Let’s take a (not-so) hypothetical situation. It’s a regular game of football. Player A has his leg out; Player B, whether intentionally or not, goes over Player A’s ankle like the freight train through the city in Inception. A red card is shown, a ban is slapped on, and Player B becomes the centre of the football world’s attention. Imagine you’re the embodiment of the press – you get to decide how everyone reacts to this. And there’re two possible scenarios. Scenario 1: vilify Player B as a monster, the bane of football, atrocious and vile and disgusting. Scenario 2: defend Player B passionately, blaming it on the heat of the moment and emotions, saying that actually he’s a really great guy.
You see where I’m going. Diego Costa and Steven Gerrard, both guilty of the exact same situation, but faced with a completely different reaction to their behaviour. Which is, to put it plainly and at the risk (sorry not sorry) of offending various Self-Righteous Liverpool Fans, quite ridiculous. There is nothing that should separate the actions of these two players, and yet one has been torn to shreds by the media, whereas the other has been put on a pedestal and given a sympathetic pat on the head. Clue: Gerrard isn’t the first one.
I can pinpoint a few reasons why the pinnacle of international media that is the English Press (note: sarcasm) insist on viewing things in this fashion, each of them as stupid as the next. The first and most obvious is the herd mentality that most fans subscribe to at the moment: Diego Costa is the man everyone loves to hate. It’s become almost fashionable, if you’re not a Chelsea fan, to mock his face and deride his football, no matter what the state of it actually is. I’m not saying that his actions are excusable or indeed welcome – quite the opposite – but what I am saying is that people are calling him a monster not just because of what he did, but because of who he is.
Don’t believe me? Look at the reception Gerrard got. I spent a good ten minutes listen to Jamie Carragher spouting post-match mindless, drivel about how Gerrard’s red card was down to his being ‘emotional’ and ‘frustrated’, talking about how he’s ‘always been the captain’, and how it was somehow Rodgers’s fault for not playing him. Hm. United fans will tell you the tragedy of Juan Mata and Ander Herrera being left on the bench for large parts of the period, but when either of them gets to start they tend to score goals and log assists rather than spend less time on the pitch than a Minute to Win It game. And Gerrard’s captaincy should incriminate him more, not less, because he should be experienced enough to handle his emotions in a way that is not manifested by stamping on other players’ ankles. Not only Carragher, but much of the press was quick to lay the blame on a ‘moment of madness’. The double standard is quite frankly alarming.
I suppose it boils down to the massive gulf that separates these two players. Costa makes himself easy to hate, whereas Gerrard is a Liverpool legend and, tellingly, an English player. It’s a lot more comfortable to call out someone who’s already got a bad reputation in the press – far less so to call out someone who is highly regarded in general. I remember during England’s World Cup campaign hardly anyone was laying the blame on Gerrard for his beautiful assist for Luis Suarez, or at least not on the level of the stick that Wayne Rooney gets game after national game, even though Rooney doesn’t deserve 80% of it. It’s the same thing – it’s easy to hate Rooney, and the press tend to take the easy option most of the time.
The blinkers are intensified by the fact that Costa wasn’t punished for his stamp in terms of red cards, whereas Gerrard’s 46 second cameo inspired both hilarity and (misguided) sympathy. There will always be hate for a player who didn’t get the punishment he deserved, even though Costa did get the same 3 game ban afterwards. Meanwhile the context of Gerrard’s game and situation – the last ever Northwest Derby he will play in, the last time he’ll lead Liverpool out against Manchester United, the ‘tragic’ circumstances of his leaving – are all hyped up and massively overinflated. Gerrard himself hasn’t helped, playing up the victim part and courting pity. Rodgers said he was ‘man enough’ to apologise for the stamp, but listen to it again and you’ll realise he was only apologising to Liverpool fans for getting sent off. Not apologising for his actions, not apologising to Herrera. That’s not particularly ‘big’. (Another comparison if you are keen – when Rooney apologised for his ‘dive’ against Cambridge the press was on him like Mark Clattenburg on an Ed Sheeran concert. When Gerrard apologised for this, it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.) This playing up of the ‘Gerrard is sorry and he really can’t be blamed’ stick is hypocritical at best.
There is absolutely no reason why one man should be treated as a criminal and the other as ‘playing with his heart’. It doesn’t matter whether you think stamping is wrong or not – if you think that Gerrard shouldn’t be punished or isn’t to blame, then you must think that Costa shouldn’t have been punished and wasn’t to blame either. Vice versa. There is no moral high ground for Liverpool fans to assume because it fundamentally boils down to the same thing (and don’t even get me started on Skrtel). Give discredit where discredit is due. Legends are not fallible and should not be treated as such. Of course it’s fine to love a player to the ends of the world and back, especially if he’s your one-club Captain and always has been. But loving him does not mean turning a blind eye to the mistakes that he makes, or worse, trying to defend him using the most inane reasoning (hi Jamie). If one of my favourite United players had done the same thing, I’d have been gutted, but would have to call him out on it.
The only thing different between Gerrard and Costa is that one’s considered a legend and the other a bad boy. But there’s no room for history and backstory on the pitch, and status should not overcome wrongdoing. Sure, it’s probably upsetting for Gerrard to leave Liverpool on such a sour note, but tough luck – it’s his fault and he shouldn’t get any sympathy, at least not in terms of his actions. There are so many things wrong with the fans and the press and this is just one of them, but we could really, really do with a lot less double standard and blind eyes. If you’re just here for the Gerrard jokes, though, then I offer a rendering of Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off:
‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
Stevie G is going cray, cray, cray, cray, cray
What the Scouers gonna say, say, say, say, say
Slippin’ up, slippin’ up
Forty seconds on the clock, clock, clock, clock, clock
Makes it so easy to mock, mock, mock, mock, mock
Hope he had a real good walk, walk, walk, walk, walk
Slippin’ up, slippin’ up
Fergie's Boys 