The Observer Sport Monthly ran what I thought was a rather mean-spirited article about Glenn Hoddle which rehearsed all the familiar Hoddle issues we’ve read so much about: distant, arrogant, obsessed with his own legend. And so on.
I’m not sure the article contained any new angles on Glenn’s pain, such as it is, which seems a shame. It seemed more interested in rehashing established wisdoms, with perhaps a little frisson of kicking a man while he’s down. You have to take your hat off to a line like this, though: ‘He seems so preoccupied with sixth senses that he can’t use the other five to see what is happening in front of him.’
What really caught my eye was this: ‘Brian Clough once said that it took ‘moral courage to play the way Hoddle does”. Attaching moral weight to aesthetic choices is at best dumb and at worst positively evil. Go and look the words ‘degenerate’ and ‘football’ up on a search engine: chances are the words ‘long ball’ won’t be far away.