A week on from a Champions League final that proved remarkable on many different levels and the tears have, presumably, dried. When they had been seen streaming down the faces of Loris Karius, Mo Salah and Dani Carvajal, among other grief-stricken footballers, it was intriguing that Paul Scholes found himself at something of a loss. A star guest at a viewing party in London, the former Manchester United midfielder wasn’t so much critical of these grown men being so publicly reduced to sobbing wrecks, as generally bemused by their ostentatious displays of emotion.
Salah and Carvajal had left the field weeping after suffering match-ending injuries that instantly put their hopes of playing in the World Cup in jeopardy. Carvajal has since been given the all-clear for Russia, while Egypt’s star player is commendably bullish about his chances of being involved. Karius, not selected by Germany, faces a long, lonely summer of introspection following two disastrous goalkeeping blunders that cost his team the game.
He was inconsolable at the final whistle and it was difficult not to empathise with him as the tears flowed and he begged for forgiveness from Liverpool’s fans. While many at the game seemed genuinely sympathetic, their keyboard-tapping counterparts were in less forgiving mood.
“I can understand Karius, I suppose, he’s devastated at what’s happened, but injuries are part of the game,” said Scholes, when pushed for his views on those who had been weeping. “If you go back years and you saw somebody crying on the pitch, they’d have had a whole load of stick for it. Now it’s a different game, players are sensitive and they get upset easily.”
Although Scholes stopped short of suggesting modern footballers should “man up”, the implication seemed fairly clear. However, it is worth reiterating that his comments appeared to be prompted by total bafflement by the behaviour he was witnessing far away in Kiev rather than any obvious lack of compassion. Because sporting misfortune and humiliation are not the kind of traumas that would drive him to tears, Scholes seemed mystified by the notion that it might have a more profound and tortuous effect on somebody else.
Scholes was a relative stranger to humiliation throughout his illustrious career as a highly decorated midfielder but he did suffer notable misfortune. He famously missed Manchester United’s thrilling last‑gasp victory over Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final through suspension. Asked whether he had been close to tears upon seeing Urs Meier produce the yellow card that would rule him out of the final, Scholes was matter-of-fact. “No,” he said. “What’s crying going to do. It’s not going to make the booking go away.”
Although the man undeniably has a point, one cannot help but wonder if he believes mourners crying at funerals do so deliberately in the faint hope it might make the body in the casket come back to life.
Scholes would be completely mystified by my behaviour as somebody who cries at the drop of a hat, often in the most ridiculous and embarrassing circumstances imaginable. I have cried watching Neighbours. I have cried at the funerals of people I don’t know. I regularly cry watching movies and remain incapable of watching the closing scenes of E.T. the Extra‑Terrestrial without being reduced to a sobbing, heaving wreck. I have cried over relationship break-ups, news of a loved one’s illness, news of a loved one’s recovery, global injustices and sad montages on Comic Relief.
I regularly weep at weddings and the big reveal of renovated houses on DIY SOS. I once broke down over a broken-down car after burning out my clutch. I would prefer not to make a public spectacle of myself over often ridiculous things, but I simply can’t help it and that’s fine.
In stark contrast, Scholesy, who is clearly made of sterner emotional stuff than me and my blubbering ilk, is better able to keep a lid on things and not given to public displays of sadness. And that’s fine, too.
In an important, stirring and eloquent piece about depression and our urgent need to acknowledge it published on the Football 365 website recently, John Nicholson made the very valid point that it is perfectly acceptable to be weak. “It is part of being human, not a failure of your gender or sexuality,” he wrote. “You are no less of a man for not being able to cope sometimes, for crying at the nameless existential pain in your soul.”
And although it is unfair to suggest Scholes was criticising Salah, Karius or Carvajal for succumbing to their existential pain on Saturday evening, he is undeniably part of a wider football culture in which such emotional outbursts are regularly and unfairly greeted with an unhealthy derision, and that needs to be addressed.
n The Class of 92, Scholes and some of his former Manchester United team-mates spoke at length about the bullying culture prevalent at the club when they were apprentices. One horrifying tale detailed the time an adolescent Scholes was locked in an industrial‑sized laundry room tumble dryer, an experience that rendered him so traumatised that he suffered an asthma attack.
One suspects he was probably not too far from tears on that occasion, even if they wouldn’t have opened the dryer door and helped him to catch his breath.
Tellingly, it was he and his team-mates who made a point of putting an end to such cruelty once they had attained the necessary dressing‑room clout.
For all Scholes’s bewilderment at the tears of today’s more sensitive footballers, it is hard to shake the feeling that underneath that gruff, no-nonsense northern exterior there lurks a sympathetic soul that is commendably soft.
The Guardian Sport
