Hurray for Troy Deeney: Watford’s anti-role model role model
If Wayne Rooney is your role model, you’re either one of his sons or mentally negligible. The Government loves to portray footballers as our moral guides, whether they’re being wheeled out tell us what to eat, who to shag and what not to smoke.
The nadir was when David Cameron saw Liverpool’s Luis Suárez bite an opponent and lamented how the Uruguayan had set “the most appalling example” to children. Dad might have ordered the bombing of Libya, accidentally left his eight-year-old daughter in the pub, said he supported West Ham having already declared an allegiance to Aston Villa but all that was small fry to stories of a stranger biting a stranger. You can topple Muammar Gaddafi, creating a power vacuum and instability in North Africa, encourage the rise of Islamist militancy within range of Italy, but it’s a footballer who teaches by example.
And so it was that Watford striker Troy Deeney was asked what he could do to stop knife crime in Britain. “I don’t like the word role model, first and foremost,” Deeney told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“The role model should be in the house at all times. We’re all humans – people make mistakes. We’re putting emphasis on being famous as more important than being a good person. What are we basing the role model on? Because we’re in the limelight. I don’t like that. If my kids look up to a man bigger and better than me, then that’s me not doing my job. My dad was not a footballer. He wasn’t anything remotely what the average person would say was a role model – but in my eyes he was Superman.”
Next up: why no-one in politics ever talks about politicians being role models for the kidz.
Posted: 4th, March 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
