Scandals and scoundrels [Part 1]:
The Tempestuous Theatre of the Football Press Conference Meltdown
“Which one of you is Simon Bird? You’re a cunt. Which one of you is [Niall] Hickman? You are out of order. Absolutely fucking out of order. I am telling you, you can fuck off and go to another ground, I will not stand for that fucking crap. No fucking way. Lies.”
So began Joe Kinnear’s nitroglycerinic first official press conference as Newcastle United interim manager. It was the 1st of October, 2008. Affronted, undermined, feeling judged before he’d even laid his first cone down on the sodden turf of Darsley Park, Kinnear defied the assembled press, seesawing between surly insouciance: (“Write what you like, makes no difference to me…”) — to threatening legal action: (“This is going to my fucking lawyers. If they can find something in it that’s a court case it’s going to court. I am not fucking about.”)
There have been many other infamous run-ins between media and manager in the Premier League which are often anecdotally filed under Meltdown. Rafa Benítez calmly listing a series of facts regarding Alex Ferguson. Nigel Pearson’s intensely bizarre ostrich question, a man who effortlessly exudes the energy of a recently-divorced PE teacher. Even Ian Holloway railing against the very concept of free transfers, like some kind of Somerset David Brent: “What are we actually saying as human beings? If Alex Ferguson is being bullied by a player and his agent, HOW WRONG IS THE GAME? YEAH? AND WHEN ARE YOU GONNA’ LISTEN? THE GAME IS WRONG. FIFA, UEFA, WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU’RE WRONG!” But while only in this last example did any of these men actually raise their voice, rant would be a strong word for the first two. Let alone meltdown. Genuine press conference meltdowns are a rare occurrence in the Copernican system of the English league.
Enter Joe Kinnear. He took exception, among many others things, to the (rather spectacular) headline Morecambe and Wise, mischievously likening Kinnear and his Executive Director of Football, Dennis Wise, to the legendary comedy double act, but also adroitly alluding to the shambolic state of affairs at the club at the time. (Plus ça change, eh Newcastle fans?)
At the very other end of the football cosmos, José Mourinho had already been and gone in the Premier League, proclaiming himself as special. Reinventing Chelsea to dominant success, he remodelled the Premier League in his own image, before scowling his way over to Italy where his all-conquering Internazionale side marched across Europe bellowing veni, vidi, vici. Some months before Kinnear’s appointment at Newcastle, Mourinho had already smouldered his way through his first Inter press conference, the hint of a winsome smile playing on his lips, speaking solely in Italian, claiming to have learned the language in “three weeks.” Still, he made it clear that Inter was a great club, Italy was a great footballing nation, and that he had to extend his thanks to many people. He did not call anyone a cunt.
Four years prior, among the English football press, it took no time at all for José Mourinho to become just Jose (pronounced incorrectly, bien sûr). Unlike Kinnear, he understood that, however disagreeable, the press was simply a constituent part of the game, that they could be charmed with a modicum of personality. Part of his media savvy was also to see that winning over journalists could be advantageous; contractual situations, spats with rivals, ‘sending a message,’ getting his excuses in, whatever happened to be on his agenda on any given day, Mourinho’s words would be fawningly snaffled down by the Simon Birds and Niall Hickmans of this world. Yet his status as media darling wasn’t achieved through charm alone.
It was through playing the game, accepting the symbiotic relationship between media and manager, and an unending generosity when it came to giving a quote or a soundbite. Sometimes jocular and jokey, sometimes tetchy and tense, the Special One’s ability was rarely questioned in his press conferences. On the rare occasion that it was, football being a notoriously amnesic game, José could simply point to his trophy cabinet and purse his lips. His success was his perennial Luzhin Defence, his titles spoke for themselves.
A decade later, in August 2018, his Man United side having lost 0-3 to Spurs, Mourinho would also confront a football press that he felt had disrespected him, just as Joe Kinnear had. “3-0, 3-0. Do you know what this is? 3-0. But it also means three Premierships and I won more Premierships alone than the other 19 managers together. Three for me and two for them two [Pep Guardiola and Manuel Pellegrini]. So, respect man, respect, respect, respect.”
When all was said and done, Mourinho was a winner. (A fact he rarely let journalists forget). Much has been written about his impressive managerial career and, of course, his Machiavellian manipulation of the media. Yet across a million headlines, interviews, and transfer gossip columns, there was one thing that Mourinho never was portrayed as: a joke.
