Generally described as over-paid and ungrateful, the footballers of today have not created the best reputation for themselves. Most press coverage surrounding the sport focuses more heavily on the scandals surrounding the players rather than the actual football they are playing. Even if you don’t know anything about the actual game, chances are you are very familiar with the Luis Suarez racism incident, John Terry’s affair with Wayne Bridge’s girlfriend and just about every detail of David Beckham’s life (including what underwear he is wearing). So considering how often we hear stories about the bad behaviour of these men, it was slightly refreshing to hear of them all coming together at a time of crisis.
As a sport that is closely followed and reported by many, it didn’t take long for the world to be informed of the collapse of 23 year old Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba on the 17th of March. Shocked team mates watched on as the man they had been kicking a ball about with just minutes earlier lay lifeless, face down on the grass. Panic quickly took over White Hart Lane, where the match was being played, as the seriousness of the situation gradually became clear. Paramedics rushed on to the field and gave mouth to mouth resuscitation, before rushing him off to hospital. It later transpired that Muamba was ‘effectively dead’ for a whole 78 minutes before medics were able to get his heart beating again. For anyone of such a young age to suffer a cardiac arrest is shocking enough, but for the incident to occur in such a public way provoked mass shock and hysteria across the footballing world.
The huge amount of support that followed the event could not have been anticipated, with rival teams forgetting their battles and posting encouraging messages for the player, with #prayforMuamba trending worldwide.
It did not matter what team you played for, showing that you cared became the priority. Not only were messages sent via Twitter but several teams showed their respect by taking part in a period of applause for the player before matches kicked off and others wore shirts with encouraging messages. Even players in different countries were moved enough to have the name printed on their shirts, one of the most famous being Crisitano Ronaldo, who is currently playing for Real Madrid.
As much as other teams did their bit to show support, no one did more than the Bolton fans themselves, demonstrating a spectacular mosaic display in dedication to the player, with both the Bolton and opposition fans turning up wearing shirts with ‘MUAMBA’ on the back.
Even fans of local rivals, Manchester United, left messages.. Shame they couldn’t get his name right though.
However, despite the football world putting up a united front, it would seem that the general public weren’t quite playing fair…
Enter Liam Stacey. Whilst many twitter users jumped on the #prayformuamba bandwagon in an attempt to gain more followers, or in a shameless attempt to get a retweet from a top footballer, this youth took things further. After openly mocking the player’s collapse, Stacey followed this already unacceptable behaviour with a series of racial slurs, later claiming that his twitter account had been hacked, oh so very conveniently.
Stacey has now been sentenced to 56 days in jail as a punishment for his ridiculous comments, and has acted as a warning for the rest of the twitter world that think it’s acceptable to send out tweets full of hate (obviously anything directed at Piers Morgan is an exception to this rule).
However, ignoring Liam Stacey and his childishness, this incident really did give me a bit more faith in humanity, in football anyway. Luckily, it would appear that our prayers were indeed answered, as Muamba seems to be well on his way to recovery, sitting up in hospital, responding to questions and moving his arms and legs. His recovery has been described by doctors as ‘nothing short of miraculous’.
The picture was tweeted by Fabrice’s fiancee Shauna, who said: “Fab wanted me to post this pic for you all and to also say thank you for such overwhelming support.”
Even though it took such a great tragedy to unite the footballing community, it did prove to us that it can happen, and maybe this is something that will keep being proven to us. So next time you read a gossip magazine about the latest footballer scandal, try to remember Muamba and genuine humanity underneath the apparent seediness of the footballing world.