KEVIN MCCALLUM: Two Englishmen, two rants — but only one sensical one

Two Englishmen spoke out this week. Both of them ranted. Only one made sense. The other? He made an attention-seeking noise.

Let’s start with the one who made sense, as much sense as a manager who has just lost a match his team really should have won against the league leaders. Crystal Palace’s Roy Hodgson, back for his second stint at the London club at the tail end of a career that began in 1975 and in which he has coached 22 clubs in eight countries, was a grumpy old man after Harvey Elliot whipped in a goal to win a match Liverpool had no business winning.

He had seen a player sent off, Jordan Ayew, a second yellow card for a foul that looked innocuous with just 15 minutes left. Liverpool only started playing then, ripping into Palace, Mo Salah equalising before Elliot’s wonder strike. Hodgson, who in March admitted that Alex Ferguson would call him a “fool” for taking up one last management position. Well, perhaps his last. After Saturday’s loss, it certainly sounded like it.

As the Guardian reported: “Palace were harshly treated by the referee, Andy Madley, who issued eight yellow cards to the home side, including one to Hodgson. ‘We’re talking too much about the referees,’ Hodgson told TNT Sport, before going on to talk for several minutes about the referee.”

The scene set. Hodgson, now 76 years old, kicked off.

“I have been in football a long time, and I do think I am entitled to give that sort of opinion, because what I saw out there today and the way we lost this game, I thought it was a gutting experience,” said Hodgson. “Games like today make me realise that when the day comes to leave it behind, I won’t be missing anything.”

It got better.

Absolutely sick

“I don’t want to take positives from that game. I really don’t. Because I feel gutted, absolutely gutted, about the way this football game played out today. People will make their judgments on my comments as they wish.

“I’m absolutely sick about the handball interpretations, I’m sick about these yellow cards for time wasting, I’m sick about player behaviour,” Hodgson said. “We’re trying to do our jobs, the coaches are trying to give a bit of advice to the players, and every time they get even close to me [in the technical area], the [fourth official] is screaming to sit down again.”

As an unnecessary qualifier he said: “Anyway, I’m in a bad mood.” 

Joey Barton, who played when he wasn’t suspended or in jail, wasn’t in a bad mood when he railed against women in football on social media, he wasn’t just being Joey Barton, an attention-seeking nobody, a recidivist thug who really should be ignored save for the fact that there are other nobodies and thugs paying him heed. He calls himself the “King of Twitter”, hates “woke media” and said on national television that prominent women in football were “sleeping their way to the top”. 

In 2017, the same Barton accused “right-wing” newspapers of conspiring against the Labour Party before a general election, saying they were “feasting on the current public concern and safety fears”. “Right-wing newspaper headlines are the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket,” he tweeted.

Took him just six years to be the rattler of the stick in his own swill bucket of a brain. “The British, white, middle-aged men (sic) is under attack.” “Strap your dicks on Monday people (sic). We have to get to work before the Simps, the Feminist’s (sic), the Racists and the Woke get there (sic) way.”

He is riding the crest of a wave of misogynistic bile that has been fuelled and emboldened by the bile of the likes of Andrew Tate. He is doing so to promote his new podcast. It’s the quickest way to build an audience, stoke hate, create division and an enemy, whether that be women, woke media or those pushy people of colour. He is the face of all that is wrong with football in Britain, the flawed, crooked masculinity, the notion that football is a man’s game, a white man’s game in particular.

His like need to be marked and watched. The hatred and noise he stirs up festers in the darkest places with the darkest minds and results in the darkest moments. Mark him closely and counter his rise. As Hodgson might revisit some of his rant: “People like Barton make me realise that when the day comes to leave it behind, I won’t be missing anything.”