Time to applaud the cheats like David Ngog for their X-Factor
By Rory Smith (telegraph.co.uk)
Simon Cowell would approve. “I’ll be public enemy number one,” said the Lego-haired mogul of his decision to keep John and Edward, a set of tuneless Irish twins who everybody seems very angry about or extremely fond of, depending on how post-modern they are, in the X Factor.
Well, he didn’t exactly keep them in. He “let the public decide”, choosing to douse our hands in Lucie Jones’s blood – metaphorically – by referring the vote to “deadlock”, an overly-dramatised narrative device lifted, seemingly, straight from The Day Today. Cowell’s decision, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that, if everyone gets extremely cross, they will spend most of next Saturday night voting for absolutely everyone else to condemn JEdward to a life of karaoke bars, appearances on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and turning on the Christmas lights in Carlow.
Cowell’s trickery would, in South America, be considered a fine example of picardia. He has displayed ruthless cunning, a willingness to forego any ethical considerations in order to advance his own interests. And it’s here that Cowell, possibly the most famous man with no discernible talent other than insulting people in Britain, would look at David Ngog and say: “I like you. I could see you selling records. It’s a yes. Louis?”
Ngog, too, clearly possesses picardia in abundance. He also, it seems, has plenty of nerve. Most players, when they choose to dive, do so to exaggerate contact, or at least have the decency to leave a leg trailing behind them as they go to ground. Not Ngog. Ngog jumped three feet in the air, three feet away from Lee Carsley, and looked beseechingly at Peter Walton for a penalty. Walton, who has the look of a man who has mislaid his keys, duly pointed to the spot. The country erupted in uproar.
Carsley suggested Ngog should be embarrassed to go home to his family, intimating that countless scions of the proud Ngog dynasty would forever have to bear his shame. Alex McLeish was more philosophical, describing the decision as a “joke,” although with the face of someone who didn’t get the punchline. Some observers used words like “scarred” and “cheat storm”. Expect one newspaper, at least, to blame immigration for this besmirching of our national game. Ngog has been called every name under the sun, and mostly by it as well. Many others, including my colleague Rob Kelly, believe this latest example of hoodwinkery is proof Fifa should get off the pot and introduce video technology.
I, personally, favour a much easier solution. Just accept it. It’s part of the game. Not only that, but simulation, picardia in its purest form, is a skill, and as with any skill, those who practice it well should be applauded. Or at least grudgingly admired. That is the approach they take in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, and frankly it makes sense.
Football is a game based on the deployment of skill in the pursuit of victory. It is not a game based on honesty. Is the rabona so favoured by Ricardo Quaresma or the elastico of Rivelino and Ronaldinho honest? No. Both are tricks to deceive the defender, yet both are lauded as art. Was Roberto Carlos’s free kick against France in 1997 honest? No. It swerved twice, and thus tricked the laws of physics, an authority far mightier than Peter Walton. Is the offside trap honest? No. It is deceitful, destructive. It fools a side in full attacking flow into thinking there is more space available to them than there is. It serves only to bind.
There was a time when it was considered sportsmanlike behaviour for a winger to stick only to his touchline, try to beat his opponent and then cross the ball in. That was the limit of what Stanley Matthews – and Charles “Charlie” Charles – were allowed to do. Anything else was thought ill manners.
When Hungary landed at Wembley in 1953 with Nandor Hidegkuti playing in a trequartista role, there will have been reactionaries who viewed their tactical sophistication as heresy. The game has evolved from that. Perhaps it is now time for it to evolve again, to embrace another artform viewed as a scourge of all that is good and honest. Perhaps, at the risk of exaggerating slightly, David Ngog can be football’s Galileo.
Judging by the comments attached to my last blog, there are those among the literally tens of people reading this who will insist this is nothing more than partisanship, but my reaction to the ridiculously overblown Eduardo farrago was the same. It is hard to take when it is your team on the receiving end, I accept, but, as McLeish magnanimously said last night: “If you stick a leg out [like Carsley did], you are running a risk.”
The only difference, of course, is that diving tricks not an opponent, but the referee, the arbiter of fair play and, in a sense, the fans’ representative on the pitch. But that, too, is a skill, and possibly a more difficult one than getting the better of a back-tracking left-back. Those who do it well do not deserve to be pilloried, but rather praised for their quick thinking, their presence of mind, their acting talents. They are all traits considered praiseworthy in other scenarios. What makes this one different? Those who do it badly, of course, should be punished. That is only right. Football rewards talent and chastises mediocrity. Diving should be the same.
The best analogy, perhaps, is with someone taken for a ride by a street hustler. You are angry, of course, but at the same time you have to wonder at the display of cheek, of sleight of hand, that has tricked you. That is how we should treat Ngog. And, for that matter, Cowell. At least the young Frenchman isn’t doing it to the whole country.
