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The build-up to any major tournament is a time of great uncertainty. Who will make the 23-man squad? How will England fare on the big stage? Who will they narrowly go out to on penalties in the quarter finals?
This summer, though, amidst the miasma of unknowns, there were two things so assured we could set our watches by them happening. In the immediate weeks leading up to a World Cup, The Sun would manufacture a scandal involving a member of the England squad. And their fall-guy was always going to be Raheem Sterling.
How did we know this for sure before it even came to pass? Well, the first bit required very little deduction beyond possessing a basic knowledge of the English media because this is what The Sun newspaper does; this is their M.O.
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Every two years without fail they feed into the excitement and anticipation of the general public and attempt to whip up a storm of indignity. Should one not immediately present itself they are more than happy to reach into the realms of the silly because they know if they shout loud enough about pretty much anything they hold sufficient sway over their readership to trigger a percentage to respond in kind.
For The Sun – and let’s be clear here that other tabloids are guilty of such nefariousness but never is Murdoch’s rag anywhere other than leading from the front – this bi-annual approach is win-win-win. The morally bankrupt institution stations itself erroneously as the nation’s moral arbitrator. They shift units. And they destabilise the national football team thus increasing the chances of failure which in turn leads to a greater capacity for sensationalistic headlines.
So we duly waited for it to come, as sure as night follows day and faux outrage feasts on something good and positive.
But why Sterling? How could we be so certain it would be the Manchester City striker targeted? That was elementary. After all, it was hardly going to be Albion’s great white hope Harry Kane was it? His persona has already been carefully defined as a clean-cut hero complete with childhood sweetheart. Should the Spurs forward stumble – as he did in Euro 2016 – that can be left to the sports guys to deal with.
Should he prevail and score lots of goals, that affords the country’s second largest selling newspaper a golden opportunity to wheel out the white van icon Geoff Hurst and have the pair pictured together arm-in-arm in a front page splash for the ages. If the Sun reporter could sneak in a framed photograph of Douglas Bader on the wall behind them then all the better.
What then of Jordan Pickford’s tattoo of a dagger? Presently the disturbing increase in knife crime is a national talking point so perhaps there was a potential – and utterly ludicrous – tie-in there? Perhaps Pickford was a contender? But no: the Everton keeper looks like a lost puppy and he is young, bless him (he is one year older than Sterling). Furthermore, he is white.
It was always going to be Sterling because it always is Sterling.
There he is tired, look, because it’s the middle of the night; and driving an unwashed car because he doesn’t give a s**t; and openly mocking our cheap eating habits by scoffing a sausage roll; and openly mocking our cheap flying habits by using easyJet and then openly mocking our bank balances by taking TWO expensive holidays.
Look there he is, the unscrupulous swine, proposing like a love-rat; and showing off a sink he’s bought his mum that is better than the type us hoi polloi get from Homebase; and going to Primark while on a gazillion a week and getting his batteries from Poundland and just when you think the toe-rag couldn’t disgrace himself more, he then goes off to have some breakfast after missing out on a Young Player of the Year Award! There he is, Sterling the ‘footie idiot’ (The Sun); a ‘symbol of the amorality at the heart of the so-called Beautiful Game’ (Mail Online).
Ever since a 20-year-old Sterling had the temerity to switch from one Premier League club to another in 2015 (one of 27 players who did so that summer alone) an industry of hate has built up around a clearly decent and perfectly normal young man. It has been a relentless, obsessive and downright weird campaign, unprecedented in its voracity and designed to turn Raheem into a national bogeyman (or a ‘symbol of amorality’).
So with a scapegoat needed to undertake their traditional pre-tournament bashing of the national football team, why on earth would The Sun waste all of their hard work castigating someone entirely new? The groundwork had already been done and that’s a huge understatement, while frankly it’s barely an overstatement to claim that so poisonous has been their coverage that on Tuesday they need only have put up a large photograph of the player with his name below it. That alone would have riled up the haters no end. Look at him there, playing football. Like he thinks he’s better than us.
