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Another Spat

Published by Ian John on March 18, 2009

It seems last night’s victory for Arsenal in their FA Cup quarter final tie against Hull City, could be largely forgotten in the furore that has followed over the allegations that Arsenal midfielder Cesc Fabregas, who was not playing in the game, spat at the feet of Hull City assistant manager Brian Horton.

Horton it seems is planning to take the incident further and has arranged talks with the League Manager’s Association, Tigers boss Phil Brown claims Horton will have “the full support of the people of Hull…It includes my chairman – we had a conversation this morning.” Fabregas has, unsurprisingly, denied the charge stating “I have never done this in my whole career on the pitch, so why would I do it when I am not even playing? I can understand the frustration of losing a game to a dubious goal, that has happened to me many times in my career as well, but this is not the fault of me or any of the Arsenal players.”

See if you can guess what Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger said about the incident… “”I can’t speak about something I haven’t seen.” Clearly the selective myopia still a problem then for poor Arsene.

The incident has made back page news across the U.K this morning with radio stations also reporting on events. My local radio station commented on the article and one of their reporters said something which baffles me. In amongst the many nuggets of bland radio-land wisdom, he informed us that “We all know footballers have to spit…”

Excuse me? Why do they have to spit? Is it a job requirement? Does a footballer’s medical contain a section where they must expectorate a mouthful of gunk a satisfactory distance before they are deemed professional enough to be handed a contract? We should be told.

I don’t understand this need to spit. It isn’t prevalent in all sports. Baseball, Soccer and American Football seem to be the worst culprits, but why? Basketball players don’t hurl gobfuls of phlegm around the court every 30 seconds, if they did most fans would turn up to games wearing wellies and a wetsuit. I don’t see women footballers having the need to expel the contents of their nasal cavities every minute or so? I can’t recall a Marathon runner being disqualified from winning gold at the Olympics, because he didn’t spit enough times on the 26 mile course. Boxers get smacked around the head and wear gumshields during their fights and even they are polite enough to spit into a bucket during the interval, usually while we are watching adverts, or ogling the eye-candy as she wanders around the ring in jeans so tight you can tell her religion.

Worse than all of that though, and really plumbing the depths of vileness, is when soccer players, and it does tend to be soccer players only who do this, decide that they must unclog their nose by holding one nostril closed and blasting the contents out of the other, at velocities that would have human biologists amazed. Why is there a need to unclog the nose in public? Have they not heard of a tissue? Do they not realise that this is not a particularly endearing attribute? And would you want to swap shirts with him after the game? You may as well just collect the contents of his bathroom bin if that is the case.

What next? I fully expect to be watching one game and see a player squat down in the centre circle, pull out a roll of toilet paper, open a book and start really ‘concentrating’ while the game goes on around him.

So spitting is unnecessary in a great many ways. Oh I know it is all to do with respiratory issues and excess saliva and blah de blah, the point is, if other people in sport have no need to do it, who expel just as much energy as footballers or baseball players, why do footballers and their ilk do it?

Simple. The answer must be to annoy Brian Horton.

Picture Credit : **UncorneredMarket** at Flickr.com

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