Frustratingly, if you’re a football fan, a football player or involved in football in any way at any level, you can expect to be sniggered at and have your intelligence questioned: the game is seen as the game of idiots, and it is no surprise considering what some players get up to and the level of intellect they display on and off the pitch.
When asked if he was volatile, David Beckham chose to reply with, “well, I can play in the centre, on the right and occasionally on the left side,” in a sheer display of ignorance over temper and flexibility; David O’Leary accurately described his childhood as so, “I was a young lad when I was growing up,” clearing up any concerns that O’Leary may have been a real life Benjamin Button; and a former England manager proved everyone wrong, concerning England not learning from the past, “ If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing.” Take a bow, Terry Venables. Hardly inspiring, is it?
Then, you have the scenarios that happen off the pitch, away from the interviewer and in the private lives of these seemingly unintelligent human beings: the same man who stated that, “Argentina are the second best team in the world, and there’s no higher praise than that,” ruled himself out for a month by getting his toe stuck in a bath tap (he then went on to manage Newcastle and England, to name a couple – yes, Kevin Keegan); Real Madrid right-back Sergio Ramos dropped the Copa Del Rey under the tour bus, as it weaved the roads of Madrid; and of course, our Premier League madcap maverick Mario Balotelli has done many a stupid thing off the pitch, including driving into a women’s prison out of curiosity.
When Oliver Holt, Mirror journalist, met Mark Hughes in 2008, then managing Blackburn Rovers, the now Q.P.R. boss made his viewpoint clear on the cause of idiocy among footballers: “They get too much way too soon,” he explained, citing the loss of hierarchy at a football club that sees respect for the first team, absent through the ranks. He puts this down to one simple thing: youth players no longer clean the boots of the first team – for him, this taught respect and reinforced the hierarchy.
However, there are footballers that should be highlighted for their achievements off the pitch, shown to the aspiring youngsters as an ideal role model and written about in the media; yet, graduate footballers are in the minority. Socrates, who died late last year, was a doctor of medicine and philosophy; Oliver Bierhoff, between scoring a goal every other game for Germany, gained a degree in Economics, as did Arsene Wenger and Steve Coppell; and Frank Lampard left the prestigious Brentwood School with 11 GCSEs including an A in Latin. There are others, but they’re either few and far between, or an interest is just not shown in educated footballers and it goes unreported.
Now in its 10th year, The Premier League Reading Stars scheme is underway for 2012 and Theo Walcott, Mark Schwarzer and Joey Barton are 3 of 20 Premier League footballers getting involved with the project, which aims to promote reading among children and families. Since it started, 11 Premier League footballers have acted as their club’s Reading Star and as part of their duty, they nominate their favourite children’s book and adult book, thus composing a 20 to 40-book shortlist for their local area, which is then supplied, free of cost, to their adopted local library.
The scheme, in partnership with the Football Foundation, the Premier League and the National Literacy Trust, which has the objectives of bringing literacy into the home, supporting the acquisition of literacy skills and using literacy as a lever for social mobility and social justice, has now gone online to widen its scope and now has aims to reach 30,000 more young people across the U.K, by the means of the podcasts they have.
The podcasts, each roughly 5 minutes long, see the Premier League footballers involved read segments of books that are part of the scheme and an interactive quiz follows, engaging the children at home, with their heroes, through the means of literacy. It is a project well worth the investment, and to date, over 16,000 children and parents have participated.