As it was they went with a tattoo featuring an assault rifle on the player’s calf, but let’s move past that for two interconnected reasons. Firstly, the story is ridiculous and manufactured. It’s the faux-outrage that is outrageous, not what a footballer has inked onto his body. Secondly, the non-issue has thankfully been debunked, ridiculed and levelled with reason elsewhere many times over.
Yet there is one aspect to the farrago that has not been mentioned enough in my opinion, and more so it’s an aspect that directly relates to what this article is about – which is not the witch-hunt of a player per se (a subject I have written about several times for this very site) but questioning why The Sun insists on demoralising its national team ahead of every major tournament.
Should you have picked up The Sun newspaper earlier this week and seen their hysterical coverage of the offending tattoo it would be understandable if you assumed the ink was barely dry. Perhaps Sterling had intended to premiere it at the World Cup? If it was a magic tattoo that is with the ability to radiate through his sock.
In fact a reliable report has suggested that it was done way back in late October and even if that’s not the case it was certainly done prior to City winning the league as photographs of Raheem celebrating clearly show the tattoo in evidence.
So The Sun sat on this. They waited and given they have previously screamed blue murder over the player in question eating cereal or walking alongside a female mate in Jamaica, it can be surmised that it was not a story relegated to their in-tray without good reason.
They waited for the season to finish. They waited for the excitement and anticipation of England’s participation in Russia 2018 to build up some steam. They waited for the most damaging time to mentally disrupt a key figure for Gareth Southgate’s team, a player who scored 23 times last season and was otherwise flying.
This therefore was not just an attack on Raheem Sterling. This was an attack on our national side.
Which, as previously stated, is The Sun’s M.O.
“Unique to this country to attempt to destroy our player’s morale before a major tournament. It’s weird, unpatriotic and sadâ€. That’s how Gary Lineker this week described the newspaper’s fetish of undermining our hopes and the only criticism I have towards his response lies in the use of ‘unpatriotic’.
It should have been written out in capital letters.
So why do they do it, this comic that hilariously professes to have the country’s best interests at heart? Pure and simple it comes down to numbers and opportunity, because prior to any major sporting event a vacuum needs to be filled, a disparity that has a lot of interest from the general public but not a great deal to write about. So that’s all it is really. A business decision. A chance to shift a few extra papers even if it means shafting something that its readers hold dear.
It of course doesn’t end there, though. That’s just the start of it. This summer – just like 2016 and 2014 and 2012 and 2010 and back through time – The Sun, having given ‘our boys’ an entirely unnecessary kicking to weaken their resolve will then enact a staggering volte-face come the tournament’s kick-off.
Indeed by the middle of June this joke of a publication will turn full John Bull, plastering tub-thumping jingoism onto its front page while alluding that 11 footballers are going into battle, held strong by the ghostly spirit of the Somme. We few, we happy few. We band of brothers.
Personally I find this stage to be the most unnerving. It’s like a psychopath enquiring about the health of old Mrs Higgins down the road while cradling a puppy. It gives me the creeps if truth be told.
Then, when England exit having been defeated by a very good international rival another volte-face; another dramatic shift. They are a disgrace who should not be allowed back into the country. The manager is a vegetable. The venom returns. The fangs. The spite.
This familiar, well-worn pattern reveals highly schizophrenic tendencies but an individual can be schizophrenic not a major news organisation staffed by hundreds. So we have to ask ourselves – which is their natural state of being? Which is the real Sun and which extreme is fake?
Surely deep down even the Manchurian Candidates who swallow the newspaper’s lies and bile wholesale must know the answer to that one. Hate leaves ugly scars that are visible to even the blind.
Don’t buy the Sun. In football, as in life, they set out only to do England down for their own advancement. They are the enemy within.
They are a tattoo that we wish was temporary but which stains our very soul.
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