Olympians are more professional than footballers, right?

The last few days, with the run up to the Premier League highly televised and the Olympics very quickly becoming a distant memory, I have heard nothing but how our footballers can learn a lot from athletes who have partaken in the Olympics.  How lifestyles contrast.  How behaviours of our overpaid, highly idolised footballers are NOTHING to compare to pristine, squeaky clean athletes.  How footballers ‘should mirror Olympian spirit’ and can ‘learn from athletes’.

Really?  I’m not convinced.

I thought the London Olympics was awesome.  I found myself cheering on British athletes that I’d never heard of and will probably never see again.  Getting as emotional as anyone else did watching Big Mo time his finish to perfection in the 5k to take his second gold.  Ennis.  Hoy.  Wiggins. I loved it. I was cynical beforehand.  I’ve never really sat and watched an Olympics before, but this was Great Britain putting on a show – I had to watch and I was/am immensely proud to be British after what they achieved.

But are these people angels?  Saints?  Supreme human beings?  Perfect role models even? No.  Absolutely not.   Take Bradley Wiggins, for example.  Hailed a hero with 7 medals in total, including 4 gold’s, making him one of the all-time great Olympians of Great Britain.  Recent winner of the Tour De France.  Here are his words just before the Olympics, in a post-race press conference at the TDF:

“I say they’re just f**king wa**kers, I cannot be doing with people like that. It justifies their own bone idleness because they can’t imagine applying themselves to do anything in their lives.  “It’s easy for them to sit under a pseudonym on Twitter and write that sort of sh*t, rather than get off their own arses in their own lives and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something. And that’s ultimately what counts. C**ts.”

Is that the kind of attitude the Great British public want from a Great British Olympian/role model/idol?  Apparently so!  Wiggins received heaps of praise for his straight talking, non-nonsense, ‘a spade is a spade’ approach.  And I quite like it too.  It has an air of patriotism about it – one of our lot, competing against people from all over the world, sticking it to the press, telling it how it is.  Good lad. Go on son!

If only the beloved public were as patriotic and supportive of Wayne Rooney last year.  Another who, in the heat of the moment, the adrenalin going, gave a little outburst of his own on camera.  Using ‘obscenities’ of sorts. Once.  But he did it and he apologised swiftly.  Banned immediately. 2 games.  Public witch hunt.  All over the press for days with mothers up in arms and fathers disgusted.  Professionals ‘disappointed’ (but with a wry smile).

Now you tell me.  What is worse?  What’s the difference? Nothing from where I'm sitting. And yet we question and compare the two groups of athletes, casting one off without a thought, putting the other on a pedestal. 

Here’s the problem.  Football is tribal.  It is, by definition, divisive.  It courts people into shedding blood, sweat and tears for their team – and has done for over a century.  It is engrained in society that we love our team.  And hate all others.  As a result, it breeds raw emotion – and people act on that emotion in a certain way.  Maybe swearing in the camera after scoring an important hat-trick, for example.

The support for Olympians is just different.  They are one of us.  British.  And we are proud of them.  And we will back them regardless – and rightly so!  The second it becomes someone who isn’t ‘one of you’, who plays for a rival team, British or not – they are the enemy.  They swear on TV; off with his head!  They have extra-marital affairs; ban him for life!

You see, footballers are no better or worse than Olympic athletes.  They are the same.  They are supported/followed/treated differently.  By me, you and, inevitably, our media.

Footballers are not perfect.  Neither are Olympians.  Stop already with the crazy idealistic comparisons and make sure of one thing – come kick-off this weekend, you hate your opponents more than ever.  As this is what makes football what it is - a competition like no other.  

Some interesting articles I stumbled across leading up to writing this...

http://tinyurl.com/c2f2ack

http://tinyurl.com/bt3vmav

http://tinyurl.com/cybcdss

http://tinyurl.com/cpcr6ym

http://tinyurl.com/bnf4abn