Spurs Balls: Dele Alli’s finger is rushed down to forensics (and it stinks of Nazis)
When Spurs footballer Dele Alli raised a middle finger on international duty, the media went into overdrive. So bad was it that Sky Sports produced this hilarious illustration:
‘Player Swears On Pitch’ is not all that big news. In any case, Alli says he was swearing at his former Spurs team-mate Kyle Walker, not at the referee. FIFA is not investigating. And that is that. Or you’d think it would be but in the Sun, Dave Kidd has two pages of intense investigation into what will very possibly be dubbed finger-gate.
He begins his long look at Alli’s finger by stating:
“It was when they showed the widescreen shot of Dele Alli appearing to raise his middle finger in the direction of Kyle Walker, rather than the referee, that you began to worry. That sick feeling you get in your stomach when you suspect we’re going to be hearing far too much about the precise angle of intention of a raised digit… And then you’ll just want to scream out: ‘Aaaarrrrggghhh! Why can’t it just be about the football?'”
Why, indeed. That question can be aimed at the Sun, which produces not only Kidd’s long story – “FICKLE FINGER OF FATE” – but also ‘DELE VISIONS”, a graphic to help us decide if Alli is a liar.
Having concluded that he might not be, the Sun produces “6 Other Rude Boys”, a look at other unsavoury gestures on the field of play. It kicks off with Nicholas Anelka doing the notorious quenelle salute, made famous by his comedian friend Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala. And there’s Mark Bosnich, then at Aston Villa, giving Spurs fans the Nazi salute. Bit much, no, to liken Alli’s digital ‘fuck off’ with the horrors of Nazi-led anti-Semitism. And there’s Paul Gascoigne’s 1998 flute-playing celebration in front of Celtic fans that earned him a £20,000 fine and a series of death threats. He claimed not to have realized the symbolic significance of his antics – an excuse that would be preposterous coming from anyone else, but which is just about plausible in Gazza’s case.
Of course, the idea behind this forensic examination of Alli’s raised finger is that the Spurs man has sullied the shirt. Which makes us wonder why the Sun didn’t mention this salute the England team once gave in Berlin:
Not Dele Alli
Over the page, Ian Wright wonders is “maybe it wasn’t a nasty, malicious gesture”. Wright then tells us what it was: “naive and daft.” He’s “off the hook,” say the Mail in a three-page story on the finger. The paper invites – get this – the “three wise men” to look at “The Devil in Dele”. One of these sages is Jamie Redknapp, who says Alli is “a lovely kid”; another is Martin Keown. Yeah, him:
Offensive? Nah.
Posted: 6th, September 2017 | In: Back pages, Sports, Spurs Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