Back in 2008, Joe Kinnear’s CV did not exactly read like a prophecy of a trophy-laden future for the Magpies given that his managerial honours extended to a pair of medals; runners-up with Luton Town in the Third Division in the 01-02 season and runners-up with Nepal at the 1987 South Asian Games (achieving a career-best win rate of 54.5% in Kathmandu). It was evident to most that Kinnear taking the Newcastle United job at this level was a man suddenly finding himself a little above his pay grade, as they say here in America.
Perhaps, his rant was intended to immediately nip that narrative in the bud. Perhaps he thought, at the very least, he could gain the respect of the press through the sheer awesome extent of his machismo. To this day I wonder what his own take on that conference was as he left Darsley Park. Maybe, he really didn’t care, despite all the swearing he’d done which made it seem like he did. Or, maybe he was satisfied and thought: well that showed them. Cunts.
“JOE KINNEAR blew his top yesterday as the pressure of managing Newcastle took its toll—just FOUR days into his reign.”
Simon Bird, as it turned out, did end up writing what he liked. Sic vita est. And Bird’s sub-editor truly fired up the ROFL-copter by photoshopping Kinnear’s head into a volcano.
So, how did we get here? Pugnacious, bullish, but above all, démodé, it wasn’t simply that Kinnear represented another underwhelming managerial appointment on Tyneside. It was that his very presence in football—in the year 2008—seemed to epitomise Newcastle United as a declining, catabolic club that could be summarised with a single word: retrograde.
Joe Kinnear had already been in management for well over a decade before the inaugural Premier League season, cutting his teeth in the Emirati league in 1976 after a knee injury ended his playing career. Unfairly or not, he was an avatar of the past. His very name evoked nostalgia. The very next day after his appointment but prior to, (dare I call it) Cunt-gate, he was already defending himself. “I am being linked with the ‘Cockney mafia’—they forget I was born in Ireland and played for Ireland all my life.” As if, somehow, he had not grown up on a Watford council estate, or as if, somehow, he did not sound like Alfie Moon’s cantankerous uncle. To be clear, I’m not for one minute suggesting that Joe Kinnear had any part in the cockney Cosa Nostra. But I am saying that again, rightly or wrongly, the shoe fit.
In appointing him, Mike Ashley had inadvertently conjured a slew of images from a long-lapsed footballing culture of indeterminate date (which I will lazily refer to as back in the day). Back in the day of sheepskin jackets, crinkly bungs in pub car parks, and headbutting—exponentially more headbutting. Back in the day when barmaids could be slapped on the arse as a ‘joke’, people knew their place, and respect was earned at the sharp end of a kick to the Jacobs. Back in the day when referees could be labelled Mickey Mouse without fear of financial penalty. Back in the day when sports journalists would be lucky to get a word out of a football manager, less a mere man and more a Sun Tzu figure, an ikon of masculinity who might, with great largesse, dole out a quote on his way to the pub urinal if he were in a good mood. And back in the day when there was, to put it kindly, an open suspicion of foreign elements entering English football. In short, the good old days for the good old boys.
And yet, for all this, whatever Kinnear’s name might evoke, there was some credence to his displeasure with the press on that fiery October day. He had been ridiculed before he’d even started. For all the red-faced vituperation, his anger italicized a wholly rational point: you haven’t given me a chance. OK, he couldn’t nod to his trophy cabinet like Mourinho could. But of the 72 active managers operating in the English League system at any one time, how many can? And how long had it been since, perhaps, Newcastle United could rightly expect to attract a title-winning manager who could demand respect, man, respect, respect, respect?
Football is not black and white, however much that might simplify the work of headline writers. Within it, truth can exist beyond the binary. Football is a ‘mouth-watering’ Champions League quarter-final between Real Madrid and Juventus at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. But it’s also a Cold War of a 0-0 in Grimsby on a Monday night in January. Football is Juan Román Riquelme and Raphael Honigstein. It is also Ricky van Wolfswinkel and Tim Lovejoy. Yes, it’s a business driven by results but not all supporters love their club for their win rate. Most don’t win much, if you do the maths. Joe Kinnear might have been an unpopular appointment. For all we know, he might have been hired as a result of a phone call in the overstock room of a Sports Direct in Gateshead inspired by Mike Ashley’s business ethos of: I know a bloke who knows a bloke. And look, Kinnear might well have been a dinosaur. But for all the snickering, for all Kinnear’s bad-tempered buffoonery, and however simple it was to characterise him as debris out of his depth in the modern age, a single fact had been ignored. The journalists in that room had been taking the piss out of an experienced man.
