portuguese farce
Portugal's national team manager Carlos Queiroz is paying for his own flight and tickets to watch his team play in Norway this week. The wrangling over his six-month suspension and the stand-off between the Portuguese federation (FPF), who want to sack him but do not want to pay compensation, is a joke.
The Fifa inspectors were casting an admiring eye over the joint Spain-Portugal 2018 World Cup bid last week. You have to wonder if the debacle at the FPF will attract as much attention as the English FA's problems have with the likes of the Uefa president, Michel Platini. The English are not the only ones capable of making a pig's ear of it.
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