The arrest of Mason Greenwood has sparked some horrible nonsense from the Daily Mail…
‘Will this be football’s #MeToo moment?’ might be a welcome headline in some newspapers, but this is the Daily Mail and this is Amanda Platell.
Platell has history with the #MeToo movement. And when we say ‘history’, we mean she has the kind of history you wold expect from a woman who used to run the Conservative Party’s media operation. The kind of history you would expect from a woman whose column led to the Mail paying £25,000 to a Cambridge academic after Platell falsely accused her of inciting a race war.
In December 2017, she wrote that ‘the hysteria started by #MeToo is encouraging women to think they have been victims of abuse – even if they never thought so before’. Hysteria, ladies and gentlemen.
Three months later she was writing about ‘the #MeToo luvvies who will be virtue-signalling tomorrow night at the Baftas’.
Then in March 2018 she described the movement as ‘feminist propaganda’ when evil Meghan Markle was showing her support, writing that ‘the last thing Britain needs is an over-confident, virtue-signalling American actress using her position in the Royal Family to promote her right-on views’.
You get the picture.
And yet now, she wants to see this ‘feminist propaganda’ used to blow a hole in the sexual misconduct that undoubtedly exists in football, which is coincidentally dominated by young, working-class, ethnically diverse men. Odd that.
‘We need to be honest, and I say this as a lifelong fan of the beautiful game. English football has a misogyny problem.’
Agreed. Though nobody who is a lifelong football fan uses the term ‘beautiful game’. But that’s nit-picking and we are here to get angry, not pedantic.
‘The number of Premier League greats who have cheated, lied, slept around and drank themselves stupid form a line-up as depressing as anything you’ll find at the most incompetent Saturday kickabout. ‘Scoring off the pitch’ is their cheap slang for having an affair, ‘playing the field’ another.’
It’s really, really not. We suspect Platell does not know many young men if she thinks they speak like extras in Carry On Football.
‘And what an irony that this problem has worsened as football makes ever louder noises about its achingly ‘progressive’ values! The rainbow laces, the pre-match pantomime of ‘taking the knee’ – too often, it looks like lazy and hypocritical virtue-signalling. Judge these players by their actions off the pitch, not on it.’
Seriously, f*** off. F*** the f*** off.
To use the apparent, sustained physical and sexual abuse of a woman to denigrate anti-racism and anti-homophobia initiatives in football is vile. Not a surprise but utterly vile.
‘Back in 2020 Manchester City star Kyle Walker broke strict lockdown rules to host a three-hour ‘sex party’ with two call girls and another ‘friend’. The next day, he piously urged his fans to stay home and protect the NHS. But then he was only following in the footsteps of so many football legends.
‘Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs was even alleged to have had an affair with his sister-in-law. Then there’s Wayne Rooney, a serial cheater who sank to using prostitutes while his wife Coleen was pregnant: yet somehow, that long-suffering girl always took him back.’
Important: Consensual sex with prostitutes/family members and alleged rape are not the same thing.
‘And let’s not forget washed-up wife-beater Paul Gascoigne, once the golden boy of British football until it emerged that he headbutted his wife Sheryl and threw her to the floor, breaking her finger.’
Shocking, shocking events, but they did occur long before ‘rainbow laces’ and ‘the pre-match pantomime of ‘taking the knee’’. It’s almost like the abuse of women by men has been occurring for thousands of years and it’s not confined to just one class or just one industry. And it’s got absolutely nothing to do with virtue-signalling.
‘I could list far more: the point is that the gentlemanly heyday of Nobby Stiles feels a very long time ago.’
It is a long time ago. And importantly, that long time ago was before social media, before mobile phone cameras and before women had a voice to speak about abuse. Nobby Stiles might have been a gentleman but domestic abuse was rife in the 1950s and 1960s just as it is now.
‘Today, these preening prima donnas are worshipped from the playground up. Because they can kick a ball better than the other kids, their peers admire them, the girls fancy them and their egos whisper to them that they’re better than everyone else.
‘Throw in the hyper-masculine environment of sport and the unimaginable fortunes handed to working-class kids – and before long, too many think they can treat everyone – especially women – like the dirt they scrape from their boots after the game.’
And just like that, it’s not the perpetrator’s fault at all, but football’s fault for giving them an ego and giving them adoration. And when we say ‘them’, we mean ‘working-class kids’. Jumped-up working-class kids.
‘Now, at last, a scandal has shaken this sport to its foundations. And with it, a burning question: could this finally be football’s MeToo?
‘With cinema’s disgraced predator Harvey Weinstein, first two brave women came forward to allege terrible abuse – then, emboldened, more found the courage to name other names.
‘The floodgates burst and a mighty industry reckoned with its toxic past.’
You mean the floodgates burst with ‘hysteria’, surely? With ‘feminist propaganda’?
All that’s missing now from this opportunistic bile is some victim-shaming. Ah, here we go…
‘Nothing else will drag this game, free-kicking and screaming, into this century. And that will involve men and many impressionable girls taking a long, hard look in the mirror.
‘Yes, every player is answerable for his behaviour. No, there is never an excuse for abuse of any kind.
‘But this sorry culture has also created an army of young female fans desperate to snare a star. I’ve seen these girls working nightclubs footballers frequent. I don’t judge them: a top-flight player can be a meal-ticket for life, whether or not you marry him.
‘Yet by luring these men, sleeping with them and all too often selling the salacious details to the Press, they have helped to foster football’s ugly underbelly.’
Women blamed for rape culture
Men excused behaviour by culture of money
Flippant mention of virtue-signalling
Rank hypocrisy
Bingo! It’s a Daily Mail full house.
READ MORE: Mason Greenwood arrested as police, club, sponsors speak out
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