As a player, Kinnear won the FA Cup in 1966. The Football League Cup in 1971 and 1973. The UEFA Cup in 1972. He received his first international cap for Ireland in 1967. And he shared changing rooms with countless greats; Bill Nicholson, Pat Jennings, Martin Peters, Jimmy Greaves, Terry Venables. Through observation and osmosis, he would have learned countless lessons from these football veterans. As manager, Kinnear would lead (a sponsorless) Wimbledon as one of the breakaway 22 into the inaugural Premier League season, ending solidly mid-table, a respectable 12th. He was a man with over 40 years of experience at the highest levels of the game, overseeing football matches from Kathmandu to Kidderminster. Joe Kinnear had, undeniably, taken Wimbledon to a semi-final in the FA and Coca-Cola Cups, even bringing the Dons to within spitting/headbutting distance of a UEFA Cup spot.
One imagines the closest to that anyone else in that press conference ever got was winning £50 in the office Fantasy Football league. What right, then, did the press have to condemn Kinnear before he’d even put together his first team-sheet? Why, then, is it so easy to imagine that sub-editor laughing as s/he photoshopped Kinnear’s face into a volcano? And why, then, is it so easy to imagine her/him laughing over her/his Sainsbury’s meal deal upon realising that ‘Joe Kinnear’ is, wonderfully, an anagram of ‘Inane Joker’?
The answer, I think, is because he or she was safe in the knowledge that football had simply moved on. Kinnear was a man at odds with the times in which he found himself. No longer could one label referees as Mickey Mouse. No longer were foreign players in the minority, an emerging curiosity to be tolerated or cashed in on for comic relief when mishandling some element of English culture. Foreign players were by now, more often than not, the fundamental components in the squad. It would take seven seasons of the Premier League for a foreigner to top the scoring charts—Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Dwight Yorke (tied with Michael Owen) in the 98-99 season. Up until that point, a total of 11 foreigners, if one excludes Scotland and Wales, had bothered the charts at all. The following year, 99-00, Kevin Phillips would have the season of his life scoring 30 goals. But for the next full 15 years, an Englishman would not top the scoring charts. The season prior to Kinnear’s arrival, there was not a single Englishman in the top 5 PL scorers, while Steven Gerrard stood alone in 08/09 behind Anelka and Ronaldo. Not an exact science, I know, but a rudimentary measure at least of how the dynamic between the domestic and the international had evolved from Kinnear’s antecedent experience in the Premier League, to his renaissance in 2008.
Following his dumpster fire of first press conference, one might expect Joe Kinnear to sever any perceived vinculum with the effing cockney wideboy image what won’t be fackin’ no-one’s mug. One would be mistaken. It took two months of Kinnear’s reign for Charles N’Zogbia to announce his desire to leave the club in the January transfer window: “After four years at Newcastle, I want to reach a higher level of ambition. That is impossible here.” Ouch. The great Bobby Robson had described N’Zogbia as “One of the most naturally gifted players of that age I’d ever seen.” Former chief scout, Paul Montgomery said of him: “You can’t teach that. He just had it. He was sublime on the ball.” Yet following a 2-1 away loss to Man City, an angry Joe Kinnear ‘mispronounced’ his surname as “insomnia” in the post-match interview. N’Zogbia would never again play for the club, making his transfer to Wigan Athletic a week later. The season would end in a triple bypass for Kinnear’s heart, and relegation for Newcastle. The following year, N’Zogbia would go on to save Wigan from relegation and become a full France international under Laurent Blanc.
When the dust had settled, Kinnear’s stewardship was remembered for the swearing and the particularly weak joke about a name. Was it inspired directly by N’Zogbia sounding only very vaguely like a lack of sleep? Or was it simply his foreignness itself? Perhaps Joe’s truth evinced through jest was actually saying: the idea that I am expected to respect this man’s identity is the true joke.
We would all prefer to think no malice was intended. To hope it was merely an offhand wisecrack, glibly made in the heat of the moment, ripened and refined in the casually xenophobic societal mores of yesteryear in which Kinnear felt more comfortable. A society where Jim Davison had to tone it down for primetime TV and lean on his more urbane material: Oi oi! Wink wink! John Virgo wearing a colourful waistcoat don’t arf’ look a bit bent, like! A parochial society, where the mere mention of other nationalities triggered a Pavlovian response toward stereotype. And a society which treated foreignness as an amusing bauble, a camp slice of curio to liven up a player unveiling, or a necessary evil that, through gritted teeth, the average punter would have to admit, at least brought a bit of continental flair to the game.
