There is the old adage, two sides to every story. But what there is not is that only one will be taken as the absolute truth, because the other one was “probably” not true.
The whole Suarez issue reached a climax in the past few days. The official report came out, and I was appalled at the negativity that Suarez was getting because his statement that he had pinched Evra to diffuse the situation was inconsistent, and it probably was, but to use such instances as to “probably” prove that what one party had said is correct and the other wrong is beyond rational logic. It reminds me of the philosophical oddity that a good writer was addressing the other day. Humans believe that if you are good then you are rewarded. But what if you are not rewarded? Does that mean you have been bad? This is what he sought to address, saying that the logic hardwired in us makes us feel responsible for it somehow, when clearly no one has been bad. If A then B, does not mean if not B then not A.
The Suarez ruling to me has these same absurdities. The one that usually come from our hardwired irrational minds. Suarez made a few inconsistent statements. Therefore what he said to have transpired should have “probably” not have occurred and let’s just suspend the bloke for eight matches and believe every word what Evra said. Even if there are no witnesses. The last reports and from pretty good places of the fourth estate also lambasted him and chose to bore into the Liverpool hierarchy. Football365.com, asked ‘how do you feel now Johnson?’ after Johnson had worn a t-shirt supporting Suarez. I do not know, of what race the writer of that article was, but if just being brown (where the usual derogatory and offensive remarks check my patriotism) was enough for someone to hail a banana from the top of a building in my path, in a society of supposed new elite European consciousness, then I can understand, how tough it is for these guys and how personal it can be. So to suggest that Johnson wore a t-shirt if he didn’t feel like it seems to be rather ludicrous.
So what was it then? Even though I do not believe completely the undertones of the vilification campaign against Liverpool, I think Kenny Dalglish got it right when he said “wrong place, wrong time”. It was a golden opportunity to come down with the heavy axe, to prove as a deterrent, and they did.
The issue of half apology might look like to some as admittance of guilt, but it is anything but a re-iteration of the same statements but addressed to the public. Apology for a word used in a different context, just once, and more the apology for the naivety of expressing one’s own cultural characteristics without thinking about the insensitivities of others and causing hurt. It reminds me of me telling people my good friends are Pakis, a perfect and non-intimidating acronym for Pakistanis in the Arabian Gulf, which they themselves use to avoid speaking the extra two syllables. I can see the faces cringe in the Queen’s territories if I were to ever use it there.
After all there is the key question of what the F.A. will do after the investigation into John Terry’s case. That had video evidence, of the words being uttered, in the not-so-Queen’s English. Context and linguistic differences does not stand a chance there. And with the Euros coming up, let us see how un-hypocritical the FA actually is and how un-self serving and how just.
