This isn’t just a shot at Everton, but at every team or individual that forgets that it’s just a game.
I will start with Everton though and I had to laugh when I saw alleged comments from the Everton boss concerning Sam Byram. I was even more amused when reading through the Everton twitter feeds where fans were turning against Byram because he decided his future would be better spent at West Ham.
Of course, had he signed for the Toffees, it would have been completely different with lots of welcomes and predictions on his bright future, etc. How fickle the average football fan is.
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For Roberto Martinez to track Byram and get as close as he did to signing him, only to lose out, must have been a kick to his pride, but to then turn around and claim the player wasn’t really right for Everton is just ridiculous. He was before he signed elsewhere. What changed?
It must have been a double blow for Martinez, as West Ham stole Ogbonna in the summer as well. Bad losers.
It’s intriguing that football is really only a game when put into the context of life and family, yet it means so much to some people that they have to vent their frustrations and make themselves look just a little silly. I’ve found some more examples for you to digest. Enjoy.
The sad, little figure of Sepp Blatter and his blast at the English FA comes next. Blatter, who has been through the mill a bit with his health, his suspension and the ongoing investigations at FIFA, raged that the British were bad losers during an interview with the Russian media. He suggested that Britain was jealous over the fact that World Cup finals were awarded to Russia and Qatar and that any complaints of corruption were untrue. Really?
Blatter has never had a good ride in the British press and the English FA would have voted against Blatter in the Presidency elections, so no love lost there then.
Sepp Blater didn’t just insinuate that Britain were bad losers, but the USA as well. In a meeting with an editor from the Financial Times, Blatter stated that a gentleman’s agreement was in place for the US to take the 2022 World Cup and if it had been sanctioned, that he wouldn’t be in the kind of trouble he is in now.
It appeared that Platini was under instruction to vote the way France would want and so his vote went to Qatar, which didn’t help Blatter. Funnily enough, later on the Qatar government bought billions of dollars worth of Jet fighters from France. Blatter felt there was a conspiracy.
In 2010, during the World Cup finals, Germany’s Philipp Lahm said the following on BBC Sport about quarter-final opponents Argentina: “We know South Americans are impulsive and temperamental and cannot lose. We’ll see on Saturday how they’ll lose and how they’ll behave after a defeat.”
His comments came a day after team-mate Bastian Schweinsteiger warned that Germany must not be “provoked” by Argentina during the match.
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Sam Allardyce labelled Arsene Wenger as arrogant and a bad loser in his autobiography: “I enjoyed beating Arsenal more than anyone when I was in charge at Bolton,” he wrote. “We’d really got to them and Arsène Wenger hated us.”
Manchester United were branded bad losers by the Hungarian side Zalaegerszeg. In 2002 in a pre-qualifier first leg Champions League game in Hungary, the minnows beat United 1-0. The Hungarians complained about the attitude of the United players and the fact that, although it had been agreed to swap shirts, Manchester United players refused. United went on to win 5-0 at Old Trafford.
Once during the 1996-97 season, Southampton beat Manchester United 6-3 at The Dell and Sir Alex Ferguson blamed the grey shirts United were wearing and then at Upton Park in the 80s, when he blamed everything and everybody but wouldn’t give credit to a resolute West Ham display.
And so it goes on. Trawl the web and find a ton of teams, players and referees who have been labelled bad losers or cheats because that person/team won’t acknowledge their own downfalls and can’t find it within themselves to give credit where credit is due.
With more money pouring into football you can expect someone to use the phrase ‘bad losers’ more often, as there is so much at stake now. Shame really.
Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy. – Joe Paterno
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