Look, I don’t know if any of this is right, I am unable to view the 80s and 90s through the prism of Joe Kinnear’s world view. (More’s the pity. Er, I think). Perhaps it’s possible that I’m just being unkind, and the Insomnia comment was a simple slip of the tongue from Kinnear.
Alas, a few years later, that same tongue would be slipping all over the place like a Labrador on wet lino. Once again, the shoe seemed to fit, a gammon Cinderella if you will, when, in June of 2013, Kinnear would make a guest appearance on Talk Sport, expertly evaluating Newcastle’s current crop of players with no short supply of passive aggressive faint praise:
“I think they've got some magnificent midfield players: Tioté, Ben Afri [Hatem Ben Arfa], Yohan Kebab [Yohan Cabaye], Sissoko are very solid. I think we lost our top goalscorer in Demba Ba when he went to Chelsea for £7.5m or something like that…. Then you had somebody like Sissy [Papiss Cissé] he was the next goal scorer with something like eight… Shola Amamobi [Ameobi] is getting better and better, he's a young kid (he was 32 years of age at the time). There’s Galteirez [Gutiérrez], and of course a lot of other players.”
Now, there’s a lot to unpack here so I’ll just stick to the bit about getting the names wrong. Speaking to Psychology Today, Ranjana Srinivasan, Ph.D. described name-based microaggressions in the following way: “They are instances of subtle and indirect racism against marginalized populations. Under this umbrella, name-based microaggressions constitute a specific category that capture the subtle discriminatory comments that minority individuals experience given their first and last names of ethnic origin. Names are prominent identifiers that can often tell the story of one’s ethnicity, cultural background, and familial lineage. There is a tendency for White European names and whiteness in general to be perceived as normative, whereas racial minorities with names of religious and ethnic origins may be seen as an inconvenience. This can result in discrimination and ostracism. Individuals with racially and ethnically distinct names often experience a mix of pride and discomfort in association with the use of their names. Examples of name-based microaggressions include: assignment of an unwanted nickname, assumptions and biases about an individual based on their name, and teasing from peers due to cultural aspects of a name.”
Admittedly, I don’t know if Kinnear has thought much about name-based micro-aggressions, or if he reads Psychology Today. I don’t know if he is a cheap racist. Perhaps it was that, yet again, he intended no malice in these (manifold) mispronunciations. Maybe it was even subconscious, a certain linguistic languor wherein foreignness triggered some insecurity within him, reminding him that that football, his version of football, the way he understood it, had evolved away from him. Or, perhaps, it is that Kinnear simply has a dull ear.
Hard men being threatened by cultured men is not a new thing in English football. It predates the Premier League. It will almost certainly outlast it. When presented with the link between Arsène Wenger speaking various languages and his perspicacity, Alex Ferguson was having none of it: “They say he’s an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages. Well, I’ve got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages.” Boiled down to its simplest form (and ignoring the I’ve got a boy part), Fergie here is in essence saying, speaking languages isn’t clever, a mere child can do it after all. I could do it if I wanted, I just simply choose not to.
Why, just the other day, in the year 2020, Martin Keown criticised Mikel Arteta for shouting instructions to his players in various languages during a match. Because, um, England? Perhaps Rob Holding and Bukayo Saka would be left bewildered by the words Allez, Nico! Allez, allez! Those that come from outside the coterie of ‘English football men’ are almost always required to prove themselves and prove themselves quickly because the Premier League takes no prisoners, as we are always gleefully reminded by savants Neville, and Souness. Almost always, these outsiders just happen not to speak fluent English. Yet those that come from within the coterie ought to be given a chance in this cutthroat business because results take time. Coincidence that often these men happen to be former colleagues.
There has always been a sclerosis of racism in English football, whether intentional or not, whether casual or otherwise, a whispered slur, or a White Lives Matter sky banner flown over a stadium. Just as there has always been a tiresome double-standard wherein English players and managers, (and honorary Englishmen such Ole Gunnar Solskjær and a plethora of Scots and Welshmen), are given far more leeway than their foreign counterparts. When Ronaldo and Carvalho dive to gain an advantage for their team, they are “damaging football,” as Steven Gerrard famously proclaimed in his 2006 autobiography. Two years later, he bellyflopped for a penalty under insubstantial contact by Mariano Pernía during an undeserved 1-1 draw against Atlético de Madrid. Where was the outrage in the English press? English punditry? Reader, suspend thy disbelief, but it was not Stevie G’s only career dive.
