{"id":8071,"date":"2017-10-23T18:58:44","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T22:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=8071"},"modified":"2017-10-23T18:58:44","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T22:58:44","slug":"five-famous-footballing-insults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2017\/10\/23\/five-famous-footballing-insults\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Famous Footballing Insults"},"content":{"rendered":"

Famous Five: <\/em><\/strong>after Troy Deeney publicly accused Arsenal of lacking “cojones”, here are five other legendary footballing insults or putdowns.<\/em><\/p>\n

The best insults stick, and they stick because they are accurate. They identify some flaw or weakness and then give a name to it. Thus it was that Watford striker Troy Deeney hit such a nerve last weekend, when he used a post-match interview after Watford\u2019s 2-1 defeat of Arsenal to publicly accuse<\/a>\u00a0the Gunners\u00a0players of lacking \u201ccojones\u201d or \u201cnuts\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here are five more famous footballing insults, when the use of a particular word to describe an opponent has become a brutal tag to label them with, and in some cases a tag that they could never shake off.<\/p>\n

“Babies”\u2014Patrice Evra on Arsenal, 2009<\/h3>\n

Of course, Deeney is not the first opponent to publicly question the attitude and commitment of an Arsenal side. Nearly a decade ago, Manchester United\u2019s Patrice Evra celebrated a comfortable semi-final win in the Champions League by claiming that the contest had been \u201c11 men against 11 babies\u201d.<\/p>\n

The use of the word \u201cbabies\u201d was so controversial that Arsenal\u2019s centre-half, Mikael Silvestre, who had played alongside the Frenchman for United before joining the Gunners, accused him of a lack of respect for his fellow professionals. Needless to say, Evra never apologised or retracted the claim.<\/p>\n

“Voyeur”\u2014Jos\u00e9 Mourinho on Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, 2005<\/h3>\n

It is not only Wenger\u2019s players who have been trashed and trash-talked about in recent years. The Arsenal manager himself has come in for increasing amounts of criticism, inside and outside of the club. The most memorable charge made against\u00a0the Frenchman\u00a0during his long Arsenal tenure was not that he was incompetent but, worse, that he was \u201ca voyeur\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was Jos\u00e9 Mourinho who made that claim, near the start of his second season at Chelsea. He did so in response to what he regarded as Wenger\u2019s unhealthy obsession with the club that had used Roman Abramovich\u2019s petro-roubles to replace Arsenal at the top of the English game.<\/p>\n

Of course, once you hurl mud around there is a danger that some of it will stick to you, and that was the case for Mourinho recently. Antonio Conte, his replacement as Chelsea manager, responded to Mourinho\u2019s allegation that other Premier League managers \u201ccried and cried\u201d about the injuries they suffered whereas he simply got on with the job. When the matter was raised with the Italian, he responded furiously<\/a>, in effect suggesting\u00a0Mourinho himself was the “voyeur” in question.<\/p>\n

“Enemy of Football”\u2014Volker Roth on Jos\u00e9 Mourinho<\/h3>\n

Mourinho has been the subject of several stinging verbal attacks himself.\u00a0Of all the allegations against him, the worst by far was that he was an \u201cenemy of football\u201d \u2013 that is, an opponent to or, even a parasite upon, the game that gives him such a wonderful living.<\/p>\n

That charge was made against Mourinho in 2005 by Volker Roth, who at the time was the chairman of UEFA\u2019s Referees\u2019 Committee. Roth was reacting to the retirement of a top referee, Anders Frisk, which apparently followed Mourinho\u2019s accusation that Frisk had talked privately at half-time to Barcelona\u2019s then manager, Frank Rijkaard, during a Champions League game with Chelsea. In effect, Mourinho was accusing Frisk of colluding with the Dutchman against his side.<\/p>\n

So Roth said, \u201cIt\u2019s the coaches who whip up the masses and actually make them threaten people with death. We can\u2019t accept that one of our best referees has been forced to quit because of this. People like Mourinho are the enemy of football.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with all these memorable putdowns, the phrase \u201cenemy of football\u201d has stuck to Mourinho precisely because so many people feel that it is entirely accurate, and not because he had at least attempted to put pressure on a referee. Clearly, it is a soft spot for the Portuguese, who may never earn the adoration of neutrals that other managers (even his arch rival, Wenger) have earned, because none of his teams have ever gone for the kind of all-out attack on the field that he has made his own trademark in interviews and press conferences.<\/p>\n

“A Clown”\u2014Brian Clough on Jan Tomaszewski, 1973<\/h3>\n

Brian Clough is the greatest wit that football has ever known, with endless lines of his entering the footballing lexicon. Despite this, he never really\u00a0opted to belittle opponents.\u00a0In fact, the one time that Clough resorted to this tactic, it backfired against him, and the whole of English football, spectacularly.<\/p>\n

The time and place was October 1973 at Wembley, when Clough was one of the guests on the ITV panel previewing England\u2019s crucial World Cup qualifying match against Poland. Having already lost to Poland away, England had to beat them to qualify for the following year\u2019s tournament in West Germany. Before the match had even started, however, Clough said of the Polish goalkeeper, Jan Tomaszewski, that he was \u201ca circus clown in gloves\u201d. The original, typically memorable phrase from\u00a0the manager\u00a0was largely forgotten, but the simple epithet of \u201cclown\u201d stuck like glue.<\/p>\n

The irony, of course, was that although much of Tomaszewski\u2019s performance that night was unusual to say the least (at one point, he used his knees to save an England shot), it was ultimately effective. Instead, it was the England goalkeeper, a young Peter Shilton, who made the mistake that allowed Poland to qualify at England\u2019s expense, when he let Jan Domarski\u2019s shot squirm under him and end up in the England net. England recovered to force a draw, but it was not enough. As for Poland, they not only reached the 1974 World Cup but ended up finishing third, thus ensuring that Clough\u2019s \u201cclown\u201d had the last laugh.<\/p>\n

Len Shackleton on the Average Director’s Knowledge of Football<\/h3>\n

Unlike Jan Tomaszewski, Len Shackleton was not a \u201cclown\u201d but, famously, \u201cthe Clown Prince of Soccer\u201d, which was the title of his 1956 autobiography. In that book, he memorably summed up the \u201cThe Average Director\u2019s Knowledge of Football\u201d by including a completely blank page. Unlike the other insults on this list, it was a written insult rather than a verbal one, but it was all the better for it, because written insults last longer.<\/p>\n

Shackleton\u2019s jibe against board directors was heart-felt, because it came at a time when even the finest English footballers were little more than paid slaves for their paymasters, the chairman and board of directors who ran every English club. Like most players of his era, he begrudged the control that non-footballers like club directors exercised over their playing staff. He took out a lot of that anger on the pitch, but his reputation for joking around and creating controversy was such that he only won five international caps, even though his talent merited many more.<\/p>\n

Of course, Shackleton had the last word in his autobiography, which remains one of the greatest\u00a0footballing autobiographies. Fittingly, he became a football writer after he retired from playing in 1957, but nothing he ever wrote\u00a0had half the impact of what he didn\u2019t write about football\u2019s rulers and administrators.<\/p>\n

Main Photo
\nEmbed from Getty Images<\/a>