Last month the ever-sapient Souness claimed that Erik Lamela making the most of Anthony Martial’s slap was: “Pathetic. It’s very Latin. If one goes, both have to go. It’s pathetic. Is this what the English game is about? We, the Brits, do it differently. I’ve played in a Latin country, I’ve worked in Latin countries, I know how they see the game.” I do not particularly care to learn more about this man’s view on Latin culture, although, one imagines that would be entirely possible given the fact that he wrote a 1999 book rather hilariously titled Souness: The Management Years, which sounds like an Adrian Mole instalment more than anything else. But he is not alone in proclaiming diving a quintessentially foreign aspect of English football.
In 2012, Sir Alex Ferguson said: “It’s not worth going into that subject because down the years there have been plenty of players diving, and you have to say particularly foreign players.” Michael Owen, then a Stoke City striker, claimed that diving was “worse than 10 years ago with the influence of players coming from South America, Spain and Italy.” This despite his own words on the subject: “I’ve been guilty of it. I could’ve stayed on my feet against Argentina. It’s just a part of the game.”
When a foreign player dives, they are ruining the game. When an English player dives, sweet FA. And when Martin Taylor broke Eduardo’s tibia and fibula, immediately he was defended as ‘not that sort of player.’ Arsène Wenger opined Taylor should never play again, citing his expectation that the usual defence of ‘he’s not that type of guy’ would be trotted out and going on to liken it to murder. “Once is enough, you have a dead person.” Sure enough, Birmingham manager Alex McLeish responded: “Martin is not a dirty player... We’re absolutely devastated for Eduardo but I didn’t think it was a sending off.” Eduardo’s injury was so graphic that Sky Sports, which was broadcasting the game live, decided not to show replays of the incident. Taylor received a 3-match ban. Yet when Luis Suárez bit Branislav Ivanovic in 2013, he received a 10-match ban. The Daily Mail described the incident thusly: “Football hits new low as Liverpool star sinks teeth into Chelsea defender’s arm.” Even the Prime Minister chipped in with his opinion. The actual Prime Minister.
None of this is to excoriate the Premier League. English football has a problem with racism. So do most top leagues in the world. This is not a controversial statement, nor a complicated one. And it is a subject that has been written about with far more astuteness by others. The abovesaid is merely intended to contextualise the culture in which Joe Kinnear had spent most of his professional life. (In a week where FA Chairman, Greg Dyke, resigned for using unacceptable language, one can only imagine how Kinnear might fare in today’s game). If Kinnear intended offence by turning ‘foreign-sounding’ names into a joke, he deserves all corresponding ridicule. Like anyone else, he deserves to be judged on his own words. But what seemed a little sanctimonious that day was for the sports writers to clutch pearls, and wonder where this AMAZINGLY SWEARY specimen had time-travelled in from.
Because if Joe Kinnear was a dinosaur, then he was a product of the cretaceous period which the football press had themselves fomented. A culture that demands respect for its norms without reciprocating it to those that differ. One can almost understand how Kinnear might have felt betrayed now that he suddenly found himself outside of the football man coterie, now that he alarmingly found himself beholden to the press and not the other way around.
Most press conferences today are trite, boring affairs where topics are anticipated and soundbites are prepared ahead of time, as though PMQs for football managers. It has been this way for a long time. Fans will comment in their thousands afterwards, did he mean X or Y? Joe Kinnear, at least, bored nobody in October 2008. He said what he felt with very little ambiguity. Is that laudable? Probably not in this context. Was it enjoyable? Yes, yes it was. There is an almost Shakespearian tragicomedy in the figure of the backwards-looking man; everyone in the room understanding that things have moved on except for the single Polonius-like figure, lamenting how times have changed (invariably for the worst). At least, in that moment in time, Joe Kinnear did not look back. A sweary volcano he may have been, a relic of an irrelevant age, but still he chose to look forward. To take back control, if you will. And so, we end at the beginning, giving the final word to our protagonist, who concluded that immortal press conference with an answer to an actual football question that still stands as an appropriate coda for my appreciation of Joe Kinnear’s performance that day:
Journalist: Enjoyed getting back in the swing of things, Joe?
J.K.: Absolutely. I’ve loved every moment of it.
Part 2 of Scandals and Scoundrels can be read here.
Nicolás Obregón, The Left-sided Problem
Nicolás is a British-Spanish crime writer/football fan based in Los Angeles.
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